When the Trump administration isn’t dismantling the network of trade relationships that knit the post–Cold War world together and fomenting destabilizing tensions between America and its allies in Europe and Asia, it seems to be disintegrating the American military deterrent.
Last Thursday, amid the global panic over Trump’s proposed tariff regime, word came down that the National Security Council was undergoing a personnel purge. “We’re always going to let go of people — people we don’t like or people that take advantage of [us] or people that may have loyalties to someone else,” Trump told reporters, which appeared to confirm early reports that the activist Laura Loomer helped to convince Trump that his NSA harbored the remnants of the reviled “neocon” wreckers and deviationists. Citing “U.S. officials,” the New York Times subsequently confirmed the basis for the ouster of General Timothy D. Haugh, former head of U.S. Cyber Command, among other key figures.
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