There is so much wrong in what he says it's impossible to tabulate the errors as you listen. Several replays are required. Trump's thrust, however, is more than a mere agglomeration of ignorance. It's a shadowy, malevolent plan for personal control of the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities via the re-implementation of an innocuous-sounding, bureaucratic maneuver known as "Schedule F."
Trump says Russia is not a threat, our greatest threat is our American representatives, we need to reevaluate the purpose of NATO, and most of the people in the State Dept, DOD and Intel Services need to be fired so he can put the right people in. pic.twitter.com/9PC6PrONM9
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) March 16, 2023
Schedule F has nothing to do with putting "America First." It's an exclusive Trump First & Only Trump plan, which he established by executive order late in his presidential term, but too late to take effect. (Incoming President Biden immediately rescinded it.)
Schedule F would create a vast category of government employees susceptible to a political purge. Presidents currently appoint around 4,000 such employees. Schedule F would expand the classification to potentially 50,000 — all of them former civil servants suddenly subjected to the political whims of another Trump administration, whose target would be, of course, the "deep staters."
Loyal, obedient Trumpers would take the place of tens of thousands of experienced, knowledgeable civil servants. As Axios reported, "the impact" of Trump's reclassification would "go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service." It "would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon."
This is what Trump is referencing when he advocates the "complete overhaul" of the latter agencies and departments. He would impale the U.S. government's professional, merit-based workforce on the bayonet of Trumpism. Any federal employee who objects to whatever whacky, illegal plan the president concocts could be summarily dismissed as an antiAmerican member of the deep state.
Trump's bureaucratic purging would be the diamond in his crown as America's singular, authoritarian power-wielder. He could, and would, appoint thousands of John Eastmans, Mark Meadowses and Martin Bormanns to the U.S. government's most fundamental, policymaking positions. The executive branch would become the banana republic inside the United States, the deepest of actual deep states.
And this, Trump is telling us.