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Pete Hegseth

Trump 2.0 Is the Real Deal

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › ideas › archive › 2025 › 01 › trump-administration-strategy › 681497

The first 10 days of Donald Trump’s presidency have seen such an onslaught of executive orders and implementing actions that Steve Bannon’s strategy to “flood the zone with shit” seems apt. But that characterization is incomplete, and it obscures a more frightening truth: The Trump administration’s actions have been not just voluminous but efficient and effective. Though Trump himself may not appreciate the depth of detail that has gone into these early days, his allies do appear to understand what they are doing, and they seem to have his unquestioning consent to do whatever they like.  

And what they want is very clear: to take full control of the federal government. Not in the way that typifies every change of administration but in a more extreme way designed to eradicate opposition, disempower federal authority, and cause federal bureaucrats to cower. It is an assault on basic governance.

A great deal of thought has gone into this effort already. The executive orders and sundry administrative directives and guidance that have been issued reflect a profound understanding of the federal government and exactly where the weak spots within the bureaucracy might lie.

Read: The strategy behind Trump’s policy blitz

Consider, as a first example, the order that reassigned 20 senior career lawyers within the U.S. Department of Justice. Because of their career status, they could not be unilaterally fired, but Trump’s team did the next best thing by reassigning them to a newly created “Sanctuary Cities” task force. With one administrative act, the senior leaders of public-integrity investigations, counter-intelligence investigations, and crypto-currency investigations—individuals with immense experience in criminal law—were taken off the board and assigned to a body that is, apparently, tasked with taking legal actions against cities that do not assist in Trump’s immigration crackdown. Their former offices were effectively neutered.

As my friend, the former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason, put it: “These are career people. They are not political. They are people who have been in these positions often many, many years or even decades. They have developed a real expertise, and that’s a great resource for the government.” A resource that is now lost.

But this is not merely an attack on expertise. This maneuver has a further effect: to disable opposition. Career employees with this degree of expertise and experience are exactly the type who would embody institutional norms and, thus, exactly the sort who could be expected, in their own way, to form a bulwark of institutional resistance to Trumpian excess. Moreover, three of the prosecuting sections of the DOJ that have been disrupted—public integrity (an anti-corruption unit), counterintelligence (combatting foreign influence), and crypto crime—are precisely the three units whose oversight might interfere with Trump’s activities, or those of his allies.

The same playbook was also used last week to hamstring environmental enforcement, by reassigning four senior environmental lawyers at the DOJ to immigration matters. The leaders of these four litigating sections are four of the most experienced environmental lawyers in the nation. Additionally, the Trump administration has frozen action on all cases handled by the Justice Department’s Environmental Enforcement Section, with substantial practical disruption. Once again, expertise has been lost and the functionality of government institutions has been significantly impaired, with the inevitable result that companies subject to environmental regulation (including Trump’s big corporate supporters) will be less policed.

One could continue with a number of other examples, whether the wholesale reassignment of 160 staffers at the National Security Council (responsible for coordinating crucial national-security matters at the White House), the reassignment of DOJ civil-rights leadership (enforcing DEI mandates), or the appointment Ed Martin (a January 6 denier) as the United States attorney for the District of Columbia. But the themes are always the same: Long-standing expertise is discarded and institutional effectiveness diminished.  

[Read: Trump can’t escape the laws of political gravity]

More to the point, however, these actions are a “deep cut” reflecting significant planning and intent. The chiefs at DOJ’s public-integrity or environmental-enforcement sections are by no means household names. Nobody outside their immediate ambit of authority would know who they are. And yet the extent of knowledge demonstrated by Trump’s team in reassigning them is extensive. Trump’s team knows which high-value targets might offer internal resistance, and it has removed them.

A second pillar of Trump’s effort to take over the government can be seen in his steps to eliminate any independent oversight of his actions.

