Americas City On A Hill On A Slippery

“Where liberty is, there is my country,” Ben Franklin reputedly said. To which Thomas Paine added, “Where liberty is not, there is my country.” Generations of American diplomats and intelligence officers have carried their core convictions with them: personifying our values, dedicated to defending the constitution and the rule of law–speaking truth to power.

The 140 stars on the Memorial Wall in the CIA’s original headquarters building in Langley, Va., have nothing to do with partisanship. And everything to do with service.

But key partisans who hold powerful national security positions in President Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., have different stars in their eyes. And MAGA’s stars do not shine brightly when it comes to respecting traditional American values, including support for allies that are threatened by Russian aggression.

History tends to run in cycles. In recent years, Republican internationalist sentiment dating to the World War II era has been shifting back in the direction of the America Firsters who watched fascism take over Europe in the 1930s, without complaint.

A few snapshots of key Trump-Vance national security aides’ world views illuminate how America’s traditional City on a Hill is presently on a very slippery slope.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has sparked a criminal investigation of “treasonous” U.S. intelligence officials who assessed, correctly, that Russian President Vladimir Putin had intervened covertly to assist Donald Trump’s 2016 election prospects. Nevertheless, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department has issued subpoenas — searching for a crime that never happened.

Gabbard’s previous intelligence experience was mainly limited to praising Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which had made her a darling of Russia’s state-controlled media.

At least, Gabbard’s top aide for counterterrorism, Joe Kent, has some respectable credentials; he’s a former Green Beret with combat experience. Still, Kent’s eyebrow-raising judgment on key counter-intelligence issues — including the astonishing claim that the Trump-inspired violent Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill was an FBI false flag operation — stands out.

Shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Politico has reported, Kent told a MAGA-friendly audience that Putin’s goals of controlling some Ukrainian territories were “very reasonable.”

This May, the New York Times and other major news outlets reported that Kent had ordered analysts at the National Intelligence Council to revise an assessment that raised questions about President Trump’s claims regarding the Venezuelan government’s relations with criminal gangs. Gabbard then fired the NIC’s two top officials, alleging their political disloyalty.

Eyes averted, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee subsequently approved Kent’s nomination to head the National Counterterrorism Center. (As a former congressional aide with intelligence oversight responsibilities, I feel a sense of shame.)

Kent ran for the U.S. House of Representatives, unsuccessfully, in the State of Washington in 2022 and 2024 (with the support of billionaire Peter Thiel). His campaign’s online channel was on Rumble.com.

Rumble is a pro-MAGA video platform that was launched by Thiel, JD Vance and other right-wing figures. Rumble — which Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump Jr. and President Trump have also enjoyed — hosts various conspiracy mongers, ranging from Laura Loomer to Alex Jones. Rumble also hosts RT, the Russian propaganda network formerly known as Russia Today. This is the MAGA-firehose version of free speech.

Another Peter Thiel ally, Michael Ellis, now the Deputy Director of the CIA, came to his position as general counsel of Rumble (with a $1 million payout).

Previously, Ellis was an aide to former House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, one of the original MAGA-world denizens to accuse the FBI of being involved in a conspiracy to discredit President Trump. Nunes now chairs the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and is CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group.

Other prominent online conspiracy-minded figures have landed in Secretary Marco Rubio’s State Department. Consider Darren Beattie, a key “public diplomacy” official (who now also heads the U.S. Institute of Peace). Beattie’s main accomplishment has been to shut down the Department’s office that had been exposing foreign propaganda operations targeting Americans, including, of course, Russia’s.

Moscow must be delighted.

According to a recent fact-check by the online journalistic watchdog NewsGuard, fake pro-MAGA online accounts “operating secretly from abroad” have continued to inflict a flood of “significant false claims” upon unsuspecting American readers.

Beattie founded Revolver News, another purveyor of conspiracy theories, including — a continuing Trump favorite — that the Jan. 6 violence was an FBI conspiracy. And that Obama administration officials “manufactured U.S. intelligence tying Donald Trump to Russia.”

Meanwhile, an unashamed Trump has been busy demonstrating that there is no need for anyone to manufacture anything when it comes to concerns relating to his attitudes towards Russian aggression. Witness only Trump’s current “peace plan” that essentially would be the humiliating Ukrainian surrender that Putin has sought all along.

Greg Rushford is a former congressional aide who conducted intelligence oversight and a former Washington journalist. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.