Mark Esper, the former Secretary of Defense, is publicly fretting that Donald Trump will retaliate against those in the deep state that sought to undermine his first term as President of the United States, telling the media that he thinks those worried about retaliation have a “legitimate fear”.
— National Pulse, 10/01/23

And with good reason.

Some of these unelected federal employees deemed it their duty to derail the Constitutional mandate of their boss, who just happened to be the President of the United States, which when left to their own devices (and a sympathetic media) led to rumors and innuendo that distracted the Trump Administration for its entire four year term. Most of the false allegations, that led to two failed impeachments, either came from Democrat party operatives or disgruntled federal appointees and employees. This didn’t have to happen.

While it was of great controversy then and to this day, the whole “elections have consequences” was played out for decades where the winner of a presidential election could literally clean house of as many federal employees as he wanted and replace them with people who were loyal to him and his agenda. This also opened things up for the expected “cronyism” and nepotism, but how different was that to what we currently have in a system where bad federal employees are almost impossible to fire?

After four years of direct insubordination by federal employees in almost every agency, Trump had enough and was going to make sure he could belatedly do a little disruption of his own at the start of his second term.

Less than two weeks before Election Day, Donald Trump signed an executive order that threatens to return the U.S. to a spoils system in which a large share of the federal government’s workforce could be fired for little or no reason – including a perceived lack of loyalty to the president.
— Professor Barry M. Mitnick, 1/21/21

“A perceived lack of loyalty to the president”… puh-leez.

I’m sure you can imagine the sheer horror and fear that flowed through the veins of entitled, overpaid, liberal Democrats in every federal agency, especially those who patted themselves on the back for the very public and semi-successful obstruction of the Trump agenda.

‘Stunning’ Executive Order Would Politicize Civil Service

President Trump signs directive that would potentially pull thousands of federal employees in “policy-making” positions out of the competitive service, making them at-will employees.
— GovExec, 10/22/20

Aww….

And yes, there’s a local DC area television program produced specifically for federal employees and contractors.

Such a public display of disrespect to a cabinet official hasn’t been seen in decades. Rules of decorum were rewritten during the Trump Administration.

Contempt led to fear.

Trump executive order strips protections for key federal workers, drawing backlash
Trump Just Signed and Executive Order Letting Him Purge Thousand of Federal Workers For Disloyalty
Trump’s Order Sets the Stage for Loyalty Tests for Thousands of Feds
Trump’s New Executive Order May Make It Easier To Fire Scientists Like Fauci
Coalition of 28 Labor Groups Urges Congress to Block Trump Order Creating Schedule F
New executive order could strip civil service protections from ‘wide swaths’ of federal workforce
House Democrats demand immediate stop to Schedule F executive order

The chutzpah of that ‘Stunning’ Executive Order Would Politicize Civil Service title IS “stunning” as if the actions of thousands of federal employees during Republican administrations (most notably Trump’s) were anything but weaponized. Many reveled in their success, bragged during friendly media interviews and even anointed themselves as whistleblowers who took one for the team, resulting in even more unnecessary and expensive distractions for the president and the American people.

While some on the left are slowly catching up, they’re expectedly and falsely portraying Schedule F as this new “radical” scheme.

A radical plan for Trump’s second term
Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios.
— Axios, 7/22/22

Note how federal employees become “civil servants” once their livelihoods are threatened….

The “spoils” system, despite the impressions given, is NOT a novel peril devised by a tyrannical Donald Trump. It’s been around, in one form or another, as early as the 1820s and has been a political football ever since.

The peak of the spoils system came under James Buchanan, who served from 1857 to 1861. He replaced virtually every federal worker at the end of their “rotation.” William L. Marcy, who was secretary of state under Buchanan’s predecessor and was the first to refer to patronage as “spoils,” wrote in 1857 that civil servants from his administration were being “hunted down like wild beasts.”

Almost every Conservative working in the federal government knows what that feels like.

Even Abraham Lincoln, who followed Buchanan, made extensive use of the system, replacing at least 1,457 of the 1,639 officials then subject to presidential appointment. The number would have been higher but for the secession of Southern states, which put some federal officials out of his reach.

In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant asked Congress to take action, complaining, “The present system does not secure the best men, and often not even fit men, for public place.” Congress responded with legislation that authorized the president to use executive orders to prescribe regulations for the civil service. That power exists today, most recently exercised in Trump’s own order.
— Professor Barry M. Mitnick, 1/21/21

The whining of obstructionist Democrats was soon etched in stone.

“To the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.”
— Senator William L. Marcy (D-NY)

The virtuous have always argued that the “spoils system” should always be based on merit and performance; NOT on politics. For the most part, Trump’s appointees were only as effective as those under allowed them to be. The fact that Republican federal employees still have to keep their values silent for fear of professional retribution shows just how badly the need for Schedule F to be deployed.