Here, the headline is his attempted purge of at least a dozen inspectors general.  Inspectors general, as an institution, are perhaps not so little-known as the DOJ section chiefs who were dismissed, but as individuals, they are mostly anonymous. IGs serve as an internal check on waste, fraud, and abuse at federal agencies. They were created by Congress in the 1970s as a semi-independent authority intended to be insulated from presidential control. They routinely report to Congress and the public about misconduct that they identify for corrective action.

Indeed, Congress so highly values the independence, objectivity, and nonpartisanship of IGs that, following Trump’s first presidency, it passed a law strengthening that independence and limiting a president’s removal authority. No doubt recognizing the threat that independent oversight might pose to his planned actions, Trump’s (possibly illegal) removal order is a frontal assault on the careful monitoring Congress has sought to build into the government

To similar effect, the Trump administration has moved to eliminate the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. That relatively obscure office (with a budget of only $7 million and 30 staff), little noticed outside the Army, is intended to study ways of reducing civilian harm during combat. But Trump’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, thinks that “restrictive rules of engagement” make defeating the enemy harder, but the protection of civilians is all about careful rules of engagement. Again, the Trump administration’s action reflects both a substantive desire to diminish oversight and a depth of bureaucratic knowledge that is extensive.

That depth can also be seen in Trump’s announced intention to fire three Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The PCLOB is an independent bipartisan oversight board reviewing executive-branch law-enforcement and intelligence surveillance activities. Yet, despite its crucial internal importance, the PCLOB is hardly a well-known institution. Save for those, like me, who work in that field, few, if any, outside observers could likely define the board’s role or name its members.

[Jonathan Chait: Trump’s second term might have already peaked]

And still, Trump’s team knew enough to identify an ingenious way of neutering the board. As an independent, statutorily created agency, it could not be eliminated. But the board does require a quorum to operate, and by firing three of its five members this past Monday, Trump effectively eliminated its oversight. As Senator Ron Wyden put it: “By purging the Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, Trump is kneecapping one of the only independent watchdogs over government surveillance who could alert Congress and the public about surveillance abuses by his administration.” And he is doing so in a highly sophisticated manner.

Along with large-scale actions to reform government, Trump’s orders included a plethora of small-bore, petty-minded actions designed to implement his personal prejudices and desire for revenge. For example, he has stripped Anthony Fauci of his federal security detail. He has also dismissed Admiral Linda Fagan of the Coast Guard, the only woman who has ever led a military branch, on a transparently inaccurate claim of ineffectiveness. Likewise, he has stripped security protection from Mike Pompeo and John Bolton (both of whom are under affirmative threat from Iran). His administration’s ban on “activist” flags at U.S. embassies would be almost comical if it did not exemplify the coldhearted efficiency at the core of Trump’s new presidency. These actions are petty, but they also reflect the comprehensive nature of his purpose and the extent of his team’s planning.

Were it not so dangerous to democratic norms, the efficiency of these early days would almost be admirable, in the same way that one might admire a well-run play by an opposing football team. But politics is not a game, and this nation’s basic security and functioning are at risk. Those who oppose Trump’s actions do not have an incompetent opponent; Trump’s team is savvy and has been planning for this for years. They came ready.

Caring Deeply About National Security Is Not the Same as Being Good at It

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › ideas › archive › 2025 › 01 › trump-national-security-foreign-policy › 681495

Few of Donald Trump’s foibles have gone undissected, but one glaring thing remains underappreciated: He does not care about U.S. national security.

Once you consider Trump’s record from this perspective, many of his past and present actions become more coherent. (The political scientist Jonathan Bernstein recently made a version of this point on Substack.) Why else would a president—to choose a few examples—nominate Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard for his Cabinet, haphazardly store highly classified documents on a ballroom stage, or publicly call on Russia to hack a former secretary of state’s emails?

This is not to say, as some of Trump’s critics have, that he is against American national security. It doesn’t mean he’s a Manchurian candidate, a saboteur trying to tear down the United States on behalf of some foreign adversary—Trump appears to have come by his hostility to rule of law and the Constitution on his own. Rather, he’s simply indifferent, just as many of Trump’s most audacious lies are less intentionally misleading than completely uninterested in truth.

