Trump Energy Dept. Appointee, NH Massage Therapist, Canned for Anti-Muslim Social Media Posts

BEDFORD, NH — A New Hampshire man who was hired to work in an unknown position in the Office of Technology Transitions inside the U.S. Department of Energy no longer works for the agency after anti-Muslim rhetoric was found on public posts he made on Twitter, according to Politico.com. Sid Bowdidge of Bedford had been hired to work in the agency but it was not known what is job would be and, as the report stated, it doesn’t appear as if he has any experience in energy policy or technology.

US DOE employees “were unsettled” by comments Bowdidge made on Twitter including stating that President Barack Obama was not using the term “radical Islam” because “they’re his relatives” as well as replying to a CNN Tweet of the San Bernardino shooters calling them, “Scum sucking maggots of the world," according to the report. His Twitter account has since been reset to a private setting.

The report noted that a number of employees were also alarmed that they hadn’t been given details of Bowdidge’s official responsibilities and that he didn’t appear to have any experience at overseeing the commercialization of billions of dollars of federal research funds that OTT handles.

A Google search by Politico revealed that Bowdidge was described a “massage therapist from Bedford” in an NBC debate watch story from August 2015. A search by Patch also found a post on Yelp from July 2013, disputing a complaint comment, where a person with the same name commented that they were the manager of the Seabrook Meineke. Lifezette.com reported in August 2015 described Bowdidge and his wife as local business owners.

A spokesperson for the US DOE confirmed that he was no longer an employee at the department.

Bowdidge isn’t the only Trump New Hampshire supporter hired for a government job recently, according to ProPublica.org, which recently released a list of more than 400 government appointments made by Trump. Daniel Tiso, a former Amherst resident and honor roll student, was hired in January as an assistant to the Secretary of the Department of Labor.

A number of media outlets, like Slate.com, mocked the fact that Tiso worked as an event coordinator for Trump in New Hampshire but was only a high school graduate; others noted that kids right out of high school handle multi-million-dollar apparatus while working for the military overseas, so surely, a high school graduate could run errands at the Labor Department. Seth Harris, an Obama-Biden transition team member who also worked at the Labor Department, noted that a lot of young people who work on campaigns have historically been hired after working on campaigns.

Patch was unable to find a similar investigation of Obama or George W. Bush appointees put together by the self-proclaimed “investigative journalism” organization.

Read the full report on Politico.com.