President Donald Trump and his loyal Republicans have turned against many of his own foreign policy apparatuses since the impeachment inquiry, leaving those officials who spoke out against him to pay the price in the workplace.
According to the Washington Post, an uptick of angry tweets from Trump sends armed security officers to the whistleblower’s side to protect him from threats while on his way to and from work at the CIA.
Bill Taylor, top diplomat in Ukraine, has opted to step down in January rather than try to continue his job as Rudy Giuliani impresses upon Ukrainian officials his lack of standing with the President. By stepping down early in the month, Taylor is also sparing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from having to appear beside him during a January trip to Kyiv.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official, has continued to work in the White House since his testimony. But Trump and his allies have smeared him as being in cahoots with the whistleblower to undermine the President, calling him “vindictive Vindman.”
Fiona Hill, former top Russia adviser at the White House, has become a favorite target of far-right media, and has consequently received abusive phone calls, some of which have scared her young daughter. Alex Jones, the right-wing troll who runs InfoWars, has advocated for her to be punished for her testimony, adding a misogynistic flourish: “indict the whore.”
For Hill at least, the venom isn’t entirely new. Since she began working on the NSC, both external and internal attempts to discredit her flooded in as Steve Bannon and his ilk crafted an “enemies” list of people whose abject loyalty to Trump was in doubt.
Now, those tensions have been blown open as usually apolitical foreign policy officers are called to testify about their true feelings about Trump’s behavior.
