This is easy: irresponsible, petty and stupid.
President Trump signed a pair of executive orders directing that there be federal investigations and other sanctions against high-profile administration critics from his first term. The first is former homeland security official Miles Taylor. He’s the jerk who wrote the anonymous New York Times op-ed in 2018 boasting about how he and others were working behind the scenes to sabotage the first Trump term. describing an internal resistance to Trump in his first term. The other is Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), who worked to oppose Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was “fixed” and “stolen,” and was was subsequently fired.
In the case of Taylor, the President implied in his remarks that he engaged in “treason,” which is a stretch, to put it lightly. Krebs was fired: that should have been punishment enough. In either case, Trump has bigger fish to fry, as the saying goes, and these orders do nothing to advance his agenda.
I agree that Taylor and the other “Deep State” employees who took it upon themselves to undermine the objectives of their boss were destructive, undemocratic and unethical. He was also cowardly, doing so in secret and still trying to benefit from it (he ultimately published a book). No one but a Trump Deranged fool would hire such an untrustworthy individual. But at this point, who cares about “Anonymous”? Nobody with coherent priorities. He’s no threat to anyone, and his 15 minutes of fame as “Anonymous” ultimately made him look much worse than his target.
As for Krebs, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that he was another Fifth Column member in good standing working to undermine the administration of which he was supposedly a part. In November of 2020, Krebs tweeted his opposition to still-President Trump’s allegations, by now familiar to all, that he had lost to Joe Biden because election systems were manipulated. Krebs wrote that “59 election security experts all agree….in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.’ ” That kind of appeal to authority sounds quaint today, after revelations that 51 former intelligence officials coordinated with the Biden campaign to falsely cast doubt on the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Sure, Krebs was a disloyal employee, like Taylor, and deserves to be excoriated and shunned. Both are still old news.
For Trump to be focused on retribution now represents poor leadership, misplaced priorities, and feeds the Axis narrative that he’s more interested in personal vengeance than the welfare of the country. I don’t quibble with his moves to insulate his administration from the insidious opposition of officials and political figures who have made their animus clear and who cannot be trusted to behave as patriotic Americans. I can see the wisdom in getting rid of lawyers, FBI agents and other officials who took part in the Democratic Party’s lawfare efforts. I concede that law firms that deliberately styled themselves as Trump foes in order to curry favor with left-leaning clients can’t complain when the President declares them untrustworthy. These two men, however, pose no threat now. There are no benefits to Trump’s agenda by trying to punish them years after their misconduct, and plenty of problems pursuing the vendettas can create.
That makes these executive orders incompetent and reckless—stupid, in short.
Ethics Alarms 
I’d analogize this to seeking the maximum sentence for someone convicted of a crime. It’s not necessarily about that individual convicted criminal, but about sending a signal to others that this particular crime will be treated harshly in the future (especially if it had previously had slap-on-the-wrist status), with the intention of creating a deterrent to others who might be considering committing the same crime.
Specifically, it might really not be enough to root out all the known “resistance” members in the Executive Branch; it might also be necessary to create a strong deterrent to the unknown “resistance” members who remain. I think, for utilitarian reasons, it makes sense to make an example of people who defied the boss flagrantly and proudly.
–Dwayne
Second. The same Deep State misconduct is brewing in the current administration. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, same on me.
Agree.
The fiasco with the Greenland base commander is, to me, a thing in kind with this.
They serve the executive, the elected representative of the people. I’m sure there are penalties for violating the chain of command beyond just firing in the case of the base commander, and they should pursue all of it.
Same with these clowns. If there’s a legal penalty that applies to the conduct, pursue it. It’s not like we have to worry if “we” do it now, the other side will do it when they’re in power, they already have. And they started BEFORE Trump was elected the first time.
It’s about the integrity of the structure of government; if the sub-tier executives in charge of departments are free to do whatever the hell they want, why hold elections?
If they had issues with the administration, they should’ve resigned.
Bring the hammer down.
If they had issues with the administration, they should’ve resigned.
Bingo. I don’t know why I neglected to write that in the post.
These unelected government “experts” consider themselves to be tenured, as if they’re college professors. They are government employees. They are superior to the tawdry people in government who have to get themselves elected. They despise elected officials and consider them bozos and show ponies.
Though in the case of the elected officials Biden and Harris, “bozos and show ponies”…well…draw your own conclusion.
We should be careful with following the mainstream media in its assertions that Trump is merely vindictive. One of the purposes of these probes is to find the truth; if a federal employee openly writes in the NYT about sabotaging the Trump administration then I do not blame Trump for wanting to have the extend of that sabotage investigated. That current federal employees are put on notice that the Trump administration operates based on the FAFO principle is a welcome side effect.
The more serious of these two cases is that of Krebs.
A Trump-deranged, cowardly underling who writes a Trump-deranged op-ed and a Trump-deranged book probably does no harm more serious than confirming the bias of his Trump-deranged cohort.
But a rigged US presidential election affects the whole country, not to mention the whole world. After all, it wasn’t Donald Trump who recently lied us to the brink of World War III.
If there is evidence that a presidential election was rigged (and recent reports suggest that there is indeed evidence), anyone who knowingly played a role in the cover-up should be investigated and, as necessary, prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Firing is not enough for such a person, nor should firing and/or appropriate prosecution be characterized as vindictiveness.