Trump's canceling of scores of security clearances is unprecedented

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

59% : "In the executive order, Trump said his decision to revoke the clearance for John Bolton, who served as his national security adviser during his first term, was in response to Bolton's memoir, "The Room Where It Happened."In the book, Bolton described Trump as "stunningly uninformed" on foreign policy and wrote: "I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn't driven by re-election calculations."But Trump's executive order said, "The memoir's reckless treatment of sensitive information undermined the ability of future presidents to request and obtain candid advice on matters of national security from their staff.
45% : Throughout the 2024 election campaign, Trump vowed to overhaul the intelligence community and the Justice Department.
42% : And U.S. spy agencies assessed that the Kremlin sought to covertly tip the election to Trump through information warfare.
41% : But no president has ever waded directly into the clearance process so publicly and on such a large scale as Trump did when he rescinded security clearances for 50 people in one step, Meyer and other legal experts said.
37% : Trump has "excluded the core leadership from the old Republican and current Democratic circles of trust," Meyer said.
35% : In an executive order issued hours after his inauguration on Monday, Trump stripped 49 former senior officials of their security clearances for signing a letter more than four years ago that Trump said showed "misleading and inappropriate political coordination" with Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.
33% : Trump also removed the security clearance for John Bolton, his former national security adviser, accusing him of revealing sensitive information in a memoir.
33% : Trump this week also canceled Secret Service protection for Bolton.
30% : But Trump has long harbored distrust of the country's intelligence and national security agencies, dating back to the 2016 election campaign.
25% : When asked about the decision on Tuesday, Trump told reporters, "We are not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives."
24% : Trump is "trying to censor the public statements of former government officials," said a former senior intelligence official who signed the letter and spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fears of retaliation.
24% : The security detail was provided to Bolton because of an alleged assassination plot that was part of Tehran's bid to retaliate against Trump for his approval of the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
23% : In the 2020 campaign, more than 200 retired military officers endorsed Trump in an open letter, saying they feared that alleged "socialists and Marxists" in the Democratic Party posed a threat to the country's way of life.
21% : "For Trump and his allies, however, the letter was seen as an attempt by former officials using their association with U.S. intelligence agencies to suppress damaging information about the Biden family weeks before the 2020 election.
18% : Trump accused the intelligence agencies of plotting to undermine his first term, part of what he and his supporters call a "deep state" conspiracy.

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