Trump making an example of disloyal ex-allies as a warning to his new crew: report

President Donald Trump is not just attempting to enact revenge with his recent spree of retributive acts against former allies, The New York Times reported on Monday — he is also trying to create a culture of fear of crossing him in his new administration.

Trump moved quickly in the first week by revoking security clearances for national security officials he considers part of a conspiracy against him, and even yanking protective detail for key former officials he developed bad blood with, like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Anthony Fauci.

But all of this is just the beginning, wrote Mark Mazzetti, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, and Michael Schmidt.

"Mr. Trump’s decision to try to scale back civil service protections was aimed at culling federal employees he believes slowed or blocked his first-term agenda and replacing them with loyalists. That initiative, developed in Mr. Trump’s first term but never fully enacted, is intended to create a chilling effect so that career employees know they could be fired if they are not compliant, one senior aide said," the report continued. Furthermore, "By ordering the Justice Department and intelligence agencies to begin scouring their ranks in a hunt for political bias, he started a process of dismissing or sidelining officials deemed to have participated in investigations he has sought to cast as 'witch hunts' against him."

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The civil service changes in particular were a key plank of the transformation of the government outlined in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, a far-right blueprint for reshaping America that Trump distanced himself from on the campaign trail.

The upshot, said the report, is that "the moves send a clear signal that Mr. Trump feels unconstrained about punishing the disloyal, that he is potentially willing to go further against his enemies than he had pledged on the campaign trail and that there will be a price for any opposition to come."