According to the Wall Street Journal, President-elect Trump is sick and tired of intelligence getting in the way of his agenda, and he is going to get rid of it. Or cut it back anyway.
President-elect Donald Trump, a harsh critic of U.S. intelligence agencies, is working with top advisers on a plan that would restructure and pare back the nation’s top spy agency, people familiar with the planning said, prompted by a belief that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has become bloated and politicized.
And…
One of the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s planning said advisers also are working on a plan to restructure the Central Intelligence Agency, cutting back on staffing at its Virginia headquarters and pushing more people out into field posts around the world. The CIA declined to comment on the plan.
“The view from the Trump team is the intelligence world [is] becoming completely politicized,” said the individual, who is close to the Trump transition operation. “They all need to be slimmed down. The focus will be on restructuring the agencies and how they interact.”
This is a little alarming. Any real conservative wants smaller government, but not in one of the few things the Constitution actually grants as an duty of the federal government: defense. This is at the same time that he’s said he wants to borrow more money, spend it on a trillion dollar infrastructure program, and keep entitlements in place. It’s worrying also that this comes from Trump denying the Russian interference in the election outright without evidence, even before any was presented to him.
But don’t worry, I’m sure this will be terribly popular among his supporters and everyone on Fox News, just like anything else he does.