The Washington Examiner is reporting that the new national security adviser, John Bolton, will fire dozens of White House staffers when he begins working early next month.
Most of those leaving will be Obama-era holdovers, as well as anyone who isn’t loyal to Donald Trump.
“Bolton can and will clean house,” one former White House official was quoted as saying.
On Thursday, Trump announced that Bolton would replace H.R. McMaster as head of the National Security Council — a move that would be effective on April 9.
Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President George W. Bush, hinted in follow-up interviews Thursday on Fox News and Fox Business that he would be a strong force to solve the White House’s lingering issue with leaks, particularly those of a national security nature.
“It’s not for them to put in jeopardy the other 300 plus million American citizens just because they think their morality is better than everybody else’s,” Bolton said of the leakers on Fox Business.
The issue is so prevalent, the New York Times reported Friday that Trump himself has told Bolton that he needs to plug up the leaks.
The permanent national security bureaucracy — what many say is part of the “deep state” — has had it in for Trump from day one. No matter what you think of Bolton, he pegged it perfectly when he spoke of some Obama staffers believing they are right and Trump is wrong. It hardly matters, as they weren’t elected president.
The number of leaks from this White House has been stupefying. And the damage they have caused to our national security cannot be measured. This is true especially since the leaks have been very selective, designed to weaken the president or one of his policies. No matter your politics, it’s outrageous and it has to stop.
If Bolton is to be Trump’s pit bull with the bureaucracy, the president has chosen well. The man was born to ruffle feathers and kick butt. He got a reputation at the prim and proper UN of being a hardass. This is exactly what the UN needed, but refused to accept.
At the UN, Bolton waged what amounted to a one-man war on the UN Human Rights Commission, trying to point out the hypocrisy of having regimes that murder thousands of their own citizens sitting in judgment on western democracies and especially Israel. It led to the dissolution of the commission but resulted in the forming of the equally ludicrous UN Human Rights Council.
If Trump stays true to form, most of the staffer positions will not be filled once they are vacant. The president is “destroying” the State Department, according to the State Department, because so many paper-pushing positions have gone unfilled. Well, Foggy Bottom is still standing and American diplomacy hasn’t suffered much as a result of a few fewer diplomats.
Bolton will be a lightening rod for controversy. It will be interesting to watch his progress in cleaning house at the White House.
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