Extremist right-wing media, including Breitbart News, are trying to purge the government of anyone they deem insufficiently loyal to Donald Trump. That includes career government employees who are not supposed to be loyal to any individual president, but to the Constitution and the laws.
The claims posted on the conservative sites include allegations of anti-Israel and pro-Iran bias against staffers at institutions such as the State Department and the National Security Council. Breitbart News, whose former executive chairman Steve Bannon is now Trump’s chief strategist, has even published lists of workers that the president should fire. [...]
Several people who have been targeted did not respond to requests for comment. But one said the information being spread is unnerving, in part because even if Trump’s top aides don’t always believe the reports they read in the conservative press, they may still feel pressure to act from voters in the Republican base who do believe the accounts.
“I, of course, worry about the fact that there are people inside the administration and outside it who may believe what they read in these things, who don’t necessarily appreciate what it means to be a career staffer,” said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for job protection reasons. “Most people don’t understand that that does not come with politics attached.”
Career staffers also have to worry about Trump’s broader war on competence—simply by knowing things and having a record of getting stuff done, they are suspect in the Trumpist worldview. And having executed former President Obama’s policies makes them the enemy as Trump’s circle and the far-right media see it. So rather than attempting to put those years of accumulated expertise and experience to work, the right is attacking.
But then again, maybe it’s not that the Trumpists and the Breitbarters don’t understand what career government employees do. Maybe it’s that they do understand this:
“They didn’t work for Obama and they don’t work for Trump. They work for federal agencies, and the agencies carry out the laws,” said Jacqueline Simon, policy director at the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union. “This is a completely apolitical civil service. Their employer is the American people.”
An apolitical civil service working for the American people to carry out laws effectively is not part of the Trump agenda.