Trump pointing
Game on.
We wrote yesterday that Trump's barrage of tweets signaled that he wasn't interested in song-and-dance routines about removing the career warmongers from State, the CIA and Pentagon.

They go or he goes.

So imagine our surprise when we noticed that the media was already sending signals that the Deep State is worried.

Newsweek has a long, proud history of operating as a glossy, illustrated Washington talking points periodical. We're not being facetious — the famed magazine was caught collaborating with the CIA in the 1950s. And you know the old saying — "nothing ever changes."

So we thoroughly enjoyed reading this detailed analysis explaining how Trump is slowly squeezing the pus out of the State Department, and why this is of course a very bad and dangerous development for Democracy, according to Newsweek:

newsweek trump gutting state department screenshot
Foreign service officers at the State Department keep the ship afloat? We thought they handed out cookies during violent coups? Or are we being redundant?

Of course, Newsweek attributes the "empty hallways" at State to Trump's "disdain for diplomacy" and hatred for "the administrative state".

The article — written by a "senior fellow" at the Soros-funded, Podesta/Clinton think tank Center for American Progress — is one long call to arms against Trump and his Stalinist purge of the kind-hearted, career public servants at the State Department.

Here's the best part:
Finally, the seventh floor—where the secretary and the senior team sits—is basically empty after a series of layoffs. For the last eight years, in addition to the secretary there was a deputy secretary and a deputy secretary for management and resources, an undersecretary for political affairs and a counselor.

This is the secretary's starting lineup, the folks who represent him within the department and at critical White House meetings where big decisions are hashed out. These are the people who provide some of the most important daily advice to the secretary.
That's certainly one way to describe the seventh floor at State. But it's also known as the home to powerful, high-ranking State Department officials — "the shadow government" — who did everything in their power to shield Hillary Clinton from justice. As the NY Post reported last October:
The FBI also released the summary of an interview that revealed a cabal at State that oversaw the email release — a "powerful group of very high-ranking STATE officials that some referred to as 'The 7th Floor Group' or as 'The Shadow Government.' This group met every Wednesday afternoon to discuss . . . everything CLINTON-related to FOIA/Congressional inquiries."

Imagine officials high in the George W. Bush administration calling themselves "the Shadow Government" as they oversaw a supposedly nonpartisan release of documents that could sink the White House hopes of its former boss.
To recap: A senior fellow at a Soros/Clinton/Podesta think tank wrote a long screed lambasting Trump for neglecting and abusing the State Department. If we believe what we read, we are supposed to be especially outraged that Trump has targeted the Clinton-supporting "shadow government" at State. Yes, hope upsetting.

This isn't a product of thoughtful independent analysis. Newsweek has published a long list of Beltway talking points in an attempt to get the public worked up about Trump's assault on the beloved State Department.

In other words: the Cold Warriors who are still holed up at State know that Trump is coming for them.

As Gilbert Doctorow wrote earlier this week, if Trump has any hope of reversing U.S. foreign policy, he needs to act decisively to clean out State, as well as the CIA and Pentagon:
State is said to have been purged at its policy-making "seventh floor" during the week of Secretary Tillerson's European travels. However, the text that was placed before the totally inexperienced Ambassador Haley for delivery in the Security Council shows that not all the "bad hombres" have been sent packing. The purge of the CIA and Pentagon has not even begun.

The ability and willingness of the CIA and Pentagon to sabotage presidential policy was clearly proven last September when a promising collaboration between Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov over a cease-fire in Syria was torn to shreds by an "accidental" attack by US and Allied fighter jets on a government outpost at Deir ez-Zor that killed nearly 100 Syrian soldiers, very likely including embedded Russian military advisors.

If these recalcitrant Cold Warriors in America's "power ministries" remain untouched, they will be in a position to create provocations at any time of their choosing to override Trump's planned détente policies. And that would be child's play, given the close proximity of US and Russian forces in Ukraine, in Syria, in the Baltic States, on the Baltic Sea and on the Black Sea. Given the poor state of relations and the minimal trust between Russia and the US-led West, any accident in these areas could quickly escalate.
The question now is: Will Trump take on the CIA and Pentagon? Because gutting State just isn't enough.