Until last month, Rumana Ahmed worked in the National Security Council. She is Muslim; she was hired on during the Obama years. Her plans to stay on during the new administration lasted eight days—which is all it took for Trump's team to demonstrate that they considered Muslim citizens like her a threat.
The evening before I left, bidding farewell to some of my colleagues, many of whom have also since left, I notified Trump’s senior NSC communications advisor, Michael Anton, of my departure, since we shared an office. His initial surprise, asking whether I was leaving government entirely, was followed by silence––almost in caution, not asking why. I told him anyway.
I told him I had to leave because it was an insult walking into this country’s most historic building every day under an administration that is working against and vilifying everything I stand for as an American and as a Muslim. I told him that the administration was attacking the basic tenets of democracy. I told him that I hoped that they and those in Congress were prepared to take responsibility for all the consequences that would attend their decisions.
He looked at me and said nothing.
It was only later that I learned he authored an essay under a pseudonym, extolling the virtues of authoritarianism and attacking diversity as a “weakness,” and Islam as “incompatible with the modern West.”
It's a good read, and a reminder not just of how Trump and his team have single-handedly emboldened a new wave of racism and violent threats on American streets, but of the governmental expertise that the Trump team is so eagerly discarding as they seek to install white nationalist policies and white nationalist supporters throughout that government.
It's also sickening, because it lays out both the racism and the incompetence of the new White House under Team Trump—and their apparent inability to see either as a problem.