On June 24, Politico reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appointed Nicholas Kass as the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council (NIC).
Gabbard appointed Kass despite widespread and increasing fears that the NIC is being politicized.
Kass has written a handful of opinion articles and social media posts expressing intense skepticism of Democrats and a fierce admiration for Trump. In a post on X from November 2024 that Kass has since pinned on his account page, he called Trump’s “epic” victory in the 2024 election “a thorough public repudiation of the Deep State and its authoritarianism, operations, puppets and supporters, and ideological pretensions and other emanations.”
Politico
There is no evidence that a “Deep State” exists. While comparing the American “Deep State” to the bureaucratic apparatus of Kemalist Turkey, Kass appeared to praise Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarian, anti-secular government.
In Turkiye, it took a generation to erode decades of entrenched Kemalist dominance and the confluence of power, ideology, and pecuniary interests that sustained it. Moreover, it required the long-term resolve of a faith-rooted, anti-establishment political movement, a major economic crisis brought about in part by the Kemalist establishment’s gross mismanagement, an effective anti-corruption campaign, and ultimately, the ruthless and controversial mass purging of the bureaucracy following a failed, violent military coup in 2016. Even so, debate over Kemalism and the Deep State legacy continues to animate Turkish politics today.
American Greatness
While an Office of the Director of National Intelligence official claimed that Kass has expertise on Russia, the Middle East, and Europe, he apparently has little experience with the top two national security priorities of the second Trump term: “China, and transnational organized crime.” This fact alone indicates a political calculus behind the hiring of Kass.
Without evidence, Trump administration and “many” GOP national security officials claim that the intelligence community has a left-wing bias. This belief has made the overtly partisan Kass more attractive to them.
