Here’s an idea: Maybe don’t trash people who have chosen national security as their life’s work late on a Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend.
Secretary of State and acting national security adviser Marco Rubio did exactly that on Friday. Axios reported the downsizing involving more than 100 National Security Council staffers. While those staffers will now return to their home agencies in the U.S. government, serving on the NSC is a great honor that has to be earned through hard work and exceptional performance.
To be clear, there is a legitimate debate over what size and responsibilities the NSC should have. My view is that the NSC has become slightly too large. It also became a place where decision-making went to die during the Obama and Biden administrations. That said, directives from President Donald Trump and Rubio to establish rapid chains of information and decision-making could have addressed these problems. The advantage of that alternative approach is that it would have allowed national security professionals from different intelligence agencies such as the CIA, NSA, FBI and U.S. military to reach back into the behemoth that is the national security bureaucracy and extract the information and actions required by Rubio, the national security principals, and the president. The key point to emphasize here is that a national security adviser can wrangle the NSC for his or her purposes without simply gutting it.
Rubio’s decision means fewer of the most important information points will get up to the top of the executive branch in a timely fashion. It will risk less informed decision-making. It will risk things being missed. It will miss expertise on specific issues being delivered directly to Rubio and his political deputies.
Indeed, contrary to Rubio’s claim that his action is a step against the “deep state,” his action will defer bureaucratic control down to individual agencies. This risks small cliques taking advantage of their own bureaucratic interests against those of the president. Sharing between various elements of government will be hampered. Again, if Rubio and Trump simply wanted a speedier NSC process, they could have demanded that of the NSC. It would then have been up to those assigned to the NSC to implement the president’s directives expediently. If not, bye-bye.
Regardless, the timing of these firings on Friday afternoon has far less justification. As CNN notes, “An email from NSC chief of staff Brian McCormack went out around 4:20 p.m. informing those being dismissed they’d have 30 minutes to clean out their desks. … If they weren’t on campus, the email read, they could email an address and arrange a time to retrieve their stuff later and turn in devices.”
On what planet does Rubio think this sends the message to career national security public servants that the Trump administration values their service? Again, we are not talking about paper-pushers here. NSC service involves very long hours and high stress. We’re not talking about customer service representatives at the U.S. Postal Service. We’re talking about highly trained intelligence analysts, military officers, and law enforcement professionals. Many of these people are veterans. Many of them could be making a lot more in the private sector than they make in government service. But they serve in the NSC because they love their country.
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They now go home for Memorial Day weekend being treated as if they are little more than worthless numbers on a Trump administration worksheet. What a weekend to send such a message of disdain for public service.
Rubio is by far one of the smartest and most informed public servants in the Trump administration. But this was a bad call made worse by its exceptionally poor timing.