The J6 Filter
A disturbing loyalty test.
The NYT reports: Want a Job in the Trump Administration? Be Prepared for the Loyalty Test.
The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. The sense they got was that there was only one right answer to each question.
While so many in mainstream American politics seem to keep trying to memory-hole J6, the incoming Trump administration understands its significance. Looking to filter administration personnel via sympathy for an insurrection intended to overturn an election and obeisance to a lie about the election is a very, very bad sign. And it underscores, yet again, how the cowardice and love of power displayed by Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP in the aftermath of J6 will continue to haunt us.
And when I say that many seem to want to ignore J6, I would note that many, many people dismiss concerns about a second Trump administration with some version of, “What was it that he did last time that was so bad?” This is usually from pro-Trump types, but even Trump opponents who lean into the “incompetence will blunt the damage” thesis seem to forget the way the whole thing ended last time.
Trump and his allies are crafting and shaping this administration very specifically.
Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and pro-MAGA podcaster, is among those conducting the loyalty tests, along with members of the personnel team. That team is led by Sergio Gor, who has helped run the publishing company that produces the president-elect’s books and ran a multimillion-dollar super PAC that supported Mr. Trump.
The more policy-focused interviews have been conducted by members of the transition staff and by potential agency heads, such as Kash Patel, Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the F.B.I., and Tulsi Gabbard, his pick to be director of national intelligence.
This is a process designed and guided by cranks and ideologues. This is like having a bombastic host of a sports podcast pick the next coaching staff for an NFL team. It is a very bad way to assemble a group of people to govern. But, it is a pretty good way to put together a cadre of loyalists who won’t let the norms get in the way of what Trump and his friends want to do.
Mr. Trump has told advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was appointing “traitors,” some of whom came to view him as a threat to democracy. He has singled out for especially harsh attacks his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who has called Mr. Trump a fascist; his defense secretaries, Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper; and his attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and William P. Barr.
That Jeff Sessions would be far and away a preferable AG says something about where we are headed.
And if anyone is missing the point: it is perfectly fine for the incoming administration to want to make sure that appointees and hires are on board with the policy goals of said administration. But it is wholly another for personal loyalty to the president, as tested by the willingness to accept lies. Moreover, when one of the governmental outcomes that an incoming administration is testing you on is an insurrection, then that is unacceptable.
Put another way: if the test is acceptance of J6 and the Big Lie about the election, then anyone who can pass the test should not be allowed in government. And yet, here we are.
It would be as if in the 1870s the only way to get a federal job was to have been pro-CSA.
If it wasn’t already obvious, this just provides absolute proof the loyalty demanded by Trump will far supersede any loyalty to the Constitution.
We can only hope that four years from now there’s an America to salvage.
Personal loyalty to the President is probably the main policy goal of this administration. Truly sad, indeed, but also what voters voted for.
I’m sorry to have to say this, but the logical move now is to stage a preemptive coup to keep the felon and his fascists out.
It won’t happen. Add one more missed opportunity:
2016 primaries
2016 general election
First Impeachment
Second Impeachment
Timely prosecution of known crimes
14th amendment disqualification
2024 primaries
2024 election
It’s hard to predict where all of this goes since Trump talks a lot but doesnt always follow through. That said, I do expect him to try to do a lot of stuff that will end up being challenged in court. I then expect our current SCOTUS, which has already determined with some pretty twisted logic that POTUS is mostly immune for anything he does, to find some way to support the large majority of what he wants. It is likely to be a real strong man govt with strong support from the high court. Which seems to be a pretty common set up in the banana republics where the leaders make sure they have the courts packed with willing accomplices.
Steve
@steve:
On topic with the picture more than the post, but I’ve been wondering if Trump really will pardon the J6 felons. They’re of no real value to him except as a campaign line. I’ve come around to expecting he will. He’s shot off his mouth about it enough to lock himself in. And conservatives tend to be scrupulous about maintaining consistency with their alternate reality.
@Kathy:
This is problematic for a host of reasons. Please stop with this kind of thing.
@just nutha:
This may seem a distinction without a difference, but what the electorate voted for was Trump Will Fix It. They wanted a leader empowered to restore prices to what they were before COVID, lower crime to Mayberry levels, and smash the scourge of wokism simply by the force of his will. They didn’t believe anyone who told them that’s not how governance by strong man works.
