Bulwark Takes - DOGE’s Latest Cut: Glenn Youngkin’s Balls

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Tim Miller and Andrew Egger take on the backlash to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s attempt to appease both fired workers and conservative voters—offering job fairs and resume tips instead of fighting for his constituents. With Virginia’s 2025 governor’s race looming, could this misstep cost Republicans the state?

Hey guys, Tim Miller from The Borg, back with my buddy Andrew Egger in his Morning Shots newsletter this morning, which you should subscribe to. Go to theborg.com if you haven't. The headline was this, and you will see why it piqued my interest immediately. Doge's latest cut, Glenn Youngkin's balls. So I don't know, I don't know, was that your headline? Did you come up with that or did Sam Stein get that credit? That was one where Sam came up with it and then we all spent like 15 minutes trying to

talk ourselves out of it and think of something better and never could so uh so it's pretty good the eunuch uh the eunuch youngkin image is nice um uh basically uh what you guys write about is his response uh to many of his constituents getting capriciously fired by 23-year-old vapers. And rather than standing up for him, for them, for his constituents, he did something else. So talk to us about that. Yeah, so this has been kind of a theme coming out of the governor's mansion in Virginia for the last few days. Obviously, Virginia has a very disproportionate share of workers in the federal government, especially up in northern Virginia, but kind of throughout the state as well. One of the highest per capita states in America. And Glenn Youngkin, being kind of like the

technocratic Republican that he is, has not wanted to kind of push back on this Doge stuff. He's not wanted to kind of poke the bear with any of of that but also he's got all these fired workers so he's got that he's has to deal with so the the amazing kind of way to thread the needle that he and his team have hit upon which they kind of rolled out yesterday at a press conference is basically saying like yeah you know Elon is rooting out all of the waste fraud and abuse and we understand that that means a lot of our people are going to be fired. But don't worry, you people.

We're going to make the transition to private sector life as seamless for you guys as possible. We're going to roll out all these resources. We're going to, you know, we're going to do this big event that's sponsored by Capital One, which is one of the biggest employers in Virginia. And we just want you guys to know this isn't the end. You know, things are bright in your future. It might feel bad now, but, you know, if you just give it a little while, you know, buff up your resume, get out there, get on some, we'll host some virtual job fairs for you, stuff like that. You know, this time next year, you might be saying this is the best thing that ever happened to you. So that's kind of the strategy they have landed on

in Virginia here, where I live. I am dying just thinking about, I mean, like I break out into hives just thinking about a job fair, like the notion of a job fair being an effective way to help people find jobs. I like the cheery name they gave this project, Virginia Has Jobs. And so if you can go to virginiahasjobs.com if you're a federal employee, and they're going to help you find a new job. Talk to us about some of the tips, some of the really not at all condescending tips that they have offered at VirginiaHasJobs.com. It's kind of a tone deaf pitch to begin with. It's like, good thing I've made the economy so good that this is going to be so easy for you now. There's all kinds of openings and stuff. And then the minute you start digging into any of the stuff they're standing up, it just

becomes like more and more sort of like condescending and weird and kind of paternalistic because it's like it's basically like giving these mid-career federal employees who've just been fired like the kind of advice that I would have gotten in like a job like like career services when I was in college, you know, like like getting ready to ready to apply like like you know here are some tips for how to buff up your resume you know like here kind of the here's kind of the language that you that you probably were used to using when you were a government employee but things are a little different out here we use different terms and you know you're probably gonna want to get it down to one or two pages we know you see

you we know you federal employees like to like to have those long resumes but you're not gonna want to do that out here. I mean, it's like these people who are, you know, have just been capriciously fired from their life's work so far are like baby birds, like kind of just breaking out of the shell and like blinking in the sunlight. Like, here's what you need, you know. And I mean, some of the advice is like so silly and specific. I'll just read you. There's like one random passage from from their resume updating tips and tricks. Start by analyzing each job posting to identify the key skills and qualifications they are seeking.

Customize your resume for each position by highlighting the most relevant skills and experiences listed in the job description. I'm just imagining some fired USAID guy who's furiously scribbling down notes as he's reading that page. He's like, all right, I know now. My entire sector has been nuked from orbit. There's no one in the world doing the work that I am qualified to do now because it's just been uprooted. But I think this is going to be really helpful for me, so thank you, Glenn Youngkin. It's just such a classic finance vest guy. You can just imagine Glenn Youngkin in his vest

like coming into a factory that's being shut down and being like, guys, we're going to find a new career path for you doing, you know, being a loan officer. Ever, you know, have you ever done any database management? I just think about this. You considered learning to code.

Yeah, right, it is. I feel like thinking about the specific examples and thinking about the types of people that are losing their jobs in Northern Virginia. Imagine, again, these aren't just random people losing their jobs. Imagine you're an NIH scientist. You're a scientist at the National Institute for Health with a specialty in infectious disease or a specific type of infectious disease. And Glenn Youngkin's like, go to virginiahasjobs.com and maybe Capital One will have a spot for you as a bank teller if you buff up your resume. It's just like, what? And it is just completely disconnected.

