A new media narrative designed to help the Democrats fight back against cuts to the federal government is taking shape, and it makes a huge, albeit unintended, point about something.
Last month CNN ran a story that contained these paragraphs on what some CIA officers are reportedly concerned about:
Across the river in Washington, a senior career Treasury Department official delivered a memo warning Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that granting a 25-year-old computer engineer with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to the government’s ultra-sensitive payments system risked exposing highly classified CIA payments that flow through it.
And on the CIA’s 7th floor — home to top leadership — some officers are also quietly discussing how mass firings and the buyouts already offered to staff risk creating a group of disgruntled former employees who might be motivated to take what they know to a foreign intelligence service.
The cuts “risk creating a group of disgruntled former employees” who might decide to commit treason? And that’s supposed to make Trump look like the bad guy in this scenario?
In any case, Politico is now all over that spin as well:
Cuts to federal workforce could create opening for foreign spies https://t.co/uzVFNfzp9Q
— POLITICO (@politico) March 21, 2025
“Quite the admission” has been made:
So the contention here is that government employees are selfish, disloyal hacks who will betray their country if you dare hold them accountable?
Well, that’s quite the admission. https://t.co/EccNzTDpl7
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) March 21, 2025
“Our federal employees are for sale to the highest bidder and only one employment opportunity away from treason” is quite a defense of them https://t.co/wRaJOnBDht
— Sunny (@sunnyright) March 21, 2025
If government officials think there are federal employees capable of that the only point they’re making is that those people should not be government employees.
Just having California politicians opens us up to Foreign Spies… pic.twitter.com/Jwur23edEc
— 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗠𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 (@txsalth2o) March 21, 2025
Right?
According to Politico the current workforce is prone to espionage??? https://t.co/ssORVECA3l
— Gene Ziemba (@gene_ziemba) March 21, 2025
And this sounds like more of a threat than anything:
The Trump administration’s rapid slashing of the government workforce creates fertile ground for foreign adversaries to recruit disgruntled staffers who know some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, according to former intelligence officials and national security insiders.
Hundreds of intelligence and national security officials who had access to reams of classified information are among the tens of thousands of federal workers who lost their jobs since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
If they’re thought to be capable of being traitors then maybe it’s a good thing they’re no longer allowed around those reams of classified information, Politico.