GOP Has Interaction With Fired Federal Worker
Whew, if you thought politics was already off the rails, grab a seat (and maybe a Parlor donut) because Senator Jim Banks just took the art of the political comeback to a whole new level — and not in a way that’s winning any popularity contests among former federal employees.
So here’s what went down: Banks, the newly minted Indiana senator and full-throated Trump loyalist, was confronted by a man who said he was one of thousands fired from the Department of Health and Human Services after Trump’s massive federal workforce purge. The man was calm but direct. He asked Banks what he planned to do about the gutting of social programs, particularly those that help people with disabilities. That’s when Banks turned, locked eyes, and said the four words that lit up social media like a fireworks finale: “You probably deserved it.” Ouch.
NEW: Republican Senator Jim Banks calls a fired HHS worker a “clown” after the man followed him around, demanding he get his job back.
You could not have timed the elevator door closing better than this.
Worker: “Are you gonna do anything to stop what’s happening?”
Banks: “You… pic.twitter.com/TUcnGY5wb0
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 1, 2025
It didn’t stop there. As the elevator doors closed, Banks delivered the political equivalent of a mic drop: “Seems like a clown.” Just like that, boom — gone. No explanation, no backtracking, just a Senator in full-on MAGA mode, grinning on camera like a man who came for a fight and brought snacks.
And about those snacks — yes, we’ve gotta talk donuts. Banks is still facing heat from a town hall meeting he didn’t attend. Instead, he sent a cardboard cutout of himself… and donuts. Real donuts. Boxes of them. His constituents, understandably ticked off, treated the pastries with the kind of respect usually reserved for campaign flyers — one even said, “I’m going to throw up on them.” A man took a bite anyway. Banks’ staffer? Unbothered. “Tell him to go to hell,” the man said. “I’ll pass it along,” the aide replied.
You couldn’t write this stuff if you tried.
Now let’s zoom out for a second. The firings Banks so proudly defends are part of Trump’s much-hyped “drain the swamp 2.0” effort. We’re talking 20,000 jobs cut at HHS, with 10,000 gone via layoffs. That includes researchers, doctors, and policy wonks who work on everything from disease prevention to drug approval. Whole departments, like the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy, have been gutted — just in time for allergy season and everything else flying through the air these days.
And leading the HHS charge? None other than Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now heads the agency and calls it a bloated bureaucracy with a $1.7 trillion budget that’s not delivering. He’s pledged to slash and restructure it into something called the “Administration for a Healthy America.” Sounds inspirational until you remember that infectious disease teams are now on unpaid leave.
What’s clear is that Banks isn’t backing down. He doubled down on social media, reshared the viral elevator video, and captioned it “Hard truth,” then changed his profile pic to his smirking face in that very moment. Meanwhile, critics — including a former Sanders health adviser — are saying this isn’t just bad optics, it’s cruelty with a press pass.