White House economic advisor (and former Fox News host) Larry Kudlow has unleashed a torrent of backlash after saying federal workers were “volunteering.” When a reporter pressed him, asking if it can really be considered volunteering when workers are threatened with losing their jobs altogether if they don’t show up to work without pay, Kudlow’s response was yet another crystal-clear example of just how completely out of touch members of this administration are with the the federal workers they are hurting. Kudlow was visibly angry, accusing the reporter of playing a game of semantics, and then he unleashed something even more outrageous: that the TSA agents and other federal workers on the job without pay were working out of loyalty to Donald Trump. Seriously.
Watch this interaction and then keep going to see the immediate reaction of federal employees.
That exchanged prompted Dara Lind of Vox to solicit reaction from federal workers, and she tweeted their responses. These are something else:
Take a moment to pick up the phone and tell Mitch McConnell and your U.S. senators that they need to immediately reopen the government.