State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told Newsmax on Thursday that recent reductions in force at the agency will not hamper the Trump administration’s efforts to address its priorities, as some mainstream media outlets have suggested.
More than 1,300 employees were let go Friday as part of the department’s reduction in force initiatives, but Bruce told “Rob Schmitt Tonight” the total is approximately 3,000, including those who took the administration’s early buyout offer of deferred retirement.
“I would just suggest that the concern about being able to meet our priorities, it’s about 15% of the State Department’s personnel, if you will,” Bruce said. “And yet, it’s the liberal media, liberals in general who are associating size with effectiveness, that the bigger something is the better something is. The fact of the matter is, this is the 21st century. We have to move at the speed of relevance, as [Secretary of State Marco Rubio] says. We have to be nimble. We have to be able to act quickly.
“We’re living in a world now where something can happen in the other hemisphere, and all of us here will see it in real time within about five minutes. So, we don’t have the luxury of taking days or weeks or months to make decisions and implement them when it comes to foreign policy, certainly, but every policy. So, this is going to actually be a chance for us to be more effective, more quick, more nimble, and also more fiscally responsible in the process of doing it. It’s a new way forward, but we’re excited about it.”
Bruce said the agency wasn’t looking at the reduction in force in targeting certain individuals as it was about reducing the size of the bureaucracy.
“The law requires us to do it in a certain way, and I think it’s appropriate,” she said. “We were looking at this not about eliminating people per se, but making the space, the office, the bureaucracy itself smaller. And we eliminated hundreds of offices. We eliminated positions, and depending on who was in those seats, then they would be what we call a reduction in force. … So, it wasn’t about picking and choosing individuals. It was a matter of us looking at what the State Department needed based on the agenda of President [Donald] Trump and Secretary Rubio, what offices were either duplicative or redundant.
“Certain positions were redundant. You don’t need three people to do a certain job. You need one. Certain offices, yes, were eliminated, but based on the nature again of how the future is going to look for the agenda.”
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