Defense, Democracy, Populism, & Domestic Politics, Power & Security Trump Stacks the Pentagon and Intel Agencies With Loyalists. To What End?
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November 11, 2020
By
David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt | The New York Times
Perry World House Director of Communications and Research, John Gans, is quoted in this piece from The New York Times on recent personnel changes at the Department of Defense in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
President Trump’s abrupt installation of a group of hard-line loyalists into senior jobs at the Pentagon has elevated officials who have pushed for more aggressive actions against Iran and for an imminent withdrawal of all American forces from Afghanistan over the objections of the military...
John Gans, a former chief Pentagon speechwriter and author of “White House Warriors,” a history of the National Security Council, said Mr. Patel, Mr. Cohen-Watnick and Mr. Ellis were all veterans of what he called the Trump’s administration’s “war on government.”
The Pentagon, more than other departments, has resisted Mr. Trump’s directives, slowing the withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan, a breach that led to the resignation of Jim Mattis as defense secretary.
“The three men have risen, in good measure because they were successful at pushing back against the bureaucracy” Mr. Gans said. “These are the people who go in and do whatever they think is required to achieve his agenda,” he said. “They are true soldiers in the war on government, the war on what Trump calls the deep state.”
