US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio are carrying out a deep reorganization of the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House, drastically reducing the number of its staff.
This was reported by the Axios portal, noting that a significant part of the functions of the National Security Council are being transferred to the State Department and the Pentagon.
Citing an unnamed White House official, Axios emphasizes that Trump and Rubio see such a reorganization as part of the fight against the “deep state“, which has a serious influence on political and economic processes in the United States within the structures of the US federal government.
Republican Trump promised during his first term as US president to fight this bureaucratic phenomenon, which has largely sabotaged his course, but did not succeed.
„The National Security Council is the pinnacle of the “deep state“. This is about Marco's fight against it. We are destroying it, the president said. According to him, the number of staff in the service will be reduced by approximately half. It currently has 350 employees.
The publication also notes that Trump wants Rubio to remain “as long as possible” as his acting national security adviser. Rubio has been both secretary of state and national security adviser since early May. This happened after Trump fired his national security adviser, Mike Walz, on May 1.
Andy Barker and Robert Gabriel will be deputy national security advisers to the head of state. The former was previously national security adviser to US Vice President J.D. Vance, and the latter is a political adviser to Trump.
Axios reports that Trump and Rubio are abandoning the “bottom-up“ approach to interagency coordination within the US administration. This approach “does not work“ and will be rejected, a White House spokesman said. The article also quotes a senior administration official who explains that the vast apparatus of the National Security Council and the “bottom-up“ approval process may have been necessary under previous presidents in cases where there were sharp disagreements between key agencies and bureaucratic wars for influence. This is not the case now, the source claims. He assured that Trump's key ministers understand each other well, know that their job is to "execute the will of the president", not to formulate and implement their own agenda, and are capable of coordinating actions "from the top down".
The National Security Council will perform coordinating and advisory functions, and will not be involved in implementing the planned policy course, writes Axios.