Given that American politics continues to look more and more like reality television everyday, in the Trump administration one day you’re in, and the next, you’re out. Such is the case for Mina Chang, a senior Trump administration official who today resigned from her role at the State Department because as it turns out, you can’t lie about literally everything and get away with it forever.
Chang, bless her heart, certainly did try.“It is essential that my resignation be seen as a protest and not as surrender,” she wrote in her letter of resignation to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Although it is unclear exactly what Chang is protesting, it might be safest to assume it is her apparent sworn enemy, the truth.
A week ago an NBC News report brought to light evidence that Chang had allegedly inflated her resume well beyond what would be considered accurate descriptions of the work she had done. While most of us hesitate to list “proficient in Excel” on a resume for fear that we one day might be asked to prove it, Chang was out there straight-up inventing positions on panels at the United Nations, as if it weren’t possible to fact-check her (although to her benefit she lasted longer than I did the last time I lied about the Excel thing). She also claimed to have testified before Congress which she’d also, surprise, never done.
Allegedly lying, though, does work out sometimes, because it wasn’t until she was up for a promotion of sorts that Congress began to take a closer look at her resume. As she was being considered for a new position overseeing a billion-dollar budget, Congress finally had some questions about her past experience. Namely, regarding a humanitarian aid mission to Afghanistan, where apparently, no aid was delivered, and also the claim she had received a degree in international development from the University of Hawaii that the university does not in fact offer. The University of Hawaii went so far as to say that they don’t even have a Mina Chang that matches her age on file, according to NBC.
NBC also reported that she claimed to have been a “cross-cultural ambassador” for UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural agency, although UNESCO asserts no such position exists, and to have won the “CBS Humanitarian of the Year Women That Soar” award in 2012, although CBS offers no award of that name.
Should you be interested in more pedestrian (alleged!) lies from Chang, I invite you to take a quick look at her Instagram, where out of her 44.1k followers, less than 200 can be bothered to engage with her content. Now, far be it from me to shame anyone for their social media presence, considering Instagram is taking our likes away regardless, but perhaps (allegedly) buying a following wasn’t the smartest move for a person who was already thought to be inflating their accomplishments. Either way, perhaps she will find comfort in one of the many quotes about weathering a storm she’s posted recently. She will definitely have some more time on her hands to drum up engagement while she job searches.