As predicted in this column several months ago, the coordinated effort between well-funded Leftist groups and their media allies to target Trump loyalists in the administration is continuing to gain ground, just as Never-Trumpers and presidential appointees unsympathetic with the president’s agenda are rising in influence and power.
Weak members of the administration, determined to avoid controversy, are sacrificing good soldiers working faithfully to advance the president’s agenda while the George Soros-backed, systematic effort to purge the agencies of devoted supporters of the Trump agenda has been emboldened by the unwillingness of many in the administration to come to the defense of the President’s most committed supporters.
The latest example is particularly ironic: a Latina immigrant and young mom who was instrumental in helping the supposedly Hispanic-hating Trump win a significantly higher percentage of the Hispanic vote in 2016 than our milquetoast nominee did four years earlier is being hung out to dry. Ximena Barreto, a deputy director of communications at the Department of Health and Human Services, was placed on administrative leave after David Brock’s American Bridge opposition research group found some edgy tweets she had posted, or retweeted, during the campaign and fed them to their eager conspirators in the media like CNN’s . After a few mainstream outlets parroted the charges of racism, and bigotry towards Islam, Barreto was immediately put on leave while the matter was investigated, with no one in the administration offering as much as a whisper of public support for someone who uprooted her own life and her daughter’s life in California and moved across the country in order to serve the President in Washington.
Now, Barreto is receiving death threats, her family is being harassed, and her reputation sullied because some in this administration seem unwilling or unable to defend the President’s staunchest and most effective defenders from orchestrated attacks by the Left, while Republican establishment types who bitterly opposed Trump during the campaign and oppose his agenda across the board are promoted to more powerful positions. Two recent examples of Never-Trumpers being rewarded with plum positions are Jon Lerner of the Club for Growth, just tapped by Vice President Pence to serve as his National Security Advisor (though he withdrew after the President personally opposed his appointment), and Brian Hook in Policy and Planning at the State Department and co-founder of the John Hay Initiative whose group penned what has become a rather infamous never trump letter.
Barreto’s case is a good example of the squandered opportunity of building on the winning coalition that delivered a historic victory just 17 months ago. While much of the President’s economic nationalist agenda continues to run the risk of being coopted by a business-as-usual establishment more interested in catering to their own narrow agenda than they are in coalition building, signature issues like building the Wall, renewing America’s crumbling infrastructure and delivering industrial jobs to the Rust Belt (states that, until Trump, seemed lost to Republicans), go relatively neglected. Precisely because Barreto did not fit the Liberal narrative — a bright, independent minded, relatively recent immigrant from Bogota, Colombia who lost her father to Escobar-era drug war violence and wholeheartedly supports the President’s tough stance on immigration — she became a target of leftist ire. And with so many in the establishment, including many in his own administration, just waiting for Trump’s demise at the hands of Mueller and the reestablishment of regular order in The Swamp, many of those who should be rushing to her defense are instead running for the tall grass.
The real scandal here is the corrupt collaboration of the hard left groups like American Bridge and Media Matters, with “mainstream” outlets like Politico and CNN to target Trump loyalists, and the tacit (or active) cooperation of Never Trumpers in the administration with the effort. This orchestrated campaign to frustrate the President’s agenda has been successful, largely because there has been so little scrutiny of how mainstream outlets are uncritically running with opposition research provided by politically-driven organizations with a fleet of researchers dedicated to destroying Trump loyalists by using the Freedom of Information Act to scour resumes and tweets for info that can be used against these appointees.
It’s a disgrace, and it needs to stop. That won’t happen unless people in the administration with oversight of such matters start defending their own and exposing this corrupt conspiracy against the President’s agenda.
Robert Wasinger served in senior advisory and liaison roles in President Donald Trump‘s campaign and transition team, after extensive experience on Capitol Hill.
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