Trump Gets Rude Awakening as Fired Workers Go Public

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Speaker 3 Donald Trump has been firing thousands of federal workers every day.

Speaker 3 Tens of thousands of workers have been fired. And now these workers are speaking out in public.
A lot of them are disabled veterans.

Speaker 3 Veterans make up about 30 to 40 percent of our federal workforce after sacrificing on the battlefield and across the country for our military.

Speaker 3 Oftentimes, our veterans get work within the federal government to serve for their lifetime. Donald Trump is tearing their lives apart, firing them, and treating them like absolute trash.

Speaker 3 They're now speaking out about it. Let me share some of these stories with you.

Speaker 3 And as you'll see at the end of the video, some individuals were even Trump supporters and didn't think this was going to happen.

Speaker 3 But let's just show you at first some disabled veterans who have lost their jobs. For example, here's a disabled veteran who lost his job with the Salt Lake Veteran Affairs Department.

Speaker 3 This is from Fox 13 News in Utah. Play this clip.

Speaker 4 Some federal workers may tell you a job with the government takes on a higher meaning.

Speaker 5 We joined it because we want to serve our nation's veterans, to serve our schools, our park goers, you know, everywhere that the federal government touches.

Speaker 4 For Navy veteran Greg House, he wanted to continue helping others who have spent time in the military.

Speaker 5 I get almost all of my care at the VA hospital. That is a huge part of my identity, and I want to serve them.

Speaker 4 So he jumped at the chance to join the Veterans Affairs team in Salt Lake City last year, and all indicators told him he was thriving in the role.

Speaker 5 Because I had only received top marks on my most recent performance evaluation.

Speaker 4 But on February 13th, House discovered that the VA cut 1,000 probationary employees. The next day, day, he saw an email.

Speaker 5 My employment with the VA had been terminated due to my performance,

Speaker 5 which didn't make much sense to me.

Speaker 4 House says it feels like a betrayal because, from his time served in the Navy to his years here at the VA, his entire adult life has been dedicated to this country.

Speaker 5 And it hurts to see that, you know, my story is not unique and that all of these thousands and thousands of probationary employees are having something that they've worked so hard for be

Speaker 5 just taken away.

Speaker 4 This 80% disabled veteran now joins many others around the country who are left searching for their next step and who are left hoping that others don't have to meet this same fate.

Speaker 3 Next clip I want to share with you is just so sad, and it's Chelsea Milburn.

Speaker 3 She's a disabled veteran sharing her emotional story about being fired from her federal job that she worked so hard at by Donald Trump. Here, play this clip.

Speaker 2 I've already said, I've served my country for 11 years, nine of them on active duty. I deployed twice.
I spent so much time away from my family.

Speaker 6 Oh, no.

Speaker 2 I was gone when my mom passed away.

Speaker 2 And I missed that

Speaker 2 to serve my country. And I was excited to continue serving in this capacity.
And they not only tore that out from under my feet, but couldn't even

Speaker 2 just grant me a layoff and instead place the blame on me that it was my performance. And I've gotten nothing but positive reviews on that.

Speaker 2 So I feel very much like the message is that my service isn't valued. They don't care about how this impacts me or people like me.
And to me, it's inhumane.

Speaker 2 It feels like they're ignoring our personhood and not respecting us as human beings or as American citizens.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that one brought a tear to my eye. Here is another veteran fired by the Trump administration.
Here's what she had to say about what happened to her. Play this clip.

Speaker 8 Yes, I was the program support assistant at the Cedar Rapids Vet Center. We were mental health, or they are a mental health and behavioral health center.

Speaker 8 We have a director and counselors, and then I support the

Speaker 8 system there I did up until Friday, February 14th. I was met at the door by my director.
She let me know that I was done. I had no idea.
It hit me out of the blue.

Speaker 8 I didn't even know I was on a list that would possibly be considered. But it appears that any one of us could be on that list.

Speaker 8 I was allowed online the entire day to be able to sort my business, and I still haven't been able to offload or offboard completely.

Speaker 8 So because we are in limbo, I don't know Logan's experience, but mine is that I still am somewhere kind of in between.

Speaker 8 And since I work for the Veterans Health Administration, there is no one now to meet our clients at the door. There's no one to confirm schedules.

Speaker 8 There's no one to help and assist with our counselors. And anytime you take the support away, may seem minor.
I was a GS6. I was on the lowest levels of

Speaker 8 the GS scale.

Speaker 8 May seem minor, but the next time you walk into a doctor's office and there's no one to meet you at the front desk, you have no idea what's going on in the background, you have no idea if you have a schedule or an appointment still, and no one's there to balance the budget to order things to make sure the doctors and nurses or counselors have the support that they need.

Speaker 8 And in turn, clients that come in to assure their anonymity, to ensure that they get their needs met. And when we talk about veterans, we're talking about 1% of the population of the United States.

