The deranged man in charge of the federal government despises the people who work for the federal government.

If they dare to dissent from his unhinges behavior, he says they are spies or they are part of the “deep state” that is determined to thwart his self-aggrandizing policies.

Yet there are some who have spoken out, most recently 90 who served as national security professionals, including some on the Trump administration.

The key to understanding this disagreement is that Trump hates anyone who disagrees with him and everyone who knows more than he does. That’s almost everyone who is a career professional in the foreign service.

An article in the Washington Post describes the concerns of national security officials, who fear what Trump is doing but worry that speaking out will reinforce his idiotic complaints about a “deep state.”

Trump has feuded with the national security community since many in the Republican establishment opposed his candidacy in 2016. And throughout the investigation into Russian interference in that election, the president sought to disparage U.S. intelligence agencies as a part of a politically motivated campaign to sabotage his presidency and sought to target some who spoke against him as partisan foils.

Those who have come forward since the Ukraine impeachment inquiry was announced said they are determined to make clear that Trump’s conduct falls well outside the institutional boundaries of the presidency.

“What is happening currently is not normal,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who served as a U.S. intelligence officer on Russia and Eurasia before stepping down in 2018. “This represents a deviation from the way that these institutions regularly function. And when the institutions don’t work, that is a national security threat.”

She was among 90 national security veterans who signed an open letter published Sunday in support of the anonymous whistleblower who filed a complaint that Trump had acted improperly in asking the Ukranian president to investigate Biden in a July phone call.

Trump has attempted to intimidate other government officials into not cooperating by casting those who offered information to the whistleblower as “close to spies.” The open letter emphasized that the whistleblower “is protected from certain egregious forms of retaliation.”

White House officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s critics have seized on criticism from ex-officials as evidence that Democrats have more than enough material to justify the impeachment proceedings against him and to try to remove him from office.

McGurk, the former special envoy charged with coordinating the global campaign against the Islamic State, issued a scathing series of tweets Monday calling Trump “not a Commander-in-Chief” for his abrupt decision to order U.S. troops out of northern Syria. The move could put Kurdish forces, longtime partners in the fight against ISIS, in jeopardy.

Trump makes “impulsive decisions with no knowledge or deliberation,” said McGurk, who registered similar concerns in December when he resigned in protest.