Tom Nichols has a piece in The Atlantic on the Kash Patel nomination that is worth a read, The Kash Patel Principle. Let me focus on two paragraphs.
The Russians speak of “power ministries,” the departments that have significant legal and coercive capacity. In the United States, those include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence community. Trump has now named sycophants to lead each of these institutions, a move that eliminates important obstacles to his frequently expressed desires to use the armed forces, federal law-enforcement agents, intelligence professionals, and government lawyers as he chooses, unbounded by the law or the Constitution.
Let’s do a quick rundown beyond Patel.
The Department of Justice. For the head of Justice, he first chose Matt Gaetz who is known to have had sex with multiple 17-year-olds and done illegal drugs on multiple occasions. He was utterly unqualified to boot save that he did go to law school and practiced for a couple of years. His main qualification was personal fealty to Trump and a clear willingness to flaunt the law, own the libs, and do whatever was needed for more power (and to avoid the consequences of his actions).
Trump replaced Gaetz with Pam Bondi, who is also known for her personal loyalty to Trump, likely did not go after Trump University because of a contribution to her re-election campaign, and is an election denier. She is infinitely more qualified than Gaetz, for whatever that is worth.
Both nominees appear more than willing to politicize DoJ and use it however Trump wants. I would underscore that this is a massive deviation from the independence that DoJ has exercised in the past.
The Department of Defense. Pete Hegseth is a TV host and author who says things Trump likes. He is credibly accused of sexual assault and is a serial adulterer. He is utterly unqualified for the job.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Tulsi Gabbard is a former member of Congress who has spent the last several years cultivating a talking head career that has made her a favorite of Trump. She was a Democrat in the House, so this will be hailed as a “bipartisan pick” as if that matters in this context. Her talking head career has been replete with pro-Russian, pro-Putin, and pro-Assad (Syria) rhetoric. She is clearly personally loyal to Trump and has no significant experience for the position.
I will throw in the Department of Homeland Security, even though Nichols does not mention it because it plays an important role in border security and any deportation process. Kristi Noem is the most qualified of the names I have typed in this post, but that is damning with faint praise. I will note, simply, that when she was angling for the vice presidency she included animal cruelty anecdotes in her book in what appears to have been an attempt to impress Trump with how decisive and tough she can be. To me, that is the kind of psychopathic behavior that would make me reject a person. For Trump, it has helped put her in a position of power.
It is hard to ignore the degree to which Trump is populating very important positions with hacks will do his bidding. I will note that one of his more normal picks, Rubio for State, is a position wherein as president it is far easier to override and control foreign policy as opposed to, say, Justice where he needs a loyalist in place to actually do the work. And even there let’s not forget how Trump insulted Rubio into beta status.
I am reminded of this quote from Hannah Arendt from On the Origins of Totalitarianism, which James quoted the other day from The Ezra Klein Show, but that I have also seen emerge in various places. It is chillingly apt.
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
I know that the default is to think of Trump as a buffoon who operates on instincts and that all of these picks will fail in one way or the other due to incompetence. However, incompetent people can do a lot of damage because of their incompetence. Further, just because they are inexperienced, unqualified, and even incompetent doesn’t mean that they can’t do some significant percentage of what Trump and his inner circle want whether that is weaponizing the FBI and DoJ or some level of cruel deportations.
I will note for defenders of the incoming administration, these critiques are not the normal partisan criticisms of appointees. First, if one has been paying attention, usually nominations are met with minimal resistance. Yes, there are usually a handful that get a lot of scrutiny, but if anyone thinks that concerns over most of these nominations are just partisan grousing, they are simply wrong. Second, if one thinks that these are good and acceptable picks, help us all out and tell us why.
In regards to the FBI and DoJ, I will leave you with Nichols’ final paragraph:
The early-20th-century Peruvian strongman Óscar R. Benavides once stated a simple principle that Trump now appears to be pursuing when he said: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” It falls now to the Republican members of the Senate to decide whether Trump can impose this formula on the United States.
As he notes in the piece, and as I also continue to harp on: the real test for how far the GOP has fallen is how many of these picks make it through.
To date the only thing that has proven disqualifying is participating in orgies that included drugs, prostitutes, and 17-year-olds. The bar is not very high (even if Gaetz was).
