Trump Itching To Do The Stalin Purge Shuffle In 2024
If trump is elected in 2024, the ex-president is preparing a purge of thousands of disloyal federal workers that would make Josef Stalin proud.
In the abominable possibility of a second trump presidency, woe is the federal employee who disagreed with trump, disobeyed trump or did anything that trump did not approve.
As part of an ominously titled policy known as “Schedule F,” trump has said he plans to fire any employee who disagrees with his policies and, like a feudal lord, will get rid of any vassal who refuses to sign oaths of fealty to him. Unlike in the years of Stalin, the purged workers will not be sent to freeze in Siberia but they will likely find their lives in public service are frozen and dead. Trump’s rationale in such a radical house cleaning is that he is draining the swamp and neutering the deep state, meaning anyone who is not 100 percent trump is done with the government.
Trump signed an executive order in October 2020 that gave agency heads the authority to reclassify certain confidential, policy-making, determining or advocating positions from the career competitive service to a new class in the excepted service known as Schedule F, to be approved by trump. Schedule F was repealed by President Biden on his second day in office but numerous pro-trump organizations and individuals have been gearing up to make recommendations for mass firings, all in the name of loyalty to trump.
According to a two-part Axios series, trump plans to call on Congress to reauthorize Schedule F to grant him much broader powers to fire federal workers. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., is sponsoring legislation to block a new administration from reviving Schedule F. The House passed the amendment on July 14 by a vote of 215–201 while it awaits Senate action. Connolly co-sponsored a similar bill called “The Preventing a Patronage System Act” which passed the House in May 2021, but never made it to the floor for a full vote.
Trump has long held loyalty above all other qualities for those who work for him and those who refused his wishes paid dearly. He famously fired former FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge princely obeisance and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned rather than follow trump’s orders to stop the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
Trump’s fixation on loyalty is like the situation in North Korea, where government workers one up each other while gushing about their leader. Trump’s demands were on public display at an absurd cabinet meeting on June 12, 2017, when cabinet employees were expected to lavish praise on the leader.
Trump went around the table and called on each official to deliver brief remarks, beginning with Vice President Mike Pence.
“It’s the greatest privilege of my life to serve as vice president to a president who is keeping his word to the American people, and assembling a team that’s bringing real change, real prosperity, real strength back to our nation,” Pence gushed.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao cheered about “Infrastructure Week,” and said that “hundreds and hundreds of people were so thrilled” by trump’s visit to the Department of Transportation.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley genuflected that trump had ushered in a “new day” at the U.N., and said, “I think the international community knows we’re back.”
“Thank you,” trump responded. “It’s true.”
On and on it went, like some bizarre ritual to the mad king.
Trump sounds like he is filming an episode of his former, reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” where trump told contestants who didn’t live up to the show’s challenge, “You’re fired.”
According to Axios, trump is expected to tell fans at an upcoming rally that he wants new presidential powers to “ensure that any bureaucrat who is corrupt, incompetent, or unnecessary can be told: ‘You’re fired!’”
Axios reported on the major advocates and advisors to trump to reinstate Schedule F.
One of the biggest supporters is the non-profit, “Center for Renewing America,” created in 2021 by Russell Vought, trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget. The center was formed to focus on one of trump’s biggest bugaboos, ending the teaching of critical race theory in schools. The theory, largely taught on a college level, outlines the ongoing impact of slavery and racism in America. Any employee who doesn’t curse out critical race theory would likely be gone.
The center website says that “proponents of this radical belief system have succeeded in pushing their ideology into nearly every facet of American society. Their goal is to tear down and destroy institutions that they claim serve as ‘white dominant’ power structures that perpetuate societal ills.” Those institutions include capitalism, the nuclear family, a republican form of government, rule of law and Christianity, the website says.
The center also reflects trump’s disproved claims that he lost the 2020 presidential election because of widespread voter fraud. Likewise, anyone who believes in the reality of Biden’s victory, adios amigo.
“The sanctity of the ballot box is under a full-fledged assault by an entrenched political class in Washington hellbent on undermining the agency of its own citizens in service of perpetual power,” the center claims. “The Center for Renewing America is committed to protecting the integrity of our elections, upholding the dignity of the vote, and fighting every effort to undermine the representation our constitutional republic guarantees to its citizens.”
