Inspiring: No One Will Hire Former Trump Staffers, But Now They Get to Pull Themselves Up by Their Bootstraps

Reaping, sowing; rinse, repeat.

The job market doesn’t have much of an appetite for Trumpism at the moment, much to the chagrin of the countless former staffers who are desperate for a fresh start in the post-Trump era. Politico reports that the handful of Trump ride-or-dies, those staffers who stuck with the former president to the very end, are now pariahs, especially following the January 6 Capitol Hill riot.

From Politico:

Tainted by Trump’s reputation, several Trump aides described an increasingly bleak job market with virtually no chance of landing jobs in corporate America and some even having seen promising leads disappear after the rampage at the U.S. Capitol. A second former White House official said they knew of “people who got jobs rescinded because of Jan. 6.” A Republican strategist was blunter.

“They are really f—-ed,” the strategist said, pointing to some top officials who stuck with Trump until the bitter end. “The Hill scramble, one of the few places where they’d be welcomed, already happened a month or so ago… They were told over and over to take their hand off the hot stove, and they didn’t want to listen.”

And it’s not just lower-level staffers getting fucked. Even former White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, is allegedly having a tough time finding a new gig. Two sources told Politico that the former congressman was sniffing around for a job at the Trump Organization due to “a lack of options.”

Trying to get a job at the sinking ship that is the Trump Organization certainly stinks of desperation. New York Magazine reports that the Trump Organization’s revenue declined 40 percent in 2020, and a cavalcade of organizations are increasingly anxious to cut ties following the attempted insurrection at the Capitol that Trump helped incite.

From New York Magazine:

Already, pro golf associations in the U.S. and the U.K. have announced they will pass on Trump’s links for their lucrative events; his longtime lender Deutsche Bank has announced it will no longer extend him credit; the tax lawyer representing his business in New York has dumped him; and tenants, including the Girl Scouts of Greater New York, are trying to end their leases in his towers.

[…] Between now and 2024, Trump has close to $900 million in loans coming due, including some $340 million to Deutsche Bank that he cannot refinance. According to the reported structure of the deals he made with the German investment bank, if Trump defaults on his loans or cannot pay his loans in full — as he has a history of doing — Deutsche can seize his business assets, such as his golf courses and hotels.

Meadows may want to look elsewhere for something resembling long term job security.

But it’s the former Trump staffers who have less clout and name recognition than Meadows who are really going through it, some leaving Washington entirely and hoping for success in red states. What’s particularly telling is team Trump’s disconnect with reality: these scorned aides seem to have expected mostly smooth sailing in the job market after Trump’s election loss. Yet, before the attempted insurrection they were probably right. The violence at the Capitol made them job market rejects, not their complicity in Trump’s racist rhetoric, his reckless covid-19 response, his war against immigrants, his virulent sexism, his crypto-fascist tendencies, his conspiracy peddling, an outcome that is deeply telling about the hypocrisy of American institutions.

Trump was a menace before January 6, but watching the violence unfold in the name of Trumpism by average citizens on live television was apparently more appalling than the incessant drumbeat of violence the Trump administration fostered for four long years. Appalling acts and ideology can be tolerated or swept under the rug until the stink gets a little too hard to ignore.