Clues are being given about what consitutes "the swamp" by Trump's actions.

First off, Trump is on track to set a record for the use of executive orders.  Personally, I think it is a dangerous way to operate because it puts too much power in too few hands.  But Trump didn't invent the Executive Order.  Every president before him that used this type of power simply justified it more and more for the next guy down the line.  Presidents that didn't do much didn't need to use many of them.  According to Wiki, Bush2 used 291 of them and Obama used 276 of them, each over an 8 year period.  In his first week Trump has issued 14 of them.  FDR used 3522 of them.  In any case I think the number of executive orders already issued by Trump shows that, rightly or wrongly, he is in there to actually change things. Unlike Obama and Bush who pretty much just occupied the White House without making any real changes during their tenures.

Trump's campaign slogan was "drain the swamp" and so that is what we should expect to see him doing if he wants to be remembered as a "do something" president.  Draining the swamp is not easy.  The swamp is full of nasty scary aggressive creatures which will come out and attack you if you threaten their habitat.  If Trump knows anything, he knows that any new deal must be set up somehow.  You don't just walk in and tell the mob that it has to stand down and vacate the premises.  Not unless you want to start a war that is.  No, instead you take the mob down bit by little bit, eroding its power until it weakens to the point where removal is easy.

That is what Trump seems to be doing right now.  And his actions will tell you what he thinks the boundaries of the swamp are.  Each time you hear someone who was part of the old guard complain or tell you that something unusual is being done by Trump, that is where another pump has been placed in order to drain the swamp.  Its way too early for me to see the bigger picture that will eventually emerge  but Trump is clearly moving some functions up in the hierarchy and some functions down as we read in this CNN piece.  CNN's take, of course is that Trump probably doesn't know what he's doing and that he will screw everything up so badly that we will eventually all go running back to the old libguard to save us at some point.  Personally, I think not.  I think Trump is crazy like a fox and that he is reshaping the power structure of DC to something that he can eventually control.  Once he is pulling all the strings then the entire DC apparatus will move in the direction he wants.  By commenting negatively on these early moves and before the big picture has emerged it merely shows what an idiot mindless bureaucrat Condi Rice really is or ever was.