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Oct. 20, 2019 - Steve Pieczenik
04:28
OPUS 182 WhiteHouse R I F
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Hi, this is Dr.
Pechenik.
Today I want to address President Trump and our good people in America.
Let me explain something, Mr.
President.
You need a massive reduction in force in the White House.
The reason I said this is Mike Mulvaney, your Chief of Staff, is a total disaster.
He undercut exactly what you said.
He was an embarrassment to the White House, an embarrassment to America.
There's a reason why he's not competent.
Number one, he's a Catholic in action who really has never performed very well in anything he's ever done.
He's been a self-aggrandizing politician and he acquired a grant for $30 million of which he profited $7 million.
So you have a man who's into process self-aggrandizement and self-destruction.
The more important part is that when I looked at your White House staff, you have over 2,000 people working directly for you on the National Security Council.
That's absurd.
You've had four chiefs of staff in three years, which means very simply, you don't need Mulvaney, you don't need O'Brien, you don't need any of these chiefs.
That's an artificial construct created over 30 years.
But the question is, you need to massively fire over 1,800 or 900 people in the National Security Council.
You don't need them.
If you have the CIA, you have the DNI, you have the State Department, you have the economic bureaus that are working for you, why do you need 2,000 people?
More importantly, you have the 90 people who work for you in the services, the cooks, the maids, the butlers, that's relevant.
But more importantly than anything else, you have a system that's so bloated, you as a businessman have not effectively gotten rid of all of these people.
What am I talking about?
Number one, you don't need the Environment Protection Agency.
It's a useless organization that even under the administrations of Obama and the Clintons really did very little.
In principle, they have no effect on the local level.
Secondly, you have a huge State Department, which I know well over four to five different presidencies.
You do not need 20,000 people in the State Department.
It's simple.
In the 21st century, when you're using the Twitter and you have virtual diplomacy, which means you use the Internet, you don't need to fly to every country.
You don't need an ambassador and you don't need hundreds of foreign service officers and then regional management officers and security officers to staff areas that we don't really care about.
Thirdly, it's important for you to understand that if you want to choose somebody who's close to you, then might as well be Kushner and Ivanka.
Be very clear about it.
They're the ones who are running the White House.
They're the ones who intercede and tell you who are the best people.
From my point of view, Steven Ross, Wilbur Ross, and Steven Mnuchin are some of the most effective people because they've created companies.
But more importantly, as a businessman, you know how to clean house, and you've got to do that.
If you do not do that, you will go against the very principles that you created when you built up the Trump Towers, the casinos, and all the other institutions that you were proud of.
Mulvaney is a disaster.
John Kelly was helpful, but really not very helpful.
So the question now is, can you clear out the federal government?
We have 16 different intelligence units.
I do not need a national security agency, national reconnaissance officer.
DNI, Director of National Intelligence, and a National Geospatial Agency.
Keep the National Geospatial Agency, get rid of the NSA, get rid of the NRO, and get rid of your DNI. That saves thousands and thousands of jobs, and the American people don't have to be burdened with a bloated tax capacity that we don't really want to pay.
We don't want the federal government to pay.
More importantly, we have a devolution of power.
It's going away from the federal government, down to the state governments, down to the county commissioners.
And the EPA and all your federal institutions are of no value.
Let me quote Donald Trump, who said, if you want to be an effective businessman, first reduce your force, increase the speed at which you work, and cut the deals as quickly as possible.
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