A banal face of evil, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas.
There were rumors that this was in the works for some time, but Trump finally decided upon it while Tillerson was returning from his first-ever Africa tour. Pompeo's transfer from the CIA to the State Department completes the "deep state" "cleansing" that Trump has tacitly commissioned since entering office. America's diplomatic corps isn't shy about its hostility towards the President, but the liberal-globalist allies of the Obama, Bush, and Clinton Administrations will assuredly see their remaining influence further diminished under Pompeo's tenure, just as their counterparts at the CIA did over the past year. That doesn't mean that they'll be completely snuffed out, but just that Trump will task his new appointee with finishing the "house cleaning" process that Tillerson started.
In hindsight, Tillerson was never anything more than an outsider who was designated to be a "deep state" placeholder for the President, not powerful enough to make his own decisions and inexperienced to the point where it compelled many of his enemies to resign out of protest. This was the perfect combination that Trump was looking for because it gave him more control over this apparatus than he had originally anticipated, but he knows that it's now time to loosen his proxy grip just a bit as he focuses on more pressing issues such as directing the trade war with China, hence why he needs Pompeo to take over and rebuild the State Department during this crucial transitional period.
What's meant by this is that Trump is finally consolidating his power after reaching various "compromises" with some of his fiercest "deep state" foes, and part of the presumed "gentlemen's agreement" is that he hands over substantial control of America's foreign policy to the neoconservatives. Between fighting against his enemies in the permanent bureaucracy, trying to push forth his domestic agenda, getting ready for the upcoming midterm elections later this year, and gearing up for his 2020 reelection campaign, Trump realized that he simply doesn't have enough time to create a "third force" from scratch to replace both the liberal-globalists and the neoconservatives, and that's why he made the decision to side with the latter against the former at this point.
NOTE:
The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Mar 23, 2018
However, the above sounds/reads like some PC 'easy let down' piece to justify Trump's supposed 'draining or cleaning' of 'the swamp' via his painfully obvious recirculation, back thereinto, of only temporarily displaced vermin therefrom . One may certainly include Pompeo as a member of that family, genera, species, et al.
The Redneck in RC (with obligatory Middle Central Florida version of a Southern Accent) might be heard to say 'somethin' lke this:
"Down 'round these here parts, We-uhz callz em, 'Swamp Rats.'"
Thus, t'was with smile in my heart when I read SOTT's final quote pointing out SOTT's selfsame & similar situational analysis, so it seems, or so I'd - nay, do - say.*
R.C.
*(Alliteration intentional.)
RC