True, a shameful number of Trump voters wanted the fascism. But I contend, that though they shouldn’t be, a significant number of Trump voters will be surprised when Trump behaves exactly as Harris/Walz said he would – serving himself above all and being cruel to Them.
In a post-factual world where expertise is scorned, apparently only lived experience will change minds. Unfortunately for every voter who knew better, they’ll have to live with the consequences as well.
Yay! DEI for wingnuts.
For every liberal action overreach, MAGA proclaims ‘Hold my beer!’ Every accusation really is an admission.
I fully expected such a thing.
And yet, here we are, indeed.
OMG Charlie Kirk(!) is going to have more influence over the next 4 years of US governance, than (insert name here – I’m having a hard time coming up with a name of a competent conservative statesman who could plausibly influence Trump in a more sane universe).
To think, all it took was Trump to break it down.
Hindsight? It’s easy to see the lineage – from Newt Gingrich and the 1994 midterms, to Clinton’s impeachment, to the conservative panic over the election of Obama, to putting Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket, and finally … to Trump. He was and is the political accelerant
Perhaps we would have come to this point regardless, but Trump was the person the Right coalesced behind.
We’re in a period of a very radical reaction. To me this 2024 election feels like it’s potentially the most consequential since 1876, when the compromise that settled that election resulted in the rollback of Reconstruction, and put off reckoning with civil rights for 80 years.
@Kathy:
Would it really be a “coup” to prevent a felon and insurrectionist who has openly expressed plans to assault the Constitution, from doing so?
Still “problematic” as Steven Taylor points out. This is the internal contradiction of democracy that has been there all along … can a democracy be so open that it allows hostile ideology to end it? Or cease being a democracy for actively preventing its own demise?
@Steven L. Taylor:
Ok. I’ll stop.
But if you don’t want any discussion of it, you should delete my previous comment.
@al Ameda:
I date it to Goldwater and his supporters recognizing they could use mass marketing techniques to sell their otherwise unsavory candidate. Which is to say, they tried to buy the election. This excellent, albeit overlong, article in WAPO yesterday lays out the history of Chuckles Koch overturning the Chevron doctrine. It talks about subverting SCOTUS but doesn’t note the first step was their SCOTUS removing most obstacles to money in politics under the new highly original “originalist” doctrine that money is speech. They don’t talk much about Kochtopus money in campaigns. They note Pence, but not how deeply he was Koch’s creature.
I fear we may well be looking at a paradigm shift like 1876 as the decades long quest by billionaires to buy the government finally bears fruit. I’m seeing that Musk put up like a quarter of the money that got Trump elected. And that doesn’t count the money invested over decades in the Federalist Society, AEI, Heritage, Heartland, and on, and on.
@Kathy:
I have some sympathy, but I try and remind myself that both James and Steven are real people with real positions in the world, and neither would want to be attacked as running a ‘blog where violent rhetoric flourishes.’
@Scott F.:
The world would be a much better place if this was true about human nature. But Trump and his Trumpers will blame the left, and the jews, and the blacks, and the woke, and the etc etc etc. And they will accept that. Or they will retcon it and decide they didn’t vote for Trump. But in my 65 years on earth, I’ve never seen a political movement “come to their senses when they realize how bad it got”. Hell, look at how adamantly Trumpers believe things were nirvana in his first term.
It strikes me that these questions are an invitation to lie.
I have a bit of interview training. The suggestion, which makes sense to me, is that an interviewer should ask open-ended questions that allow the candidate to define themselves, and this will provide one with better information. If you ask questions that have an obvious “right answer”, then people will give those “right answers” based not on whether that’s their core belief, and more on “I want this job”.
Which isn’t to say asking this question isn’t a problem. Hmm, in civil employment law, there are questions one can’t ask, and questions one can ask. I wonder if there’s an analogue that applies?
@MarkedMan: Yes, that was my immediate reaction, too. It looks like we’re in for some ugly times so it would be nice if we could convince ourselves that some good might come out of it, but how many times have Republicans screwed things up and paid virtually no price, certainly in the longer term? They could eliminate Medicare and still win the senior vote, it seems. It’s very discouraging.