Speaker 8 I'm one of them.

Speaker 8 So when doug collins the secretary of the va said he would watch out for me he would watch out for veterans and protect us if he was nominated as the secretary well of the 220 000 of us that lost our positions with the government many of us many of us are veterans and i'm one of them that's proven and folks there are tens of thousands of stories just like this i'll just share a few more with you and i've went through them all and and if i kept on showing these over and over again i think you you get the point.

Speaker 3 I just, I want to give these individuals a voice on this platform as well. And I want you to see how cruel and unusual

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 3 treatment is by the Trump administration, by Elon Musk, against people who have sacrificed their lives for the United States of America. It's so horrific.

Speaker 3 Here is a veteran by the name of Andrew Lennox. He's speaking out after his job at Veterans Affairs was terminated in the Doge purge.

Speaker 6 Let's play it.

Speaker 10 Want to understand something because the grounds for termination in your case and so many others is basically a question of whether your continued employment was in the quote public interest.

Speaker 10 What is your reaction to that?

Speaker 6 So yeah, that's the exact language that was on the termination notification.

Speaker 6 It's my reaction at first, it was surprise, you know, disbelief.

Speaker 6 And I mean, this morning as I packed up my office, it's anger, you know, because it's a, you know, my, I was terminated for my performance. I haven't even had a performance review.

Speaker 6 Nobody consulted any, you know, any supervisors or even the director of our hospital before making these terminations.

Speaker 10 So tell me about your job and why you wanted to work at the VA.

Speaker 9 Yeah, so I spent 10 years in the Marine Corps.

Speaker 6 I loved it. Greatest job I ever had.
And I made the decision to transition into the civilian world. And for a little bit, I worked in civilian jobs.

Speaker 6 I was at a pharmaceutical company for a little bit, and they sent me to a military-friendly employers conference. And I ended up sharing a table with some Veterans Affairs social workers.

Speaker 6 There's a Marine Corps vet, and he was telling me about the work he does. And like looking at that group of people and the organizations that get back to, you know, veterans, I made the decision.

Speaker 6 That is what I want to do. I want to continue serving my country.
And I thought there'd be no better way than helping know veterans, you know, my family, the people

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 gave me so much, I'd like to give back. And my role there is an administrative officer for our primary care

Speaker 6 department of the hospital. So it's a lot of behind the scenes stuff.

Speaker 6 It's kind of eliminating the red tape and friction that just comes into healthcare as far as like scheduling doctors, the patients, making sure wait times are short.

Speaker 6 scheduling vacation, pay, ordering equipment, all these things that we try and take the administrative burden off of the doctors and the nurses and the care providers to get veterans treated as quickly and effectively as possible.

Speaker 3 Here is another fired Army veteran speaking out about the federal layoffs. Let's play it.

Speaker 7 Well, joining us tonight is Nelson Felice Sr., a 30-year Army veteran who served as a first sergeant and spent more than a decade working for the Department of Veteran Affairs until he got a notice that he was being let go just a week ago.

Speaker 7 Nelson, thanks thanks for joining us tonight. I'm sorry about the difficult situation that you're in right now.
Tell us, what type of work did you do for the VA?

Speaker 11 So I started back in Florida doing MSA work. Now I

Speaker 11 was working in a hospital doing background investigation for the VA,

Speaker 11 VHA, and fingerprinting folks that were newly hired.

Speaker 7 I got you. Yeah, important work.

Speaker 7 I'm sure you enjoyed doing it, doing it for 10 years. I know you wrote a letter appealing your termination.
Tell us about how did you find out you were being let go and what reason were you given?

Speaker 11 Well, I didn't find out because my normal work hours were that during the week. So Friday I was off.

Speaker 11 So they were calling me, but I had my phone on vibrate with Valentine's Day and, you know, little family time.

Speaker 11 And then I got a phone call from one of my coworkers and told me, hey, you need to look at your email and see what's happened.

Speaker 11 So then I found out that at 7 p.m., they sent me a letter saying that I was terminated. And that just

Speaker 7 shocking, I'm sure, to see that. Did they say it was for performance or did they give you any type of reason? Or did they just say you're out?

Speaker 11 They just took it random and everybody that they sent this letter to said it was performance.

Speaker 3 But there's a form called 0750 that will show that that was incorrect plus i had tenure yeah you know and a lot of veterans they end up working at it shouldn't surprise you at the veterans department and veterans affairs which is just getting absolutely gutted there could be about 50 60 70 000 veterans who are going to be losing their job based on what the trump administration is doing each with a story like the one i just shared with you as you know i'm a dad and well i've just been having the greatest time ever.

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Speaker 3 As I said at the beginning, I wanted to share with you a video of a Trump supporter.

Speaker 3 And here's what this Trump supporter. I don't know how the other people voted in the beginning of this video, but this is a Trump supporter right here.

