Nearly every American president leaves his imprint on the National Security Council, the White House body first established under Harry Truman in 1947. John F. Kennedy made its staff into his personal foreign policy instrument. Richard Nixon brought in Henry Kissinger and established unprecedented White House dominance. Most recently, Barack Obama expanded its policy staff to a peak of more than two hundred experts.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump made a mark of his own, issuing National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 2, matter-of-factly titled “Organization of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.”