Or, when pressed, some will just make up a completely fictional career for themselves.While under normal circumstances, you could expect young White House officials to work their job titles into conversations at the earliest opportunity, the Trump crew has learned to use the types of dodges more commonly deployed by employees of the CIA. “I’ll just say I work for the federal government,” says a White House aide. After some conversations at bars on U Street and the Hill turned south when his Trump ties came up, one since-departed staffer has learned to reveal his White House past only as a last resort. “Even now, people have to ask five or six times before I say, ‘Yeah, I worked there,’” he says.
The new and inventive tactic of lying about who you are to trick someone into dating you may work in person, but it doesn't pay off as well on the dating apps. It turns out that it's a little harder to cloak your identity on Bumble.When being vague doesn’t cut it, staffers can always straight-up lie, as one young administration official learned to do while working out of New York during the campaign. “I told people I was an auditor down on Wall Street, and people just stopped asking me questions after that,” he recalls.
And, really, no one can hide from Google.One beleaguered 31-year-old female administration official described at length her “very, very frequent” scraps with her matches on dating apps. “You do the small talk thing, and you have a very good conversation, and then they might say, ‘You didn’t vote for Trump, right?’” she says. “As soon as I say, ‘Of course I did,’ it just devolves into all-caps ‘HOW COULD YOU BE SUCH A RACIST AND A BIGOT?’ And ‘You’re going to take away your own birth control.’” In one recent star-crossed exchange, the official told a match she worked for the federal government. When he pushed, she revealed she was in the administration. He asked her, “Do you rip babies from their mothers and then send them to Mexico?”
As the young and un-sexed Trump staffers flee the normal avenues of dating, deleting their dating apps and steering clear of bars out of fear that mean liberals will heckle them or make them to listen to the audio of crying migrant children, they're forced to look to each other for companionship.Evasive answers will get you only so far, though, since many dating apps provide enough information for inquisitive users to sleuth out their matches’ identities. “I literally got the other day, ‘Thanks but no thanks. Just Googled you and it said you were a mouthpiece for the Trump administration. Go fuck yourself,’” says the official. It’s all enough to drive her and some of her colleagues away from at least some of the apps. “I’m no longer on Bumble,” she says.
And sure, it must feel like a pretty bleak fate for all of DC's Young Undatables to accept defeat and fuck one another, but come on. The young White House staffers should feel lucky—at least they have careers that let them slug down bottles of Smirnoff Ice on the job or whatever.Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.Follow VICE on Twitter.Unlike their predecessors, who made their mark on the city’s social scene, they largely keep to themselves, more likely to hop between intimate apartment gatherings than to hit the town. “Instead of folks looking outward,” explains one young White House aide, “more folks look inward.”