'Chill in the air': Staffers 'looking for exit' as Trump guts 'engine' of foreign policy

CNN’s Chief National Security Correspondent Alex Marquardt claims there is a “chill in the air” at the National Security Council as many layoffs are expected.

The comments came after Marquardt gave a report on negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

“Alex, I also understand you have new reporting on a shakeup at the National Security Council. Not even sure a shakeup is the right way to characterize it,” Anchor John Berman asked.

“We are expecting John in the near future, significant changes to the National Security Council, one administration official telling me that ‘the NSC, as we know it, is done,’” Marquardt said.

“Remember, there have already been significant changes. We know that the national security advisor, Mike Wallace, he's been pushed aside. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, [is] taking over on an interim basis. [Rubio’s] expected to be there at least for several more months.”

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He went on to say, “But under Rubio, my colleagues and I are told there's going to be a dramatic slimming down, that the decision-making process is going to be concentrated at the top with Trump and his senior aides, far less deliberation going on at the more junior levels. Remember, the national security council is really the engine that drives American foreign policy.”

Marquardt added, “It coordinates across departments and agencies but now that this shakeup is going to mean that this decision making is really going to be taking place at the much more senior levels, we're told that these days there are far fewer meetings that current staffers are being asked to re-interview for their jobs.”

“There really is, we're told, a chill in the air because of departures like Mike Wallace and his deputy, Alex Wong, who is also expected to leave because of previous purges that have happened. Most recently, Laura Loomer, the president's supporter, is calling on a number of NSC staffers to be fired, and that did indeed happen,” Marquardt said.

“And we're told that NSC staffers are interviewing elsewhere, looking for the exit. So this is expected, we're told, to happen after the president's trip to the Middle East and this could dramatically reshape the way the U.S. government coordinates and engages in it’s foreign policy.”

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