Vought proved his loyalty to trump when he was director of the Office of Management and Budget and defied a subpoena to testify before Congress in relation to the Trump–Ukraine scandal. Trump was later impeached because he had frozen military aid to Ukraine unless the Ukranian president agreed to provide political dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Another organization behind reviving Schedule F is the ultra-conservative think thank, The Heritage Foundation. Edward T. Corrigan, former vice president for policy promotion at The Heritage Foundation, is among the leading advocates of Schedule F. A veteran political strategist, Corrigan got his start on Capitol Hill as an intern on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Sen. Jesse Helms R-N.C., who was widely accused of racism throughout his career. It would seem that those who disagreed with Helms on the issue of race would be showed the door.
Another friend of Schedule F is the Conservative Partnership Institute, headed by Wesley Denton, a former senior policy advisor for the Heritage Foundation and former acting chief of staff of trump’s Office of Management and Budget.
After trump’s 2020 defeat, Brooke Rollins and Larry Kudlow formed the America First Policy Institute which focused on continuing trump’s policies in in foreign policy, promoting free enterprise, pushing American military superiority and anti-immigration. Rollins served as the acting director of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council under trump. Rollins is leader of another pro-trump group, the Save America Coalition, which was created to oppose President Biden’s $3.5 trillion economic proposal.
James Sherk, a former research fellow in labor economics at The Heritage Foundation, is providing advice on labor and employment policy. Sherk is a 2003 graduate of the Hillsdale College, funded by the conservative billionaire, Koch brothers. He has promoted the corporate agenda of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEX), to undermine the rights of workers. ALEC was created in 1973 with funding from the rightwing Coors family. Sherk has advised ALEC on opposing a rise in the minimum wage, a position supported by trump.
Andrew Kloster is senior counsel to a non-profit group called the Compass Legal Group. He served in various trump appointed positions and most recently, Kloster was Chief of Staff to the Wisconsin Office of Special Counsel investigation into election administration. In an April 12, 2021, Kloster proved his trumpian bona fides when he blogged “Right off the bat, let me say this: the 2020 presidential election was stolen, fair and square.”
During his miserable four years in office, trump’s fixation on loyalty took the form of requiring a loyalty oath, which was instituted in 2020 by John McEntee, trump’s former personal assistant, and director of the Presidential Personnel Office. McCentee began issuing questionnaires to test job applicants’ trump loyalties and as director of the Office of Presidential Personnel, McEntee was responsible for hiring and vetting applicants for thousands of executive-branch positions. According to published reports, trump assigned McCentee the task of identifying for removal political appointees and career officials who were insufficiently loyal to the president.
A leading advisor is Daniel Scavino Jr., who was trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications from 2019 to 2021 and Director of Social Media from 2017 to 2021. Scavino previously was the general manager of Trump National Golf Club Westchester and the director of social media for the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign.
On April 6, 2022, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection voted to hold Scavino and another aide, Peter Navarro, in contempt for their refusals to testify on the basis of Executive Privilege claims. That should cement their futures in a future trump administration.
Trump also has relied on the advice of Richard Grenell, who served as trump’s Acting Director of National Intelligence in 2020. Grenell also was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020 and was the Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations from 2019 to 2021. The German publication Der Spiegel profiled Grenell in 2019 and found that almost all of the sources for the profile “paint an unflattering portrait of the ambassador, one remarkably similar to Donald Trump, the man who sent him to Berlin. A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism.” A trumper to the core.
Kashyap Pramod “Kash” Patel, chief of staff to the Acting States Secretary of Defense under trump, was described in published reports as a “Trump loyalist.” As an aide to former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., Patel played a key role in helping Republicans derail investigations into trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Robert O’Brien Jr. served as national security advisor from 2019 to 2021 and was in office when the United States brokered the Abraham Accords, which established peace agreements and diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and later included Bahrain, Morocco, Oman, and Sudan. O’Brien said that trump should be eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. True loyalty.
John Lee Ratcliffe was trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI). At his confirmation hearing, Ratcliffe pledged to be apolitical but he was later regarded as as using the DNI to score political points for Trump
Peter Navarro was the Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator. In the Trump administration, Navarro said his role was to “provide the underlying analytics that confirm [Trump’s] intuition [on trade]. And his intuition is always right in these matters.” Fealty.
Mark Paoletta, former trump general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget, specializes in representing clients in congressional investigations. He represents Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in her interactions with the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attack. Any attack on the select committee scores points bigly with trump.
Boris Epshteyn was the strategic advisor on the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign. He was a member of a team of Trump allies who sought to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory and for that he certainly has won a place in trump’s heart. Epshteyn was involved in a bar fight in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 2014. A charge of assault was dropped after he agreed to undergo anger management counseling and perform community service. Trump’s guy.
And there you have a sprinkling of the rascals who are drooling in hopes of being in the trump dictatorship in 2024.