President Trump wants Bill Pulte, the incoming acting Director of National Intelligence, to pick up where Tulsi Gabbard left off and cut more staff from the intelligence community's sprawling oversight office. Trump told the New York Post on Friday that Pulte should "start the process" of further downsizing the agency, saying bluntly: "I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn't be there."

Pulte, who currently serves as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, will take over at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence after Gabbard departs on June 30. His stint as spy chief is expected to last only a matter of months, but Trump made clear he wants those months to count.

Gabbard's nearly 50 percent staff reduction sets the template

The groundwork has already been laid. Gabbard announced plans last August to cut the ODNI workforce from 1,800 to roughly 1,300 under a restructuring initiative she dubbed "ODNI 2.0." That plan was originally due to take effect by September 30. An ODNI official told the Post on Friday that Gabbard ultimately went further than her initial target, slashing staff by nearly 50 percent and saving close to $1 billion in annual costs.

Those are not small numbers. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was established after the September 11 attacks to coordinate intelligence-sharing among agencies including the CIA and the National Security Agency. Over the years, the office ballooned. Gabbard's team described the problem in a press release tied to the ODNI 2.0 initiative:

"ODNI has become bloated, radically expanded in size, and distracted by tasks and requirements that fall outside its mandate."

The same release went further, charging that "ODNI and the IC are plagued with unauthorized intelligence leaks, politicization, and weaponization of intelligence."

An ODNI official framed the transition to Pulte as continuity, not disruption. The official told the Post:

"We look forward to working with Mr. Pulte and President Trump to continue that work and advance further initiatives aimed at rooting out deep state bad actors and securing saving for the American taxpayer."

Trump sees the acting role as an advantage, not a limitation

Critics might wonder what a temporary appointee can accomplish in a few months. Trump sees it differently. He told the Wall Street Journal that Pulte's limited tenure actually works in his favor.

"It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time."

The president elaborated on the logic in remarks to reporters Thursday from the Oval Office. He framed Pulte's role as clearing the path for a permanent successor, doing the difficult organizational work so the next confirmed director doesn't walk into a bloated bureaucracy.

"Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come. Because, if he reduced the size, in conjunction with me... and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in [after him]... he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn't have to saddle somebody that goes in."

That framing is worth pausing on. Trump is openly describing a strategy in which acting officials serve as restructuring agents, absorbing the political friction of cuts so that permanent appointees arrive at leaner agencies. Whether you call that efficient management or institutional hardball, it is an explicit theory of governance, not an accident.

Election fraud and intelligence disclosures

Workforce reductions are not the only assignment Trump has in mind for Pulte. During Thursday's Oval Office remarks, the president said he expects Pulte to continue looking into alleged election fraud. Trump told the Journal he wants Pulte to release "everything" the intelligence community possesses regarding the 2020 election.

"I would say everything. He should look at everything and make a determination."

Trump added: "He may find out some things about the rigged election."

No specifics were offered about what materials the intelligence community might hold or what form any disclosures would take. But the directive signals that Trump views the DNI post as more than an administrative coordination role, he wants it used as a tool for transparency and accountability across the intelligence apparatus.

Pulte's unconventional background

Pulte comes to the intelligence world from housing finance, not from the national security establishment. Trump addressed the gap directly, drawing a parallel to his own experience.

"Look, I wasn't greatly experienced in national security, and I think I've done a really great job with it. A lot of people would say that."

The president also noted that he leaned heavily on CIA Director John Ratcliffe during the Iran conflict, suggesting that Pulte will have experienced hands around him even if his own résumé runs more toward mortgage markets than satellite imagery.

The ODNI official who spoke to the Post reinforced the continuity argument, noting that Gabbard herself had said from her first day that she was "willing to be the last Director of National Intelligence if it was determined that ODNI was unnecessary." That posture, a willingness to question the office's very existence, set a tone that Pulte is now expected to carry forward.

The bigger picture: accountability inside the intelligence community

Strip away the personnel moves and the real story is about what the intelligence community has become, and whether anyone in Washington is willing to do something about it. ODNI was created to fix a specific problem: the pre-9/11 failure of agencies to share critical threat information. Two decades later, the office had nearly doubled in scope, accumulated layers of staff with unclear mandates, and, according to its own leadership under Gabbard, become a vector for leaks and politicized intelligence.

Gabbard's response was to cut hard. Nearly half the workforce, gone. Close to a billion dollars a year in savings. Those figures, reported by an ODNI official, represent one of the most aggressive federal downsizing efforts in recent memory, and they happened with relatively little public attention.

Now Trump wants Pulte to go further. The president's comments suggest he believes the intelligence bureaucracy remains oversized even after Gabbard's cuts. Whether Pulte can deliver meaningful additional reductions in a few months, while also pursuing election-related disclosures and maintaining the daily intelligence coordination that is ODNI's core function, remains an open question.

But the direction is unmistakable. This administration views the intelligence community not as a protected institution but as a federal agency subject to the same scrutiny, the same efficiency demands, and the same accountability as any other arm of government. For taxpayers who have watched the national security state expand for two decades with little oversight and less transparency, that is a long-overdue shift.

Agencies that can't explain why they need 1,800 people shouldn't be surprised when someone finally asks.