Four Trump quitters walk into a bar to swap war stories from an administration they couldn’t
serve for one more minute. In an interview with Lydia Polgreen they share their reasons for quitting their job.
Lydia Polgreen has met
Trump haters before, many of them; the kind who seize upon every conspiracy
theory and refuse to give him any benefit of any doubt. The four people she
recently spent the morning with at Solly’s Tavern in D.C. (sans booze, don’t
worry) were not Trump haters; however, they were Trump quitters.
All of them, at some
point over the course of the last nine months, had left their posts within the
current administration, having decided that they could better serve their
country from outside the government than from within. They weren’t happy about
quitting, either. They were civil servants who wanted to remain civil servants,
who, except for one, had worked under presidents of both parties. They had
disagreed with superiors over the years, they had been fearful of new
regulations and wary of political appointees, but they stayed on because that’s
the nature of career work in government. This was different.
When they came together
for this discussion two weeks ago, the rapport was instantaneous. The vibe was as
convivial and familiar as a reunion, except for the fact that they had been
strangers five minutes before. They hailed from different parts of the
bureaucracy, they ranged widely in age and background, but they had undergone
such similar mental calculations since Trump’s election. Would their friends at
work feel betrayed by their quitting? Would they be opening up their job to
someone with views antithetical to their own? Having spent most of their lives
in back offices, did they really feel comfortable taking such a public stand?
Once we got into the interview proper, which has been edited and condensed for
clarity, they were candid, funny and furious. They may not work for the
government anymore, but they all still see themselves as public servants.
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