State Department ‘Crying Sessions’ Over Trump Prove It’s Time to Gut the Agency to the Studs

Employees of the U.S. State Department may be awful at their jobs, but at least they are focusing on their “mental health.” 

According to a RedState’s previous reporting, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is demanding answers after taxpayer-funded “crying sessions” were held in Foggy Bottom following Donald Trump’s election victory. Well, I assume they were held in Foggy Bottom. Knowing the current state of the government, it’s possible some or all of them were done remotely given how many federal employees are only required to show up once a week under the Biden administration.

No one has ever accused Foggy Bottom of having an overabundance of masculinity, courage, or common sense, but this, like when I discuss the Air Force with my daughter, exceeds anything that I could have imagined. If people are so fragile that they require mental health intervention when their candidate loses an election or when they don’t get their way on a policy, they need to be immediately removed from access to power and sent off to do something less strenuous.

Issa has now provided another statement on the matter after he initially issued a letter asking for details on the sessions.

“It is disturbing that ostensibly nonpartisan government officials would suffer a personal meltdown over the results of a free and fair election, something the United States champions around the world,” Issa wrote to outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “It is unacceptable that the Department accommodates this behavior and subsidizes it with taxpayer dollars.”

If you need a reason why the federal government is such a cluster of inefficiency and failure, its employees needing to cry it out after an election is a pretty good one. Remember, these are supposed to be unbiased civil servants. Yet, they are so emotionally unstable and wrapped up in their partisan wants that they can’t show up for work and function. I didn’t like that Joe Biden won in 2020, but I certainly didn’t shed any tears over it, much less did I expect my employer to pay to coddle me. 

That this happened with taxpayer money makes it all the worse. Some families can barely make ends meet, and their hard-earned cash is going to “cry sessions” for spoiled, entitled government bureaucrats. That’s insane on its face, and Issa is right to demand answers. It’s bad enough the Pentagon can’t pass an audit. The State Department should be able to account for how much it spent on this foolishness. 

Further, as Issa notes, this raises real questions about whether these employees can be expected to submit to the will of the people in electing Trump. 

“The mere fact that the Department is hosting these sessions raises significant questions about the willingness of its personnel to implement the lawful policy priorities that the American people elected President Trump to pursue and implement,” he wrote. “If foreign service officers cannot follow through on the American people’s preferences, they should resign and seek a political appointment in the next Democrat administration.”    

Hopefully, some will resign. Those that don’t, though, should be rooted out. The State Department has long been one of the most entrenched bureaucracies, seeing itself as immune from the preferences of the American people. If spending taxpayer money on this idiocy isn’t enough of a reason to gut it down to the studs, I don’t know what is. Many of the careerists need to be shown the door or real change simply won’t happen. 

That’s not going to be easy. If the bureaucracy has done anything successfully over the decades, it’s building a system to protect itself. Firing government employees borders on impossible at times, but there are workarounds such as Trump’s Schedule F executive order. While Biden has taken measures that may delay its implementation, the incoming heads of these agencies will have an opportunity to reclassify employees and clean house, at least to some extent. That has to be a priority. 

Few agencies enjoy the sheer level of power to influence policy that the State Department has. It can not function if it is staffed by partisan hacks who cry about elections. Heck, for my money, I’d say we just shut down any agency that has to hold “crying sessions” over Trump winning. Either that or move it to the middle of nowhere in South Dakota. Either way, I suspect the worst actors inside the department would end up unemployed.

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