- Some Trump-voting federal workers told BI they feel betrayed.
- They said they voted for Trump to lower prices; not for Elon Musk to lead mass firings.
- Some said they still support the administration’s efforts to cut waste and have hope Trump will deliver.
David Pasquino voted for President Donald Trump. Then, the new administration fired him.
The former Veterans Affairs employee told Business Insider that while he still supports aspects of the Trump administration he finds many of the president’s actions problematic.
In particular, he supports the president’s approach to border enforcement and his plans to increase the size of the military. He’s not a fan of the Elon Musk-led firing of thousands of federal workers.
“They are literally taking a chainsaw to the government when they should be using a scalpel,” Pasquino said. “This is not what I imagined when President Trump stated that he was going to change the government and make the government more efficient.”
BI spoke to 10 current and former federal workers, offering some anonymity to speak freely without retribution. Some who are still employed said they voted for Trump with the hopes that he would deliver on his campaign promises, but the constant threats to their careers and villainizing of their coworkers have led them to regret it.
“I feel betrayed. This is not what I wanted, to let everybody lose their job,” a Veterans Affairs employee who voted for Trump twice told BI. “You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired. This is not ‘The Apprentice.'”
Others said they continue to support Trump and his mission to cut government waste. The overwhelming message was that they did not cast a vote for Musk.
“I don’t like Elon Musk,” a VA employee said. “I don’t want him meddling into my business. He’s not the president. Trump is.”
Harrison Fields, the White House’s principal deputy press secretary, told BI that Trump “returned to Washington with a mandate from the American people to bring about unprecedented change in our federal government to uproot waste, fraud, and abuse.”
“This isn’t easy to do in a broken system entrenched in bureaucracy and bloat, but it’s a task long overdue,” Fields said. “The personal financial situation of every American is top of mind for the President, which is why he’s working to cut regulations, reshore jobs, lower taxes, and make government more efficient.”
Elon Musk is ‘not the president’
Musk’s role as the unofficial head of DOGE has confounded voters and lawmakers across the aisle who did not anticipate the influence he would have over the Trump administration. He has appeared in the Oval Office alongside Trump, speaking to reporters. His ideas posted on X have translated into official emails from the Office of Personnel Management, and he’s even met with world leaders.
“We didn’t vote for him. We voted for Trump,” the VA employee said, adding, “That pisses me off right there.”
An employee at the National Weather Service told BI that they “actually admire” what Musk has accomplished at SpaceX and Tesla, but “private business is completely different than the government.”
While private companies focus on profit, the employee told BI, “The public sector does way more than worry about money and being efficient.”
“We have lives to save and functions to perform that don’t necessarily make money but are extremely important nonetheless,” this person said.
Musk has continued to defend his efforts and signaled during a recent interview that DOGE has no plans of slowing down. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has attempted to dial back Musk’s role in the White House. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week that while he thinks Musk is doing “an amazing job,” he wants his Cabinet member to take the lead on cutting government waste.
‘I voted for something totally different’
Marcia, 67, is another Trump voter who was fired from her federal job, and she said she feels “extremely let down.”
“He was going to make prices lower. He was going to make gas cheaper. He was going to help the middle-class people in America,” Marcia, who is seeking to reinstate her position, said.
The National Weather Service employee said that they voted for Trump because they wanted the country to return to how things were in 2019. Instead, they said, “This is just the most toxic environment I’ve ever seen.”
The employee described feeling “hoodwinked” by the president. During the campaign, this person said that they trusted Trump when he said he had nothing to do with Project 2025, the conservative blueprint authored by the Heritage Foundation. Among other things, Project 2025 described breaking up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service.
Following the election, Trump nominated Russell Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, to lead the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.
“I said, ‘I’ll believe Trump, he won’t do everything in there,'” the National Weather Service worker said, “but then all of a sudden, everything is starting to come true.”
The VA worker said the administration is not using their vote to fulfill the promises that won them over.
“I voted for something totally different, for the economy and the border, the immigration control,” the worker said, “I did not vote for him to go in and bully the federal government and start firing people for no reason.”
Marcia said she felt confident in her vote back in November because of Trump’s promises to boost the economy and crack down on border policy. But if she knew then what she knows now, she would never have cast that vote.
“I’ve been a Republican all my life, and this is the first time that a Republican president misled me,” Marcia said “If I knew I was going to lose my job because Trump became president, no, I would not vote for him.”
Some still support the cuts — even if more are coming
Some federal workers who voted for Trump don’t feel the same sense of betrayal. One of those workers said that they “fully support DOGE auditing and finding fraud in the system.”
“If the agency doesn’t need them, then why are they there?” the worker said. BI also previously spoke to Trump-supporting federal workers who said that while they didn’t fully stand by Trump’s approach to the federal workforce, they support his mission to reduce government waste.
“I think overall we’re going to end up better off with him as a president,” one of the workers said.
Another worker who is broadly supportive of Trump and DOGE’s mission said that job cuts, should they come to their agency, would “definitely be hard on my family.” Going into the election, they knew that positions could be cut. Even so, they added, “I believe if we are going to continue funding essential services like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, and infrastructure we have to cut spending in a massive way.”
More federal terminations are likely coming; the Office of Personnel Management asked all agencies to submit reorganization plans by March 13. It’s leaving workers in limbo, wondering if they’ll be next on the chopping block — and for those who voted for the president, a particularly bitter taste in their mouths.
The National Weather Service worker said the cuts aren’t prompting the efficiency within agencies that DOGE intended.
“There is anxiety, there is shock, and also that feeling where they just don’t trust us to do our jobs,” they said. “DOGE wants us to be as effective as we can be, yet they’re distracting us with all these threats.”
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