but the politicalization of the nsc is deeply jarring to me. i was a career civil servant, served regardless of who the president was. the reason the nsc is staffed with career officials is because they have actual expertise and years of experience with departments and agency, regardless, again, of who's president. there is a disconcerting trend which is that the political appointees run a shadow process driven by the president's personal interests and not national security ones. to me, this looks like the president is trying to make the nsc into a campaign surrogate and campaign arm rather than using them to advance u.s. national security. >> some of the reporting on this has focused on the numbers. from my perspective, it's not the numbers over different administration of both parties, the numbers have ballooned and drawn down. what matter is the quality of the people, whether there are, as samantha is describing, national security professionals who are doing this work or whether there are people who are just beholden to the president