Presidents have been working around the foreign affairs bureaucracy forever, simply because the foreign affairs bureaucraps suck.

FDR hardest hit:

“In 1938, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt became involved in an illegal scheme to circumvent the US arms embargo in Spain … involving sending FDR's alcoholic brother-in-law to Paris as a secret emissary”

( (https://t.co/pjCSGfMhyV) https://t.co/JJWuCo46OB

— Adrian Vermeule (@Vermeullarmine) January 26, 2020