Daily Signal's Tyler O'Neil discusses how President Trump is dismantling the “deep state” which has infiltrated the federal government to advance a progressive agenda. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.
Chapter 1: How many federal employees accepted Trump's buyout offer?
We are saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars with this buyout. In fact, I can confirm that more than 77,000 federal employees accepted this very generous buyout offer from the Trump administration.
That was White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt announcing the number of federal employees who have accepted the Trump-Doge buyout.
Chapter 2: What steps has Trump taken to reshape the executive agencies?
Thirty days into his second term, President Trump has taken aggressive steps to reshape the executive agencies by forcing out tens of thousands of federal workers, part of a personnel-is-policy approach designed to remove those who'd block his America First agenda.
In this episode, we speak to Daily Signal's Tyler O'Neill about the deeply entrenched Washington bureaucrats that he documents in his new book and what it's going to take to fully revamp the federal government. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Saturday, February 22nd, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
Chapter 3: Who is Tyler O'Neill and what is his book about?
Joining us now is The Daily Signal's Tyler O'Neill, author of The Wokedopus. Tyler, thanks so much for coming on. Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. So I wanted to start by noting an article that you wrote for The New York Post discussing a concerning poll of federal employees. Can you tell us a little bit about what that poll found?
Chapter 4: What did Tyler O'Neill reveal about federal employees' stance on Trump?
Yeah, so this was a really shocking poll. It found that 64% of Washington, D.C.-based federal bureaucrats who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election said that they would not follow a lawful order from Trump if they considered it to be bad policy.
I think back in the first administration, you had some Republicans or some who identified as Republicans who would still oppose Trump from within. Thankfully, that seems to be less of the case. But the fact that anybody who works in the executive branch would decide and really gear up for not following the legal orders of the sitting president is a really shocking development.
Chapter 5: Is obstructionist behavior more common among left-leaning bureaucrats?
Now, did this ever exist in the reverse? So, for example, do we know if Republican partisans engage in this kind of obstructionist behavior, or is this culturally more entrenched on the left?
It's definitely more entrenched on the left-wing side. This broader phenomenon dovetails very much with my new book, which is called The Woktopus, The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.
And in my book, I talk about, you know, the left's vast influence campaign that's propped up by a dark money network led by people like George Soros, who now his son Alex is heading the Open Society Foundations. So in the Biden administration, the influence of this left-wing network really exploded. And we saw what I call the woke-topus revealing itself in
in its true form, showing how far its tentacles had reached into the federal government when it came to staffing and advising and really brainwashing and weaponizing the government to achieve its woke purposes. But even under Biden, we saw... many bureaucrats gear up against the sitting president.
And these were left-wing bureaucrats gearing up against a left-wing president because they didn't support his rhetorical stance on Israel. And many of us who know the issue of Israel and the Middle East and Iran in general will know that Biden was by far not the most reliable president. When it comes to standing for Israel, he loosened the sanctions on Iran that enabled
the rogue state to fund Hamas and likely led to the October 7th terrorist attack. But as soon as that attack happened, Biden came out and said to Israel, we will never fail to have your back. And that messaging didn't comport well with some of the activist groups.
And so you saw this gearing deep state move against a Democratic president from the left because they wanted him to focus on securing a ceasefire deal and essentially not allowing Israel to protect itself and prevent another October 7th terrorist pogrom.
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Chapter 6: When did the 'deep state' become influential in national politics?
How long has this been an issue in the federal government? I mean, did you track when the deep state became a real player in national politics?
Yeah, that's an excellent question. We know that there was a large influence in the Obama administration as well. I think the phenomenon I describe as the Woktopus
came into its full flower in the Biden administration, but it had been growing over years, but only recently did some of the more aggressive woke groups, I'm thinking like the Human Rights Campaign, and of course the Southern Poverty Law Center had a little bit of an advising role years and years ago, but only under Biden, their access tripled, quadrupled, expanded in this administration.
There was this one moment where the Human Rights Campaign, you know, the Biden White House released a statement, and this was just last year, they released a statement weakening their stance supporting sex change operations for children. And they had language that suggested, oh, we're not actually going to go full bore into this.
We think that maybe it could be a good idea sometimes, but we want to withdraw our full support. The human rights campaign created a pressure campaign on the White House. The White House changed its messaging. just a few hours later. And then the head of the human rights campaign went to her donors and said, look, this is tremendous impact and we have to keep doing this.
So I don't have the receipts on every way that these activist groups achieved their goals in the Biden administration, but there are moments like that that really peel the curtain back and show that, yes, this vast influence campaign achieved many of its goals. and in sometimes shocking degrees.
Now, what do you make of Trump's decision to cut off security clearances for the people who signed that letter that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation? Is that an effective start or is that more of a symbolic move?
Yeah, I think it's a very effective, mostly symbolic move. Some of the people have already lost their security clearances and some of them have passed away. But I think it really sends the message that it will not be tolerated for current or former government officials who have these security clearances to weaponize their security clearances
That example was exhibit A of big tech and the deep state colluding in order to suppress a very true news story that we now know the Hunter Biden laptop was real. The New York Post was correct. All of this rhetoric about it being a Russian influence campaign was itself disinformation and of the worst sort.
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