Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany pointed to a 2017 Washington Post article about bureaucratic resistance to President Donald Trump during his first term after former Obama administration official Marie Harf complained Monday about layoffs of government employees.
Since Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by rebranding the United States Digital Service in a Jan. 20 executive order and added additional responsibilities to the commission, federal employees are being laid off from some agencies. McEnany noted reports of some federal government workers seeking to remain “out of spite” with the intention of waiting for Trump’s term to expire during the discussion on “Outnumbered.” (RELATED: Top Trump Adviser Gives Corporate Media ‘Civics Lesson’ During White House Briefing)
“I do think that federal employees fall into three buckets, you have the political appointees, some of whom are thrilled that this is happening, they see this as a revolution in government,” McEnany said. “Then you have this other pot of hardworking federal government employees, I think they don’t care who the president is, I think they care deeply about their job and that pot does exist, but that is not all federal workers.”
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“There are federal workers that have this attitude, this was an NBC anonymous communication that came to them, I saw this a few weeks ago, a federal employee at the Department of Veterans affairs, ‘A lot of us are going to stay out of spite,’ they said,” McEnany continued. “‘We’re here for however long we want to be here. I could be here until retirement in 30 years, the Trump Administration is only here for four.’ What’s wrong with trying to root out and employees staying out of spite?”
Harf responded by claiming the firings were not legal, and spent almost two minutes criticizing DOGE for “attacks on public servants.” A federal judge allowed layoffs at the United States Agency for International Development to go forward Friday despite a lawsuit from two unions representing workers at the agency.
“DOGE isn’t managing these people and at the same time, people across the country can’t pay their mortgages or put food on the table for their kids because they got fired from a job they thought had job security,” Harf said. “That is not electorally or morally a good plan, I think, for Republicans.”
After a back and forth, McEnany referred to the 2017 Washington Post article about bureaucrats who resisted Trump’s policies during his first term. (RELATED: Fox News Host Says Only People Who ‘Are Up In Arms’ About Trump, Musk Cuts Are ‘Unionized Government Bureaucrats’)
“It’s easy to oversimplify and point to some stories of individuals who got termination notices, but the background is this: This is not a Republican newspaper, conservative newspaper, this is ‘the Washington Post’… years ago: ‘Resistance From Within The Federal Government,’” McEnany said. “Listen to this, less than two weeks into the Trump Administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently-departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives. There was even a support group that took place about how to resist the Trump Administration. That should not happen. That is undermining the will of the American people.”
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