Reports: Trump to Set Up War Room Staffed With ‘Street Fighters’

President Donald Trump is reported to be gearing up for long battles over the Russia investigations and sabotaging leaks from the Deep State by assembling a war room staffed with ‘street fighters’ to fight those battles while Trump and his regular White House staff can focus on implementing Trump’s agenda.

Mike Allen, reporting at Axios, broke the stories about the war room and ‘street fighters’ in respective stories published Tuesday and Thursday.

Day 124 … White House officials tell me they’re gearing up for months, and likely years, of Russia defense. Trump and his inner circle are belatedly scrambling to install war-room-like mechanisms designed to prevent the drama and threat from consuming the entire West Wing, and derailing everything else.

Trump aides have studied precedents, including the Reagan White House’s handling of Iran-Contra and President Clinton’s scandal machinery.

The West Wing appears to be absorbing key lessons from its predecessors, although even Trump allies tell me he’s just beginning to take steps to wall off the controversy that should be begun on Day 1…”

AND

West Wing officials are prepping for a years-long war with investigators and the bureaucracy, with plans to beef up legal, surrogate, communications and rapid-response teams as part of a “new normal” for President Trump — besieged.

“The White House is embracing the fight, which is going to last as long as Donald Trump is president,” said a Trump ally familiar with the preparations. “We’re getting street fighters ready to go.”

A West Wing official said Trump has been frustrated by the ferocity of the incoming, and has demanded a more visible response.

Trump aides recognize that besides being in the crosshairs of investigators on Russia, they will be the continuing target of leaks from the bureaucracy. The Trump ally referred to this second enemy as “nameless, faceless, deep-state types” who have been inflamed and are punching back through the media…”

As was reported on Monday by OANN and picked up by TGP, upon his return from a nine-day trip to the Middle East and Europe, Trump plans to fire ‘multiple people’ identified as leakers of classified information.

Fox News’ Ed Henry confirmed the Axios reports Thursday night.

Once President Trump wraps up an initial foreign trip that aides believe has gone very well, the Commander-in-Chief plans to strike quickly next week to beef up the White House staff with a “war room” aimed at taking the fight to the administration’s critics more aggressively, according to two advisers to the president.

The names of David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski, two trusted hands from the Trump campaign, are being bantied about as possible additions to the White House staff.

But the advisers to the president stress both men are currently focused on continuing to help the president from outside, and no final decisions have been made on whether the president will ask them to officially join the administration or simply defend the president more aggressively from the outside.

The advisers to the president describe a hands-on Trump who is prepared to go on offense after realizing — perhaps belatedly — that he has to get far more serious about two critical matters, pushing back against leakers in the federal government and dealing with the political damage from the various Russia investigations led by Congressional committees and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

“It’s all hands on deck,” said one of the advisers to the president who is involved in the planning.

The second adviser added bluntly, “there are going to be some changes” to the president’s existing staff…”

Perhaps Trump at his rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa next Thursday will trade out the Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” for…

Street Fighting Man.

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Kristinn Taylor has contributed to The Gateway Pundit for over ten years. Mr. Taylor previously wrote for Breitbart, worked for Judicial Watch and was co-leader of the D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com. He studied journalism in high school, visited the Newseum and once met David Brinkley.

You can email Kristinn Taylor here, and read more of Kristinn Taylor's articles here.

 

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