GOP senator says he 'won't apologize' after telling fired HHS employee he 'probably deserved it'
Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) on Wednesday said he “won’t apologize” for telling a fired Health and Human Services (HHS) employee that he “probably deserved it,” after video footage of the exchange was widely circulated on social media.
The viral video showed former HHS employee Mack Schroeder approaching Banks in a Senate office building on Tuesday and asking him about the mass layoffs at HHS. Schroeder, who noted that he personally was among the fired HHS employees, asked the senator how he would ensure residents in his state got the services they needed.
“You probably deserved it,” Banks told Schroeder, referring to Schroeder’s termination. When Schroeder asked why, Banks told him, “Because you seem like a clown.”
Banks, in a video posted to the social platform X on Wednesday, further dug his heels in, refusing to “back down” from his position.
“The Democrats and the left-wing media have lost their minds because I told a left-wing activist in the halls of the Senate office buildings yesterday what I really thought: A clown is a clown, who's chasing senators through the halls with a cellphone, complaining about losing a left-wing woke job in the federal government that should have never been a job to begin with,” Banks said in the video Wednesday.
“I won't back down. I won't apologize for it,” he continued. “I support President Trump and the DOGE effort 100 percent to cut wasteful spending and woke jobs out of the federal government, and we’re just getting started.”
The firings come as HHS fired thousands of people as part of the Trump administration's efforts to cut staffing for federal agencies. A press release from the agency said that HHS was letting go of 10,000 people on top of another 10,000 staffers lost in prior efforts to reduce the workforce size.
Some fired employees, including Schroeder, have been protesting inside the Capitol this week.
Schroeder said in an interview on CNN that, at HHS, his job was focused on working on programs that "support people with disabilities and older adults." But Schroeder told CNN that he was not asking Banks about getting his own job back but was instead asking Banks how he would help his constituents who feel the impact of the job cuts.
“First of all, I didn't ask him, ‘What is he doing to help me get reinstated in my position?’ I wasn't asking, ‘Why did I get fired? What are you going to do to make sure me and other employees get their jobs?’ I was just asking, ‘What are you doing about the social services that are being cut specifically for people with disabilities?’ And his response was just that I deserve to get fired,” Schroeder said in the CNN interview, when asked to respond to Banks calling him a clown.
“So I think he didn't even answer my question,” Schroeder continued. “It wasn't really about that, and I still have not heard a response about what the plan is, as many of these staff get cut and the programs are potentially defunded.”