A self-described “MAGA junkie” from West Virginia cried as she recanted her vote for Donald Trump after the Department of Government Efficiency eliminated her job.
Jennifer Piggott of Parkersburg told CNN that she once flew a Trump flag outside her house in Wood County, where 70 percent of voters supported the president, but the DOGE team he formed at the request of billionaire backer Elon Musk cut her job, as well as 100 others at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service.
“We had the flag, I had the shirt – I was a MAGA junkie,” Piggott told CNN.
Piggott’s job was eliminated when DOGE restructured the bureau where she worked as a probationary civil service employee.
“I cried,” she admitted, her eyes welling up again. “It’s scary, you know, it’s a really scary thing, and I was embarrassed.”
DOGE fired Piggott and her colleagues for alleged poor performance, but she told CNN that she received “the highest rating” possible on a job review three weeks before she was fired, and she now regrets voting for Trump for the third time.
“I’m not sure that I would have [voted for Trump], and the way that it’s been done,” she went on. “I’m for balancing the budget, that type of thing, but not, not in this context, it’s just not right.”
A federal appeals court judge has refused to halt a ruling requiring the administration to reinstate more than 17,000 workers who were laid off across six agencies, but that is little comfort to Piggott, who claims she has faced vandalism and death threats since criticizing the cuts.
“I expected better from [Trump], I really did,” she told me. “I expected you to do the right thing and cut waste and fraud, as you promised us before we elected you, but you aren’t. You’re creating a disaster, and I’m not sure what America will look like if this continues.”
