Want a Job in the Trump Administration? Be Prepared for the Loyalty Test.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Hat tip, Joe.My.God.

NYT: Trump’s Applicants Are Undergoing Loyalty Tests
December 9, 2024

Want a Job in the Trump Administration? Be Prepared for the Loyalty Test.
Applicants for government posts, including inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, say they have been asked about their thoughts on Jan. 6 and who they believe won the 2020 election.

By David E. SangerJonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman
Dec. 7, 2024

At the Trump transition offices in West Palm Beach, Fla., prospective occupants of high posts inside the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies typically run through a gamut of three to four interviews, conducted in recent weeks by a mix of Silicon Valley investors and innovators and a team of the MAGA faithful.

The applicants report that they have been asked about how to overhaul the Pentagon, or what technologies could make the intelligence agencies more effective, or how they feel about the use of the military to enforce immigration policy. But before they leave, some of them have been asked a final set of questions that seemed designed to assess their loyalty to President-elect Donald J. Trump.

The questions went further than just affirming allegiance to the incoming administration. The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question.

This account is based on interviews with nine people who either interviewed for jobs in the administration or were directly involved in the process. Among those were applicants who said they gave what they intuited to be the wrong answer — either decrying the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or saying that President Biden won in 2020. Their answers were met with silence and the taking of notes. They didn’t get the jobs.

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Kirsten Grind contributed reporting from San Francisco.

David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger

Jonathan Swan is a political reporter covering the 2024 presidential election and Donald Trump’s campaign. More about Jonathan Swan

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 9, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Test of Loyalty For Applicants To Trump Jobs. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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1. Civil Service exams under Trump.

Civil Service exams under Trump.