Employees at all the agencies analyzed, without exception, are sending their campaign contributions overwhelmingly to Clinton over her Republican counterpart. Several agencies, such as the State Department, which Clinton once led, saw more than 99 percent of contributions going to Clinton.
— The Hill, 10/26/16

The havoc created by unelected, federal employee Democrat ideologues during the Trump term was blatant and it didn’t take long for their loyalty to be rewarded.

President Joe Biden repealed Trump’s Schedule F executive order which permitted the Trump administration to hire and fire federal employees for political reasons; among a flurry of executive orders and memos to federal agencies were directives that directly affect work/life of federal workers. Since the presidential election, AFGE had called on the incoming Biden administration to undo Trump’s harmful executive orders. We thank the President for taking swift and decisive action to protect the federal workforce.
— American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), 1/25/21

Let’s hope in 2025 when Donald Trump is sworn in for his next term, one of his first acts is the issuance of thousands of pink slips to the fat-and-perpetually miserable federal employees who were active insubordinates then and who be even more determined if they were to get “four more years”.

After three short months in 2017 serving on the National Security Council under President’s Trump National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, Rich was fired for telling the truth. He sounded the alarm on the Deep State coup to remove President Trump and of the subversives within the ranks. Rich set it all down in his famous memo – POTUS and Political Warfare. And for this, he paid for it with his job.

At the time, Rich was labeled as a “conspiracy theorist” but as events played out over the following three years, Rich has been fully vindicated.

The Memo is the riveting story of how Rich Higgins’ twenty year career fighting for America First within the bowels of the DoD and Pentagon bureaucracy enabled him to discern – well before anyone else – the Deep State’s efforts to stop and ultimately remove the President from office. No one was more bold – or more frighteningly accurate – in anticipating the ferocity of the Deep State’s assault on the Constitution and President Trump.
— The Memo, Barnes & Noble

While Rich Higgins may be a good, “twenty year career” civil servant, he’s also the latest example of someone who could be living comfortably off a taxpayer-funded pension seeking supplemental income off the lucrative name of Donald Trump.

How many pundits, talk show hosts, cable news anchors, journalists, former federal government employees, etc. inundated us during the run-up to the 2016 elections with books containing information we MUST know in order to help elect Donald Trump? You’d think, if this information was SO important to the continuation of the republic, they’d give us that information for free. After all, a vote is a lot cheaper than a $20-40 book a person may read at least once.

Think about all of those cable news personalities who earn six figures or more but that’s not enough. They have to ingratiate us with their musings on the premise that just because they’re now where they are, they are smarter than all of us and the world will be a better place for $25 a pop.

How about all those so-called journalists who are embedded within presidential campaigns, well compensated and fed for those arduous months following around those who would be king. They give us all the information (they and their publisher believe) we need to know before casting ballots for the most powerful elected candidate on Earth… that is, until AFTER the election when they produce behind-the-scenes tell-alls containing information that may have made a big difference to the American people BEFORE the election.

Not to be nitpicking, but that’s called double-dipping to those of us in the real world: getting paid to produce a product and getting paid again for new product that’s just product withheld from the public for reasons that can only be speculated. Then we get to see these people pimping their books on cable news and morning shows, promoting themselves as brilliant satirists or important whistleblowers whose observations are worthy of you shelling out your hard-earned dollars to supplement their generous salaries or federal pensions.

Imagine if the American people had to pay in order to receive the wisdom of the Founding Fathers and those words in the Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, and Bill of Rights were only obtainable and shared from a coffee table before winding up on a bookshelf. You’d have to admit, those words (which we got for free) have a lot more staying power than anything written by a New York Times campaign embed, sanctimonious millionaire teleprompter reader, loudmouthed talk show host, or retired government employee who only spoke out after his or her twenty was safely in the can.

And don’t get me started on anyone who writes a book based on the two words that can generate instant interest: Donald Trump.

Make a hole on your coffee tables and some room on your bookshelves. It’s a long time before 2024.

Most officers earn respect. However, some demand it.

Most officers observe and respect the rules. However, some believe the rules apply to everyone except themselves.

For example, we have Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman who appeared before the House Intelligence Committee as a witness for the Democrat impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump on November 19, 2019.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman violated the chain-of-command, embellished his credentials for a House committee for public consumption, betrayed the expectation of security by sharing the contents of an official phone conversation between President Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, all the while having to be reminded that the President of the United States sets our foreign policy, not unelected government employees and any disagreement Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman may have had with tactics are not subject to immediate redress and action by the president.

And whatever you do, don’t challenge or criticize Lt. Col. Vindman on the field of battle known as Twitter.

Memorable military quotes.

“I have not yet begun to fight.” Admiral John Paul Jones, 1779
“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Admiral David Farragut, Battle of Mobile Bay, 1864
“Nuts.” General Anthony McAuliffe, Battle of the Bulge, 1944
“I felt marginalized by his tweets.” Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, impeachment testimony 2019
— Rush Limbaugh, 11/21/19

Some people need be reminded of their place in the grand scheme of things.