Trump 2.0 and the Spooks: Week One

Donald Trump wants payback from the Intelligence Community for his last term – how’s that going, and what’s next?

The first week of President Donald J. Trump’s nonconsecutive second term in the Oval Office has been a whirlwind. A flurry of executive orders has descended on Washington, aiming to dismantle the “administrative state” detested by MAGA. How has this bureaucratic commotion impacted the Intelligence Community?

With his customary panache, Trump out of the starting gate vowed to declassify and release all still-classified records pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy as well as the 1968 assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. These aren’t hot-button issues to most Americans, but for assassination buffs and conspiracists, this is a big deal. It’s also important to RFK Jr., the elite liberal environmentalist who’s improbably become a MAGA celebrity as well as Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary.

Trump signed the executive order, adding flourish for the cameras: “That's a big one, huh? A lot of people are waiting for this for a long — for years, for decades.” Boldly overpromising then quietly underdelivering is a reality TV trope, and there’s no reason to expect major revelations coming from these releases by the new season of The Apprentice: White House. As this newsletter has elaborated in considerable detail, there are still-classified records pertaining to the JFK assassination, but the important secrets involve neither the FBI or CIA, but the National Security Agency. Moreover, the controversial NSA reports that have been withheld from the public for over six decades, for no valid reason at this point, will not prove edifying to conspiracists informed by the Kremlin-inspired oeuvre of Oliver Stone. If the relevant NSA secrets “mysteriously” aren’t released as part of Trump’s EO, Top Secret Umbra is on the case.