As President Donald Trump was preparing to start his second term, corporate media outlets were breathlessly reporting that the Trump transition team had asked “more than a dozen career diplomats to step down.” Scores were said to be “stepping down,” resulting in “an exodus of decorated veterans of the Foreign Service,” the Washington Post reported.
Good.
The gnashing of teeth from the Pravda press over Trump making good on his pledge to dismantle the deep state was as expected as the president’s swift action. The reporting also was — not surprisingly — not entirely correct.
Reuters, according to sources, reported that among the diplomats asked to take a hike was John Bass, “the agency’s No. 3 official … who was acting undersecretary for political affairs overseeing policy from Asia to Europe and the Middle East.” His imminent departure was first reported by the Washington Post. The State Department updated the diplomat’s bio, noting “John Bass’s term ended on January 20, 2025.”
Reuters and others reported, via their sources, that Lisa Kenna, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service who had served as executive secretariat under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Trump’s first presidential term, would take over Bass’ duties. In fact, the president announced Monday that he had named Kenna acting Secretary of State until the confirmation of his nominee, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Kenna’s tenure was but a few hours. Early Monday evening, the Senate unanimously confirmed Rubio as Secretary of State, the first of Trump’s nominees to make it through the confirmation process.
Trump’s rapid moves to “clean out the deep state” should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. He campaigned on it. He has nominated a cabinet team dedicated to deep state disinfecting. On Monday, the new administration made clear that “the State Department will have an America-First foreign policy.”
‘First Administration was Sabotaged’
Still, showing the door to previous administration staff has been a routine practice for presidents over the run of the executive branch. The fact that Trump is wasting no time in getting rid of diplomats adversarial to his foreign policy agenda is further proof he doesn’t intend to make the mistakes of his first term.
“Certainly President Trump is coming into office with far greater experience, and that means a wariness of how his first administration was sabotaged,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told The Federalist. “Beyond rooting out political appointees who are definitely subject to dismissal under a new president, you also have partisan employees burrowed into the government under the protections of federal worker laws. The left has done pretty good at burrowing in radical leftists in those positions.”
Indeed, within minutes of the 47th president taking the oath of office, leftist groups sued Trump’s quasi-government Department of Government Efficiency. The lawsuit seeks to block DOGE director Elon Musk from working with the new administration on its vision to reshape federal agencies and cut $2 trillion in government spending. Multiple news outlets reported Monday that co-director Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, was stepping aside from the DOGE to run for governor of his home state Ohio.
Trump has outlined a 10-point plan to “shatter the Deep State, and restore government that is controlled by the People.” The plan includes the return of his executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats” and overhauling federal departments and agencies, “firing all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus.”
‘Must Be and Will Be’
The State Department’s Bass was intricately involved in one of President Joe Biden’s biggest foreign policy failures: the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan during his first year in office. Bass was picked to oversee the botched and bloody evacuation. While there’s plenty of blame to go around, Bass has testified that the Biden State Department had given him “no plan, no insight into who qualified for evacuation and only a basic understanding of the mission’s goals,” according to the New York Post.
As Ambassador to Turkey under President Barack Obama, Bass denied that the U.S. was involved in an attempted coup in the Middle East nation. The Turkish government has claimed it has evidence; U.S. government officials have called the allegations “absurd.”
Rubio now has the task of leading a State Department that has sustained a bruised and battered reputation over the past four years amid “woke diplomacy” and muddled objectives.
In his opening remarks last week to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio said the department’s top priority “must be and will be the United States.” To meet that directive, Rubio is going to have to send packing some longtime diplomats who, to put it generously, have a different world view.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