It's impossible to even imagine a person that would find this to be a useful tool. Like maybe if you're going to try to create some government efficiency, if you're Glenn Youngkin and fire wasteful government workers, you might want to start with the people that were writing down the advice on this website, virginiahasjobs.com. Right, right, yeah. It really is kind of an amazing thing, right, that you're going to kind of start from this this posture of here. Here are like my two goals. I'm Governor Glenn Youngkin. And here are my two goals. One is that I have to somehow stop these people from being mad at me and not voting Republican this November. And the second thing is that I cannot stick up for them as not being wasters, fraudsters and abusers of the public dole at all. Because if I, if I suggest that any of these people who are being fired shouldn't have been fired,

my future in Republican politics is over. And rather than just kind of like keep his head down and, and just kind of like shamefacedly kind of tiptoe on by the whole thing. He's like, no, you know what? I think I can thread this needle. I think I can, you know, roll out the correct therapeutic language and roll out the correct, you know, just like affect and the right resource package to where we're going to make this whole thing better. You know, we're going to fix it. I did not write about this in the piece, but something that just kind of occurred to me when you were talking about the fleece vest guy. It really is. I mean, like, Glenn Youngkin comes out of private equity, right?

And, like, he and Elon are kind of, like, the two poles of the kind of, like of the new industry and the one guy who's like very just kind of like warm and and like has this has this uh you know affect of really caring about the people that he's talking to versus the guy who is like you know the god of tech and everyone who is around him at all times must be supplicants and and all that but in the end i mean they are they are working toward ultimately the same aim which is is, you know, maximizing their own capital. You know, there's plenty of, and we do this here because there's plenty to eye roll at when it comes to woke speak. There's plenty to eye roll at. But here is, you know, kind of the type of speak that was very popular to make fun of when I was growing up in the 90s and 2000s, but has gotten out of vogue, which is PowerPoint corporate, you know, corporate retreat speak.

And like, that's what this website is. It's just the white milk drinking version of woke speak. But this is like the businessman's version of it. We're going to do some very generic corporate retreat speak to try to make you feel better about the fact that I'm getting rid of all your jobs. Maybe the best thing in the whole rollout was not anything that happened at this press conference yesterday. It wasn't even Youngkin. It was the lieutenant governor of Virginia, Winsome Sears, because she recorded this video basically in the same

vein, right? Basically, she said, we know there is concern about the federal government workforce transition, as well as people looking for work and new career opportunities. Like, like, okay, it's all, it's all like that. But then, so she, she does, she cuts like a two minute video, basically just saying we feel your pain. Um, and then she links on Twitter on X, the everything app, um, to a bunch of resources. She said, if you've been affected by federal workforce changes, the Virginia employment commission offers unemployment benefits and job assistance link. The Virginia workforce connection provides a comprehensive job search platform for displaced workers.

Link. For a quick reference guide on available assistance for federal workers, check out this Virginia Works resource. Link. Then there's another link for veterans seeking employment. Another link for small business and supplier diversity. And the punchline is that every single link that she linked to goes to a broken 404 web page not found government page i mean it's like it's truly like like like it's bad idea in concept bad uh bad rollout and just horrible execution like on every level of this like operation make federal workers not be

mad at us the republicans in charge of the state of Virginia, just from top to the bottom. Great job, Glennon Winsome. One last thing. There is a more timely political consideration here in your Commonwealth, Virginia, because they have the off-year governor's races. So Abigail Spanberger is the almost certain Democratic nominee, Congresswoman, kind of a moderate Democrat, and from Northern Virginia. Winsome Sears, who you just mentioned, Lieutenant Governor, black woman, is the almost certain Republican nominee, TBD. You get surprised in politics. But this is very relevant, right?

Because Youngkin wins on kind of like the first year backlash to Biden overreach in a in a bluish purple state. Right. Like a purple leaning blue state. Youngkin wins. And now we have like these firings happening that are disproportionately affecting Virginia. And like the first major election of Trump 2.0 will be happening in the state with Spanberger and Sears. So it's, I think, even more significant than like the similar stories happening in Maryland. But politically, it's more significant in Virginia. Yeah. And it's almost like so comical and so, you know, just just just obviously bad for Republicans standing in the state just because that was kind of the Yunkin coalition, right, is that he peeled back a lot of these kind of white collar, you know, DC suburbs type voters who had kind of

gone Trump to Biden. And then he was able to kind of get them back on team red by, by basically being like competent, technocratic, economic, right, like Republican policy, like chamber of Congress policy. Plus some COVID culture war stuff. Yes, exactly chamber of culture war stuff plus yes exactly plus culture war plus uh kind of like anti-woke stuff specifically yeah um and it was like oh maybe that works maybe that's like a a new model um but then obviously this just blows this stuff like this just completely blows up the the competent technocratic economic argument which is which is a huge part of that and so it so it's almost like so bad for Republicans that it's not like Democrats can even like pleasantly surprise this November. I've seen a lot more

commentary that's like, if Democrats do not clean up in Virginia, like Genghis Khan coming down from the step, right? Like, what is the point of them as a party? Like, how are they supposed to function anywhere? You know, so that's like, it's almost like should be so much of a gimme that that that they can either like meet expectations or disappoint right it's a so it's not not not not necessarily awesome to be uh uh that canary in the coal mine for democrats this time around well i mean they'll take anything the take democrats will take a win where they can get it all right so don't try to take the shine off it uh and it hasn't happened yet so many months away we'll be covering the virginia governor's race. Thank you, Andrew Agar, for bringing a

little glimmer to my eye this morning, getting to read Glenn Youngkin's private equity PowerPoint message to the fired NIH scientists. It's, I know, bleak for the federal employees, but the absurdity is something some of the rest of us can get a smile out of we gotta take our laughs we can get them right now right so all right brother uh thanks to andrew egger everybody subscribe to the feed we'll see you soon