Given Trump's administration picks so far, it's clear his cabinet will be launching an all-out assault on nearly any group of non-wealthy Americans you can name. From Medicare recipients to students to retirement savers to the working class, we're all in the firing line.
And none of it is but a thimbleful compared to the persecution Muslim Americans in our government are expecting from the new administration.
Muslim-Americans and other minorities holding national security jobs in the federal government fear for their futures under President-elect Donald Trump — enough so that some have held informal meetings to discuss how to protect themselves from potential anti-Muslim witch-hunts.
The employees are on edge about everything from retaining their security clearances to the possibility of discriminatory treatment under Trump, whose top aides include known peddlers of conspiracy theories about Islamists infiltrating the U.S. government.
They aren't wrong. Trump has surrounded himself with advisers who have been eager to promote the conspiracy theories peddled by anti-Muslim lunatic Frank Gaffney or the notorious Alex Jones. His advisers also seem set on acting upon those theories; several in his orbit have called for the return of McCarthyite hearings to determine who, in and out of government, might be classified as part of the enemy within.
“My initial reaction was, ‘Oh my God, should we quit and leave?’” said a State Department official of Muslim heritage who — like most sources contacted for this story — was unwilling to speak on the record for fear of angering the new administration. “People are still struggling to understand what it means right now. Does it make sense to stay on board? Do you wait to see what the policies are going to be? I just feel like it’s completely mysterious how this is going to work out.”
So far Trump's staffing choices have, down the line, validated what the worst of his critics predicted about him. He is surrounding himself with extremists; he is continuing to tweet out unhinged conspiracy theories; he is, with his picks, preparing to knock down large parts of government simply because the people who have his ear want him to. There's no sense in expecting anything else but the worst. Yes, there will probably be some form of Trump-sanctioned, Gaffney-premised witch hunt. Yes, it will probably do great damage to the government he now leads.