[David A. Graham: What Trump did in Osaka was worse than lying]

“Trump is the only thing he’s interested in,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser during Trump’s first term, told me. “He’s not really interested in domestic security, either, or anything else.”

Nor is this to say that Trump’s appointees don’t care about American national security. Tulsi Gabbard, his nominee to be director of national intelligence, has a very strange collection of views that she seems to honestly feel would improve America’s position in the world. Her lengthy meeting with the now-deposed Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad appears to have been prompted by sincere but misguided convictions.

Other Trump appointees also hold views that may diverge from “the blob,” as detractors sometimes describe the foreign-policy establishment, but people like National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy–Designate Elbridge Colby are viewed as serious, thoughtful people with a command of their fields.

[Read: Trump’s plea for Russia to hack the U.S. government]

Pete Hegseth, too, seems to care a great deal about the future of the country—but Hegseth is plainly unqualified to be secretary of defense, and a president who cared about national security would not put him forward to lead the Defense Department. Hegseth has never run any organization near in size and complexity to the Pentagon; the ones he has run, he’s run into the ground. Many eyewitness accounts suggest he has, or has had, serious issues with alcohol abuse. (Hegseth denies any drinking problem and says he will not drink as secretary.) None of this even gets into his serial adultery and past accusations of sexual assault. (He has denied any wrongdoing.) His primary qualifications for the nomination are that he looks good on TV and that he’s been a consistent cheerleader for Donald Trump.

A president who cared about national security would not have publicly called for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 campaign. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said; Kremlin operatives promptly tried. Nor would he defer so egregiously to Vladimir Putin, blaming “U.S. foolishness and stupidity” for strained Russo-American relations. He would also not summarily dismiss DHS advisory committees and work to dismantle key cybersecurity bodies simply because he was angry that they undermined his lies about the 2020 election.

[Read: Trump blames bad relations with Russia on everything but Russia]

A president concerned foremost about national security does not systematically alienate key allies, attempt to intimidate them, or question whether he’d stand by basic treaty obligations, such as NATO’s Article 5. Nor would a president who was interested in national security withhold duly appropriated funds to a key ally like Ukraine in the hope of obtaining a personal political favor. He would not use the military as a prop, whether in creating a show at the border or cinematically calling off strikes on adversaries.

A president focused on national security would not abscond with dozens of boxes full of highly sensitive national-security documents, storing them mixed up with golf shirts and newspaper clippings and leaving them on a stage in Mar-a-Lago, unsecured. (He would also not, as federal prosecutors alleged, refuse to return them when subpoenaed. Trump denied this.) Nor would he pardon violent rioters convicted in an assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump has revoked security details for Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and his former adviser Brian Hook, all of whom worked in his first administration. Bolton told me he wasn’t shocked, because when he resigned from the White House in 2019, Trump immediately ordered protection removed. “Normally, somebody in that job gets protection for three months, six months—there’s no set formula,” he said. “But because you have information you don’t want your adversaries to get, it’s not a perquisite. It’s for the protection of the government.”

[Read: Why the president praises dictators]

Caring deeply about national security is not the same as being good at it. U.S. history is littered with examples of catastrophic choices made by conscientious officials. The architects of foreign policy in the George W. Bush administration truly believed that toppling Saddam Hussein would improve security in the Middle East and American interests. They were wrong. Conversely, Trump’s first term saw some foreign-policy wins, including the Abraham Accords and the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Other gambits that seemed more aimed at personal glorification—or a Nobel Peace Prize—such as his summit with Kim Jong Un flopped.

Even if Trump’s approach does sometimes produce wins, however, he is more motivated by pique, personal benefit, attraction to autocratic leaders, or pursuit of adulation. Those, more than a calculation about what’s best for the nation, are what guides Trump.