@Jay L Gischer:
An invitation to lie is also an invitation to be sacked.
One time the US visa application I filled out asked whether the applicant had links with terrorist groups. No one filling it out will answer “YES.” But that can be a basis for criminal charges, like perjury to begin with, later on.
Look for staff at all levels in the felon white house to denounce other staff for deviations from purity. Much like the citizens of the USSR did during the great terror.
@Michael Reynolds:
I mean, c’mon, this isn’t Twitter fer Chrissakes!
I don’t believe that violence is necessary, so much as brinksmanship.
As I put it, “Force them to force us.”
Repeatedly over the past couple decades we’ve seen Republican governors and legislatures force the federal government to force them to do things like allow abortion clinics to contijue, allow voters to vote, etc.
And we’ve seen police unions outright refuse to enforce laws whenever they get their noses bent out of joint.
I can see blue states like California and cities like Los Angeles refuse to comply with federal actions, or slow walk and obstruct as long as possible. Or even us having people inside monkeywrench operations in order to make it difficult for the Trump admin. to do anything.
@MarkedMan:
Of course, the true believer Trumpists will never accept failure. Cultists will drink the kool-aid before accepting they’ve been duped. Trumpism will never fail – it will only be failed. The Donald’s last term taught us that.
My point is that Trump wouldn’t have been elected by true believer Trumpists alone. The margin of victory was very small and the difference was the “causally informed” voters who bought the easy solution pitch, because it was what they wanted at no cost. And they didn’t accept the wisdom and the expertise of people who were telling them something they didn’t want to hear.
There are too many true Trumpists, but they aren’t a plurality, let alone the majority of the electorate. Those who oppose where Trump and the GOP want to take the country need to remember they don’t need to deprogram the cultists, They just need to show the mushy middle the consequences of aligning with the cultists.
I recall reading that Trump has described a frustration from his first stint, he’s always been a CEO and was amazed, as a POTUS, at all the people under him telling him what he could and couldn’t do. He seeks to eliminate that.
@Scott F.: Oh, I’m aware that most voters aren’t “true” anything. But that doesn’t change my observation: neither the true believers or the tag-alongs will ever blame Trump because it would mean blaming themselves to some degree. Sure, there will be exceptions but it will be a small fraction
@dazedandconfused:
That CEO thing is a bit of a dodge. Trump has a long history of not being told what to do. Probably what landed him in military school as a kid.
@dazedandconfused: Someone said, when Eisenhower was elected, that he was unprepared for the presidency because as a general he wasn’t used to dealing with politics and was used to people doing whatever he ordered. Now, whoever said that knew little about politics in the upper levels of the military, or about Montgomery and Patton. But the thought seems apt to your comment.
@Kathy: Thing is, the question you cite is a factual representation. It can be proven before a court.
Whereas the questions Team Trump is asking are about beliefs. It would be perfectly reasonable for a person to maintain that they “really” believed *whatever* while doing something Trump didn’t like.
@Jay L Gischer:
Sorry, work has me distracted from what matters 😉
Denunciations in the USSR didn’t require proof. It was a way to sow mistrust and disunity.
In the felon’s “government” this may serve as well, and also to get rid of undesirables. For the latter, it doesn’t matter whether an accusation is true or not, only that it was made.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Indeed.
They have begun their graceful ill-conceived swan dive straight into a deep-but-empty pool. This is one of those times that we have to let them do their thing.
Their wings are spread, and they believe that they have all of America supporting their actions. But once changes to social security, Medicare, Obamacare, the impacts of tariffs, inflation, etc. take pace, America will suddenly have a change of heart in the midterms.
The Trumpers will celebrate the Feast of the Maga on Jan 20th., but the party will be short lived.
@dazedandconfused: Correct. And I am sort of convinced that this cuts both ways. Yes, Trump will try and run rough shod over norms, and surrounded by sycophants, he’s going to succeed at that at times. But these underlings are going to overstep as well, and Trump will cut them loose as soon as they lose their value.
I fully expect a lot of chaos, but also a fair amount of activity that will blow back.
While I’m a natural optimist, I regard optimism as too close to hubris for comfort.
So, if you all don’t mind, when contemplating the felon era to come, my go to guide is “imagine how bad things can get, and multiply that by 11.”
