Wanna work for Trump? There’s a loyalty test for that
The unqualified crop of losers Donald Trump has so far picked to work in his administration likely believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was not an insurrection.
That’s according to The New York Times, which reported on Monday that Trump administration appointees have been given a loyalty test in which they have to say, “what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen.”
The New York Times reported that people who said President Joe Biden legitimately won in 2020 or disavowed the violence on Jan. 6 were not chosen for jobs.
“The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question,” the Times reported.
A look at the people Trump has already picked for both Senate confirmable positions and other political roles bears this out.
For example, Trump nominated Kash Patel, a right-wing lunatic who has vowed to seek revenge on reporters who correctly debunked Trump’s election lies, to lead the FBI—a position that’s not even open as the current director’s term doesn’t expire until 2027.
Trump also announced that Peter Navarro will be returning to his administration to help implement destructive tariffs. Navarro went to federal prison for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the now-defunct House Select Committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s beleaguered pick to lead the Department of Defense, said the people who traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, were there because they “love freedom.”
And Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, wants to help Trump carry out plans to nix protections for career civil servants. This would allow Trump to fire federal employees who the administration does not believe are loyal enough to Trump.
The news is appalling, and a terrifying example of the coming descent into fascism the United States is about to experience when Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20. But it’s not shocking, as Trump and his allies explicitly said they would require blind loyalty to Trump.
As far back as November 2023, Axios reported that Trump and his allies were “pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024.”
Trump’s own Agenda 47 also pledged that on his first day in office Trump would, “re-issue 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats.”
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that career federal employees are scrubbing their social media of any anti-Trump posts to try to protect themselves from being fired.
“There is shock and there is actual fear, and there is self censure in the sense that people are scared about retaliation,” Jesus Soriano, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 3403, told The Washington Post.
We are living in truly dark times.
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