Welcome to Trumplandia: Where Telling the Truth Gets You Fired (Or Deported)

Well, that was a fun little democracy we had. Blink and you missed it.

You see, in the new and unimproved second term of Donald J. Trump, facts are no longer pesky little things to be dismissed—they’re crimes. And telling the truth? That’s straight-up treason. Just ask Michael Collins and Maria Rykoff, two career intelligence professionals with a combined six decades of service, who were booted from the National Intelligence Council faster than Rudy Giuliani downs a tumbler of Just for Men.

Their crime? Publishing an accurate, apolitical intelligence report. The horror!

The report—dated April 7—dared to conclude that Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, while violent and nasty, is not controlled by the Maduro regime. Gasp! That inconvenient truth dismantled Trump’s fever dream justification for using the Alien Enemies Act to deport thousands and funnel migrants into a Salvadoran hellhole prison system.

So naturally, Collins and Rykoff were canned. Not quietly. Not professionally. Not even with a handshake and a cheap watch. Nope—this was a good old-fashioned political purge, brought to you by Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s hand-picked Director of National Intelligence, who apparently mistook the job for Minister of Propaganda.

Let’s take a beat and reflect on Gabbard’s glow-up: from anti-interventionist to state loyalty enforcer. She once railed against regime change wars—now she just brings them home and unleashes them on her fellow Americans. Plot twist: she is the regime now.

As former CIA Director John Brennan put it (with the kind of barely contained rage you’d expect from a man who’s watched his agency turned into an InfoWars internship program): “This is a calculated act of political warfare against truth itself.” In Trump’s second term, the enemy isn’t China, Russia, or even reality-TV has-beens. It’s the truth. And if you tell it, you’re next.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t just an intelligence kerfuffle. This is the whole authoritarian buffet. We’ve got:

• Climate analysts disappearing from the Pentagon.
• Civil rights lawyers exiled from the DOJ.
• DEI officers dropped like bad stock tips at the CIA.

Meanwhile, Congress—the branch of government formerly known as “a check on executive power”—is practicing its best impersonation of a potted plant. No hearings. No subpoenas. No moral outrage. Just polite silence as the Constitution is used to line the birdcage in Mar-a-Lago.

And don’t think our allies aren’t watching. You can practically hear the whispers from Berlin to Canberra: “Can we still trust U.S. intelligence, or should we just ask ChatGPT and hope for the best?”

Here’s the part where I remind you what’s at stake: This isn’t theoretical. Real people—human beings—are being deported under fraudulent pretenses. Families are being ripped apart because someone in the Oval Office needed a scapegoat and a distraction. And the intelligence community has been turned into a MAGA fan fiction workshop.

Collins and Rykoff didn’t leak anything. They didn’t go rogue. They told the truth, on paper, in a professional report. That’s it. That’s all. And for that, they got shown the door.

So where’s the outrage? Where’s the accountability? Where’s the firewall between political power and objective analysis?

Spoiler alert: It’s gone.

Here’s the chilling punchline: If the only acceptable intelligence is the kind that flatters the leader, then we no longer have intelligence. We have a cult. And if that cult declares truth to be treason, well, then guess what?

We’re all traitors now.

So buck up, fellow citizens. Speak the truth anyway. Even if it means getting labeled the enemy. Especially then.

Because when silence is safety, speaking out becomes the only act of patriotism left.

Julie Bolejack, MBA