Donald Trump’s 10-Point Plan to Dismantle the Deep State Revisited

What can we expect from the new Trump administration? Inquiring minds surely want to know.

Few details have been released so far except for Trump campaign co-chair Susie Wiles’s appointment as the future White House Chief of Staff. Other than that, Trump has said many things over the past year or two outlining his agenda when he enters the Oval Office in January 2025.

In 2023, Trump released a video outlining a 10-point plan aimed at dismantling the deep state and returning the power center of the federal bureaucracy to the American people.

Roll the tape courtesy of Collin Rugg:

Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the Deep State.

1. “Immediately reissue my 2020 executive order, restoring the President’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats.”

2. “Clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.”

3. “Totally reform… pic.twitter.com/Xhg297uWCe

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 8, 2024

Let’s break these down individually one by one:

1. “Immediately reissue my 2020 executive order, restoring the President’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats.”

Seems like a no-brainer to eliminate federal employees actively working against the current administration. There’s a difference between disagreeing with a policy and working to overthrow or undermine a President at every turn. The DC establishment in 2017 was heavily on the side of harming and slowing anything Trump wished to accomplish the first time around. This is akin to firing employees for stealing from the register or bashing the company while still taking home a paycheck.

2. “Clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.”

This part is perhaps key to flushing out the corruption in the various intelligence agencies. They operate in many cases autonomously and outside the purview of congressional oversight. There is a level of fear from Congressmen and Senators that they can be controlled by these agencies or damaged by anonymous leaks if they dare question or attempt to reign in abuses. This type of reform has to come from the top.

3. “Totally reform FISA courts which are so corrupt that the judges seemingly do not care when they’re lied to in warrant applications.”

The abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts have been well-documented and were specifically used to illegally spy on Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. In many cases, FISA Judges are fed fake or incomplete information and are either fooled or willing accomplices in allowing domestic wire-tapping based on false pretenses. The typical scenario is that an intelligence agency would like to spy on an American citizen but they’re not legally allowed to do so. The loophole is to spy on a foreign actor the American citizen might be communicating with as a backdoor way to spy on the real target. The abuses are widespread and this system needs serious reform.

4. “Expose the hoaxes and abuses of power that have been tearing our country apart.”

Whether it was the Russian collusion hoax or endless failed impeachments. Democrats with their cohorts in the intelligence agencies worked overtime to cripple and attack the first Trump administration. It’s a system that does not like to be controlled or questioned even though it’s supposed to function for the safety and security of the American people. Rogue agents within the three-letter agencies can leak information when it suits them to drive a narrative or harm elected officials. It has to stop.

5. “Launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the fake news to deliberately we false narratives and to subvert our government and our democracy.”

It remains to be seen what kind of attack rogue agents inside the government will launch at Donald Trump during this transition period or when he takes office in January. The pipeline from anonymous leakers to left-wing news agencies is one way the intelligence community can put a false or incomplete story into the news cycle and essentially create a new scandal out of nothing and with no accountability for where it came from. Journalists sympathetic to the cause don’t ask questions and simply report these leaked gems as if they’re a settled fact.

6. “Make every Inspector General’s office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the deep state.”

This again is a no-brainer. There should be a lot more objective and outside oversight than there currently is. Inspector General appointments should be far removed from influence by the department they oversee.

7. “Ask Congress to establish an independent auditing system to continually monitor our intelligence agencies to ensure they are not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns against the American people, or that they are not spying on someone’s campaign like they spied on my campaign.”

Once again, this is simply good governance. It’s been widely understood by both parties that spying on American citizens using illegal means occurs regularly. There are loopholes in various surveillance laws that allow such behavior. This shouldn’t be able to happen without some kind of oversight body that would expose the practice and deter illegal surveillance from happening in the first place. In other words, someone to watch the watchers.

8. “Continue the effort launched by the Trump administration to move parts of the sprawling federal bureaucracy to new locations outside the Washington Swamp.”

This idea, perhaps even beyond many of the other reforms, would do wonders for decentralizing power inside the DC Beltway. There is no reason why so much agency power should be concentrated in one small geographic area and powered by a workforce that votes heavily Democrat politics. Moving agencies to parts of the country where they would presumably be staffed by moderate and conservative Americans is crucial to proper representation within these sprawling bureaucracies. You can’t run a successful business if you can only hire workers that are loyal to your competitors.

9. “Work to ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they deal with and that they regulate.”

More good governance and a no-brainer in terms of preventing the revolving door of influence between regulators and the industries they regulate. After working for a department, such as the FDA, for example, these federal regulators become indispensable to companies like Pfizer and others to help navigate the government bureaucracy. In turn, it’s a game of learning how to play the system because you hire the other team’s head coach. The American people end up losing.

10. “Push a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.”

According to a 2023 survey from the University of Maryland, a whopping 83% of Americans support term limits for members of Congress. This is an idea that many discuss but few make any headway on. Congress is not in the business of limiting its own power and elected leaders in the House and Senate like the idea of holding several terms and then taking a retirement pension. The idea that anyone would retire as a Congressman was not the original intent of the Founding Fathers. The goal for Congress was that ordinary people would take time, a term or two, out of their busy lives and serve the people by representing their interests. The lack of term limits is what produces people like Joe Biden, a fifty-year pillar of the DC establishment and someone who should’ve been kicked out a long time ago.

It’s unclear which of these reforms may be on the early list of things to accomplish for the Trump administration in 2025 but it does provide a window into the thinking of Donald Trump this time compared to his first term.