Maoist combat sessions hosted by the US State Department to assist staff deal with Donald Trump’s election to a second term in the White House have caught the attention of a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. California Republican Darrell Issa, who is in the race to become the next chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is demanding clear answers from Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
As ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I am writing to you regarding reports of official State Department therapy and listening sessions following the election. I fear that by providing federally funded mental health counseling, the Department is catering to federal employees who are personally devastated by the normal functioning of American democracy because Kamala Harris was not elected President of the United States.
Instead, on November 5, the American people overwhelmingly elected Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States – a decisive departure from four years of failed Biden-Harris foreign policy. It is disturbing that supposedly impartial government officials would suffer a personal collapse in the face of the results of a free and fair election that the United States is committed to around the world. It is unacceptable for the Department to accommodate this behavior and subsidize it with taxpayers’ money.
Furthermore, the very fact that the Department is hosting these meetings raises significant questions about the readiness of its staff to carry out the legitimate policy priorities that the American people elected President Trump to pursue and implement. The Trump administration is tasked with making sweeping foreign policy changes, and if foreign service officials cannot implement the preferences of the American people, they should resign and seek a political appointment in the next Democratic administration.
The Free Beacon reported a week after the election that the State Department paid the equivalent of political grief counseling when the pro-Hamas faction realized that it was no longer in charge.
The U.S. State Department’s Office of Near Eastern Affairs, which oversees American diplomacy in the war-torn Middle East, also held a group discussion Friday with Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf and the Acting Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs , John Bass, reports three sources have been briefed on the matter.
One source described the meeting as a “shouting session” about Trump’s victory, which is likely to lead to sweeping changes at Foggy Bottom. Officials at the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs have been working for months to impose sanctions on the Jewish government and withhold critical arms shipments, claiming Israel is not doing enough to provide humanitarian aid in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. They are said to have discussed the difficulty of Trump’s victory and urged employees to express their feelings in private.
“For four years, there has been an excessive emphasis at the base on people’s feelings, often with a college campus-like fervor, rather than on the work of advancing America’s interests,” said a U.S. official briefing on the meetings was Free beacon.
“This meeting was hopefully the last gasp,” the source said, adding that there was “a lot to unf-k” at the State Department after four years of the Biden-Harris administration.
No one has ever accused Foggy Bottom of having an excess of masculinity, courage, or common sense, but this, like discussing the Air Force with my daughter, is beyond anything I could have imagined. When people are so infirm that they require psychological intervention, when their candidate loses an election, or when they fail to prevail on a policy, they must be immediately excluded from access to power and sent to a less strenuous task.
The original story and this letter from Rep. Issa get to the heart of what awaits President Trump and Secretary Rubio when they take office. The public service and foreign service workforce that describes itself as “non-political” and “non-partisan” is in reality highly political and extremely partisan. You can expect internal resistance, leaks and sabotage. You can also rest assured that they cannot distinguish forbearance from weakness.
Rubio needs to go in strenuous and take one Certificate of Fire and Sword. People must either loyally follow the instructions they receive or serve as examples.
Read the letter
Rep. Issa Letter to Sec. Flashing about post-election therapy sessions from streak on Scribd
