Susan Rice and the Hidden Resistance

I will admit, when I first read that Susan Rice was still ensconced on the Defense Policy Board well into the new Trump administration, I thought it must surely be fake news, some hallucination conjured by an overactive internet rumor mill. Yet, with the bitter taste of disbelief still fresh, the facts became clear. Not only had she lingered, she had lingered officially, and with all the institutional imprimatur the position carries. It is the sort of stunning oversight that shakes one's faith in the assumption that elections carry consequences.

Rice, a veteran of Obama-era foreign policy failures and perhaps best remembered for her calculatedly deceptive Sunday show performances following the Benghazi disaster, was somehow still whispering counsel into the halls of the Pentagon in 2025. Her known hostility to President Trump, his America First doctrine, and the foundational pillars of his administration did not, apparently, disqualify her. Her presence was not merely inappropriate, it was absurd, a lingering ghost from an administration the voters had quite emphatically rejected.

Thankfully, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth acted swiftly. Upon confirming the disgraceful truth, he took the only responsible course available: he discharged the entire cadre of Pentagon advisory board members, wiping the slate clean. Yet the discovery of Rice's lingering influence opened a larger question in my mind. How many other advisory boards, spread across the vast administrative sprawl of Washington, remained populated by individuals not just ideologically distant from the president but openly hostile to his agenda?

When I dug deeper, the findings were no less alarming.

At the State Department, Thomas Donilon, a consummate Democratic insider who served as Barack Obama's National Security Advisor, continued to co-chair the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Donilon, whose worldview is saturated in the globalist dogmas that Trumpism explicitly rejects, was not some neutral technocrat offering dispassionate advice. He was, and remains, a committed architect of the very foreign policy status quo that voters repudiated.

Serving alongside Donilon was Cecilia Muñoz, another alumnus of the Obama White House, celebrated in progressive circles for her aggressive domestic policy advocacy. That she too advised the State Department in 2025 suggests not malevolent intent by Trump officials, but the lingering inertia of an entrenched bureaucracy and the sheer pace at which the new administration had to operate.

The situation at the President's Intelligence Advisory Board was equally disquieting. Janet Napolitano, former Obama DHS Secretary and Democratic governor, lent her counsel, as did Evan Bayh, a loyal son of the Democratic establishment. Jane Harman, the California Democrat whose tenure on the House Intelligence Committee made her a fixture of Beltway orthodoxy, also held a seat, alongside Calvin Smyre, the "Dean" of Georgia Democrats.

It must be said: these appointments were not acts of sabotage, they were inherited artifacts of the prior administration, relics that had, perhaps through bureaucratic oversight, been allowed to persist longer than they should have. The Trump administration, moving at a breakneck pace to secure cabinet confirmations, implement executive orders, and dismantle the administrative state's more overt structures, may not have fully cleared the decks of every board and commission.

The President’s Export Council, ostensibly a forum for economic growth, suffered from a similar inertia. Keisha Lance Bottoms, former Atlanta mayor and Democratic partisan, advised on export matters, flanked by Lacy Johnson, a Democratic operative from Indiana, Patrick Murphy, a Democratic former congressman from Florida, and Juan Verde, a Democratic strategist from the Obama Commerce Department.

These individuals are not mere advisors offering technical expertise from some neutral Olympus. They are political actors, shaped by decades of partisan struggle, invested in the success of the Democratic Party and the failure of the Republican vision for America. Their continued presence on federal advisory boards confers undeserved credibility, allowing them to subtly or not so subtly undermine the president’s directives under the guise of "expert opinion."

Even within the Department of Defense itself, figures like Michael Bloomberg and Reid Hoffman, both prominent Democratic donors and partisans, held advisory positions on the Defense Innovation Board. Robert Wolf, famously dubbed "Obama's Wall Street ally," lingered on the Defense Business Board. Their appointments predated the new administration and, in the tumult of transition, may not yet have been formally revoked.

Advisory boards matter. They shape the information a president and his cabinet receive, frame the choices deemed "serious," and create institutional momentum behind or against policy initiatives. A hostile advisor is not a harmless academic adding "diversity of thought." He is a wedge, a saboteur in slow motion, capable of cloaking opposition in the respectable garments of "best practices" and "expertise."

To appreciate the peril, one need only revisit George Washington's Farewell Address, in which he warned against "the insidious wiles of foreign influence." Today, foreign influence often enters not through emissaries but through the porous membranes of a permanent political class, credentialed, networked, and ideologically committed to resisting populist correction.

What President Trump, Secretary Hegseth, and others must recognize is that elections, though decisive at the ballot box, are never self-executing within the bureaucratic labyrinth. Personnel, as the old Reagan maxim goes, is policy. Without loyal personnel, policy becomes little more than rhetorical flourish, mocked and resisted within the very apparatus charged with carrying it out.

It is not sufficient, therefore, to appoint secretaries and department heads. The advisory bodies must be purged of those whose loyalty lies with other agendas. It is not a question of suppressing dissent or banishing disagreement. It is a question of ensuring that advice flows from those who share, at a fundamental level, the vision that voters endorsed.

Nor should we shy away from acknowledging that credibility itself is a weapon. A Donilon or a Napolitano or a Rice can, with the simple weight of a title, influence media narratives, congressional investigations, and public perceptions. The mere fact that such a figure "advises" the president creates the illusion of bipartisan concern when, in fact, what exists is partisan subversion.

The stakes are not academic. As Mark Twain once noted, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." In our era, an ill-placed advisor can seed narratives, foment resistance, and hamstring executive action before the ink on a policy directive has even dried.

The Trump administration must move swiftly to correct these oversights. A full review, department by department, board by board, is essential. Those whose affiliations, records, and loyalties stand in opposition to the constitutional mandate entrusted to President Trump must be thanked for their prior service and formally dismissed. Moreover, it is vital that these removals are publicly reported, ensuring that neither the media nor the bureaucratic establishment can operate under the false assumption that these old holdovers remain in positions of influence.

In doing so, we reaffirm a basic principle: the American people have the right to see their political choices honored not merely symbolically but operationally. Anything less is a betrayal disguised as continuity.

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