I don't have a subscription and was able to read the whole article. Here are a couple of key paragraphs. It should be noted some of those 'bloated' individuals were in charge during the H1N1 outbreak. This is not to assign blame or get into a who's right, who's wrong. It's just a different perspective from someone who was there versus Facebook meme's and some newscaster blaming everything possible on the the current President.
"When I joined the National Security Council staff in 2018, I inherited a strong and skilled staff in the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate. This team of national experts together drafted the
National Biodefense Strategy of 2018 and an accompanying
national security presidential memorandum to implement it; an
executive order to modernize influenza vaccines; and coordinated the United States’ response to the Ebola epidemic in Congo, which was
ultimately defeated in 2020.
It is true that the Trump administration has seen fit to shrink the NSC staff. But the bloat that occurred under the previous administration clearly needed a correction.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates,
congressional oversight committees and members of the
Obama administration itself all agreed the NSC was too large and too operationally focused (a departure from its traditional role coordinating executive branch activity). As The Post
reported in 2015, from the Clinton administration to the Obama administration’s second term, the NSC’s staff “had quadrupled in size, to nearly 400 people.” That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017."