Speaker 3 It's a FEMA civil servant and disabled military veteran voted for Trump. Now he's out of a job.

Speaker 3 American veteran fired from FEMA told WTOP, quote, I voted for Donald Trump, but this is not what I was expecting. We didn't think they were going to take a chainsaw to a silk rug.

Speaker 3 The man said he was a Trump voter. He was fired by a White House official and said in TV interviews that contradicts what White House officials have said, that these are like far-left people.

Speaker 3 He was dismissed as part of a widespread purge, yet the form email reads, quote, the agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the agency would be in the public interest.

Speaker 3 The government blames his firing on him. WTOP says it reviewed his positive evaluations as a leader.
The man and his wife accepted that the U.S.

Speaker 3 needs to save money, but assume that as a veteran of long service, he would have been safe. They're calling their reps in Congress.
They thought it wasn't going to happen to them.

Speaker 3 This nastiness, this devastation would just happen to others. We tried to warn you that it was going to happen to you, and it's going to happen to others if you don't stand up.

Speaker 3 Look, Americans are pissed right now. U.S.
consumer sentiment is plunging. Trump's approval ratings are plunging.

Speaker 3 The University of Michigan's latest consumer survey shows American sentiment declined in February for the second consecutive month. And it was a double-digit decline from the month before.

Speaker 3 Inflation already surging. And to that comment from the Trump supporter who said he didn't think that they would take a chainsaw to a silk rug, may I show you this video of Elon Musk at CPAC?

Speaker 3 Here, play this clip.

Speaker 11 This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.

Speaker 11 Turns off.

Speaker 3 Or, how about Stephen Miller blaming you, blaming our hardworking veterans and federal workers as well, just federal workers in general who work every day

Speaker 3 for our government? You know, they're not seeking attention on social media. They're not out there, you know, seeking the limelight like Trump and these MAGAs.

Speaker 3 They're out there working hard, chopping wood every day to make sure that you and I and others in this country are safe and secure. And then you have Stephen Miller saying things like that.
Horrible.

Speaker 3 And here is Donald Trump's National Economic Council director, Kevin Hassett. And he basically blames that these federal workers were bad workers, is what he says.
And he mocks them.

Speaker 3 And he basically says, oh, I guess people who get fired never say they perform bad, right? Here, play this clip.

Speaker 8 We're being told by a lot of people who have been let go at other agencies that they were told they were being dismissed because of poor performance when, in some cases, they haven't even had a performance review yet because they've only been on the job a couple of months.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I've never seen a person who was laid off for poor performance say that they were performing poorly.

Speaker 6 Okay,

Speaker 2 good point. Sure, Kim.

Speaker 3 Just so you see, as well, I'll leave you with this.

Speaker 3 There are other programs that they're cutting, they're cutting jobs at the Veterans Affairs Crisis hotline that deals with

Speaker 3 suicidal veterans who are calling and need help or in crisis. They're making cuts there.

Speaker 3 They're making cuts to 9-11 first responders. Here, play this clip.

Speaker 8 The 9-11 health program taking a heavy hit from the Department of Government Efficiency.

Speaker 7 You know, the fund provides health care for thousands of first responders and civilians, while new staff reductions could put lives at risk. Tom Mueller, has a closer look.

Speaker 7 More than 137,000 people are enrolled in the 9-11 health program. First responders and everyday New Yorkers exposed to the toxic dust, battling health ailments and cancers.

Speaker 7 The program created to keep them alive is now the latest target of budget cuts under Elon Musk and Doge.

Speaker 3 It's repulsive.

Speaker 3 It's reckless.

Speaker 3 You know, no wonder that we're seeing Republican voters as well show up at town halls being held by Republican members of Congress.

Speaker 3 Democrats, Republicans, Independents are pissed at what Trump and Musk are doing to our veterans, to our hard-working government workers who have worked every day to keep us safe as well.

Speaker 3 They're trying to take away your Medicaid and Medicare, and they're going after your social security. And what about just privacy? Privacy, right? We all value our privacy.

Speaker 3 Why are they trying to tell us that Elon Musk and billionaires get to go into our bank accounts, get to have our tax records, get to look at our medical records, get access to our social security information, get access to all of the private data about our families?

Speaker 3 Why do they get that?

Speaker 3 And then Trump and Elon Musk and J.D.

Speaker 3 Vance and these right-wing media networks, they want to tell us, oh, because these people are so rich, they would never do anything bad with it come on what are we talking about here that's not america we should not be okay with that regardless of political party

Speaker 3 so stand up and make your voice heard okay we're in this together and my heart goes out to all of those veterans disabled veterans who i showed you in this video

Speaker 3 who lost their jobs, but also whose dignity was attacked as well. And that's an attack on the dignity, I think, of all veterans and all hardworking government workers.
All government workers.

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