Looks like Professor Taylor believes that the Supreme Court was wrong when they ruled in FISCHER v. UNITED STATES that the Justice Department overstepped by bringing obstruction charges against hundreds of people who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
J6 Filter will impeach 6 Justices.
Or we remember how it ended last time, remember the massive amount of damage, and are very aware that if he was surrounding himself with more competent people it would be far worse.
Getting from saying “deport 30M illegals” to actually greatly increasing the number of people being deported is a long road with many steps, one of which is apparently to create a strategic reserve of bitcoin.
And adding judges.
And building detainment centers. And paying for building detainment centers. And subcontracting out to friends to build detainment centers. And pocketing a large profit from building detainment centers. And finding enough workers to build detainment centers.
There are so many points of grift and delay and cost overruns, and being behind the schedule, and the far right he is tapping for administration tend to be grifters.
It will be very bad. But the incompetence and the grift will blunt what would otherwise be even more disastrous.
For every true believer who wants to get rid of Social Security, there’s a grifter that wants to get the Social Security Trust Fund out of treasury securities and into DogeCoin. For every Stephen Miller eager to hurt brown folks, there’s someone who wants to sell ICE new brown shirts and someone else who wants to somehow direct those funds into purchasing Trump Bibles.
It will be very expensive, and very dumb, and take years to fix. But not as bad as if competent people were involved.
ETA: of course, if you’re trans, they will still hurt you directly, and get their toadies riled up to commit hate crimes. And it kind of doesn’t matter whether it’s state or vigilante actors encouraged by the state. I just hope they get Caitlyn Jenner early enough to provide a little Schadenfreude.
@Scott F.:
Any sane Republicans have long since been cast into outer darkness by the MAGAs.
@Gustopher: I will agree that he will not achieve a maximalist version of his promises.
I think I think a lot of terrible people can do a lot of damage. I take very little solace that, say, Patel is not the most competent choice for FBI Director or Pam Bondi for AG.
And Tom Homan is not incompetent, for example.
@Kathy: Thanks.
@Paul L.:
Perhaps you can upack that thinking Paul because, based on this article, I don’t see Steven talking about the Obstruction component at all.
It would be helpful if you (a) explained the core impact of the ruling around the application of “obstruction” charges and then (b) explain how Steven’s post addressed the issue of obstruction as applied to the January 6th rioters who entered the Capital Building (which was the specific focus of that decision).
@gVOR10: I would say whoever said that was clueless on the difficulty of managing a multi-nation war alliance as well. There’s a reason Patton got Patton’s job and Ike got Ike’s.
I really don’t think Ike should ever be in the same sentence, paragraph, page…oh screw it.. book as Trump though.
@Matt Bernius: Matt, you may as well be interacting with a bot.
@MarkedMan:
Trump’s popular vote margin of victory is at 1.4% now. “A small fraction” is all that is needed to tip the balance away from Trumpism. As has been covered here by Prof. Taylor, anti-incumbency is a wave that Trump rode to no small extent.
And, I actually don’t think it will be all that hard to convince a significant number of the “tag-alongs” that rather than blame themselves for making a mistake in supporting Trump (knowing what they should have known in 2024) they should feel that Trump betrayed them by not delivering what he was selling them. I agree that it is true about human nature that people will do all manner of justifications to escape their personal culpability for a bad outcome. But, properly messaged, putting the culpability on Trump when he doesn’t Fix It isn’t beyond reach.
I keep hearing “repairing the damage” and “retaking Congress in 2026” – but it seems to me that there’s a significant chance we just had our last national election.
The President can declare a national emergency and suspend elections. Even if that’s not legal, the Supreme Court says we have to presume it was necessary. What then?
@restless: No he can’t and no they didn’t. It is probably going to get very ugly, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. The people Trump is nominating seem intent on doing the things they said they were going to do. But some portion of those people have to be confirmed, and other things Trump wants to do will require the military or some other group to go along. Ultimately, it may come down to who is willing to follow what orders.
But politics hasn’t ended. Trump is a lame duck from day 1. And he seems to have badly misunderstood why/how he was elected. Most of the people who elected him didn’t vote for what he wants to do. And he can’t do the things that they want him to do.