Oooh, wasn't I glad to see Ed's earlier piece on what Marco Rubio announced over at the State Department this morning.

Today is the day. Under @POTUS’ leadership and at my direction, we are reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy at the State Department.

These sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats to put America and Americans first. pic.twitter.com/CGWz3JrYwu

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) April 22, 2025

Ed said that the New York Times was in 'freakout mode' over the changes, between Rubio's basic announcement and Trump's EO.

...The attached statement doesn't describe the sweeping nature of the reforms Rubio plans to implement. Fortunately, the New York Times has entered freak-out mode over the executive order issued by Donald Trump outlining its scope and scale...

It's all so much clearer to me now, reading the above piece, how this really strange Politico article ever came to be written.

Much like the tater and egg controversy I wrote about earlier that media and Democrats tried to whip up for Easter, this one, while targeted and much more malevolent, is just as peculiar in that what it alleges at the beginning evaporates on its own by the end.

It all starts with the near-death condition of USAID. Again, there are parallels to Ed's piece, where the media is panicking and whipping up defenses over losing its entrenched, impervious to administration change, bureaucratic power base.

It starts with Marco firing a longtime Trump associate and the initial architect of USAID's demise. The author claims to have spoken to 'five people, including administration officials and allies, all of whom were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.'

Peter Marocco, the Trump administration official in charge of dismantling USAID, left a meeting at the White House last week to return to his office at the State Department. But when he arrived, Marocco could not enter the building: security told him he was no longer an employee there, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Word of Marocco’s firing quickly tore through the Republican Party and MAGA ecosystem, startling President Donald Trump’s loyalists who viewed the aide as part of an elite cohort of administration true believers. Loud voices on the right piled on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing him of undermining their disruptive agenda.

Four of those five sources said that Marco had fired this Marocco person and that the MAGA side was incensed at the 'Neocon' Rubio. They describe tensions due to Rubio's teams being 'insular' and 'obstructive' to the DOGE agenda - all sorts of inflammatory insinuations and innuendos.

...One White House official said Rubio went to a senior White House aide for clearance to remove Marocco after tensions reached a boiling point last week. They described Marocco’s firing as “the first MAGA world killing from inside the White House.”

Woof. Lurid.

And they proceed to plant all sorts of anti-Trump suspicions about Rubio's motive through the first half of the article, up to and including the flat-out declaration that Rubio's tenure at State is hanging by a thread. Paragraphs read as if this one fellow was the end-all and be-all at the State Department.

...The political aftershocks from the dismissal continue to rattle through the administration.

In the days since his ouster, Marocco’s MAGA allies have come to his defense and raised new suspicions of Rubio, including questions about why he would want to protect USAID and whether he’s loyal to the president.

The anger directed at Rubio by MAGA firebrands provides a vivid illustration of the ongoing feud between MAGA world and the conservatives they view as too much a part of the establishment they want dismantled. And the two men clashed over the Department of Government Efficiency’s gutting of USAID, one of the first and most visceral examples of the second Trump administration’s more aggressive, burn-it-down approach to the federal bureaucracy. As Rubio maintains what many believe is a shaky hold on his power in the Cabinet, Marocco’s ouster may further weaken his position with some of the loyalists in Trump’s ear.

“He’s really not a MAGA guy, he’s a neocon,” a Trump ally said of Rubio, adding that this move “is gonna bite him.”

Gracious, how dire.

But, wait a minute. Why should Marco worry about weakening his position 'with some of the loyalists in Trump's ear'?

Marco Rubio is the Secretary of State, is he not? He sits at the president's right hand at every cabinet function. Does he really need a Wormtongue intermediary to talk to Trump?

I would think not.

But it's the rest of the piece that makes you wonder why they bothered writing it, other than they were hoping the right eyes would only read the first inflammatory, smarmy insinuations.

Well, it also might be, Politico allows - after all the neo-conning, MAGA-hate mongering, USAID protecting, and Rubio sucking - that schmaybe this Marocco guy could have been let go simply because he's an asshat. 

Who has a well-established track record of being a pain in the ass to work with.

In fact, he's been booted from worse Trump administrations than this one.

...Another Trump administration official familiar with the situation said Rubio was unhappy with Marocco, but it wasn’t ideological. Marocco didn’t get along well with many of his immediate colleagues, including people who reported to him. Rubio and others also were frustrated with how Marocco handled his day-to-day duties, the official said.

“It wasn’t just Rubio who wanted him moved,” the official said. “It was a group decision, including people from the White House, who were getting complaints about him.”

A former U.S. official in touch with people who worked with Marocco at State echoed that explanation. Marocco had largely sidelined career employees who could help him do his job and was often “flying blind,” the former official said.

Marocco has a history of rankling his co-workers, including during the first Trump administration, when he held several positions. In 2020, he spent a few months at USAID, where his style and demands upset staffers so much that they crafted a 13-page memo laying out their concerns for the agency’s senior leaders.

How about them apples?

Oh. And Rubio's position at State is 'tenuous' because of lunatic Laura Loomer?

OKAY

This is all about a Sec State who unloaded a mutually agreed upon pain in the butthead, a good deal of it is paybacks and plenty of it about Politico being butthurt at losing THEIR USAID piggybankroll... 

...The USA Spending link is right here for $8.1M last year alone.

There's money - more taxpayer money - that has been flowing into Politico's coffers than that.

...and most of it has little to nothing to do with actual news.

When one backs away and looks at it in the context of Rubio's 'housecleaning' - which most assuredly is MAGA blessed - and the corresponding prog media freakout at the slaughter of sacred cows, it makes even more sense why they'd barf such a turgid dramatic writing exercise up and give it an URL.

Hegseth might be the easiest target to throw darts at, but Rubio would be damn near an equal score if they could pull it off.

Their problem is how hard they'll have to work to take him down.

This Sec State isn't going to sit slumped forlornly in a chair and sniffle like the last one. 

We know why Biden looks like he's about to fall asleep but why does Blinken look like he's about to cry.

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) Nov 14, 2023

I guarantee you.