Trump has pushed out career experts and aides who challenged him.
During Donald Trump’s first term, his top advisers attempted to run a traditional process for shaping foreign policy, tapping experts from the White House’s National Security Council, debating recommendations from across the government, and steering the president away from decisions that they feared would damage America’s interests. But Trump was deeply mistrustful of the NSC, which he saw as too big, too cumbersome, and too attached to Republican orthodoxy.
Back in office, Trump has pushed away the help of career experts, and major decisions—the handling of the war in Gaza, for example, and negotiations over Ukraine—are now made by a tiny core group of loyal advisers, including Vice President J. D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chief of Staff Susie WiIes, and one or two others. The president “is now fully the quarterback, and he doesn’t want too many guys in the huddle,” a former official, who remains in close contact with the White House, told us. “And those that are there need to run the play he calls, no questions asked.”
