SAY WHAT? - Hoo boy. The new orange king is busy choosing his viper's den of crooks, rapists, misfits and "comically inappropriate" zealots, aka bootlickers to "run" his "government": A Russian asset to head national intelligence, a rabid TV host to helm the world's largest military, an anti-science crank for HHS, a child-sex-trafficking "foreheadful MAGA pustule" as A.G - a bid so demented it wasn't even on our Apocalypse Bingo card. Shockingly, these are not serious people, but loyalty tests: "The absurdity is the point."
Thus does our new era of governance by nihilist sociopaths open with mind-blowing headlines like, "Trump Names Fox News Host to Lead Defense Department." After the most vicious, hollow, bonkers campaign in this country's history, nobody's surprised Trump is choosing to reward the sycophants, culture warriors and "incompetent fascists" who will do his malevolent bidding. Still, his Cabinet appointments for the three jobs most vital to him - control over the military, intelligence secrets and the DOJ's power to prosecute - are preposterous enough many argue he's not even pretending to want a real government, but simply playing perilous chicken with a GOP Congress to see how much he can get away with, each name worse than the last.
First up was his choice of "stunningly unqualified" former Hawaii congresswoman, National Guard reserve and new bestie Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, even though she has no experience in intelligence work - "literally, none" - or managing anything. She also made a dubious 2017 "fact-finding" trip to Syria and met twice with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who's accused of killing hundreds of thousands of his own people; critics deemed the meeting "an outrage" and she is widely viewed as a Russian flunkie who "cozies up to dictators." While Trump praised her "fearless spirit," many blasted the nomination, charging she's not just ill-prepared for the job but such a national security risk that Putin might as well have gotten it.
Continuing his shamble toward national insecurity, next was Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old veteran and co-host of a Fox & Friends weekend show Trump likes, so hey why not make the guy on it Secretary of Defense to run the world's largest and most powerful military establishment with 1.3 million active-duty troops, 1.4 million National Guard members, nearly a million civilian workers, access to the nuclear codes and a budget of over $800 billion, about half of all federal discretionary funding, thus rendering an extremist, adulterous, belligerent culture warrior and former prison guard at Guantánamo with no managerial experience "undoubtedly the least experienced nominee for Secretary of Defense in American history."
A graduate of the University of St. Thomas, Hegseth served in Iraq and Afghanistan, then worked as a guard at Gitmo while in the Minnesota National Guard. That gig primed him for excusing and successfully lobbying "President" Trump to pardon several war criminals serving long prison sentences for murder in Iraq, including a "freaking evil" Navy Seal "perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving." At Biden's inauguration, he was one of 12 Guardsmen removed from duty after men in his unit said he was a white nationalist, maybe because of his tattoos; they include the Join or Die snake; Deus Vult, God Wills It, the cry of the Crusaders; a flag and the AR-15 he carried in Iraq; and across his pecs a huge Jerusalem Cross - a celebrated white nationalist symbol.
In his new book, he's still bitter about the rebuff: "Twenty years, (and) the military I loved, I fought for, I revered...spit me out. The feeling was mutual - I didn’t want this Army anymore." He calls new diversity efforts "garbage - any general, admiral involved in the DEI, woke shit's gotta go." He thinks the Black head of Joint Chiefs of Staff got his job by being Black. He's called liberals "domestic enemies," praised Jan. 6, cited a “desperate need" for Christian kids to get "a Christian education," once said he didn't wash his hands in ten years because germs aren't real, and said the 225,000 women now in combat shouldn't be. Tammy Duckworth says he's "dangerously unqualified" and so ignorant about war he thinks he can keep women behind an imaginary line; she'd ask him, "Where do you think I lost my legs?"
In 2017, Hegseth got passed over for head of Veterans Affairs; he'd just divorced and had an out-of-wedlock child with his second and "ultimate" wife, who turned out not to be when she filed for divorce a month after he had another child with Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet. He was also investigated after a Minnesota PAC he started, supposedly to support conservative candidates, was found to have spent less than half the money it raised on candidates, while dropping about a third of it on two lavish Christmas parties and nebulous "reimbursements" to Hegseth. He still seems to harbor anger issues: In a recent meltdown, he seethed about vaccines and screamed that a "dirtbag" reporter was just part of the "trash heap of left-wing media."
This week on Fox Business, he was calmer but no smarter. Celebrating Trump’s vow to leave the Paris Climate deal and the decimation of our only planet, he raved, "Good! Think of the exact opposite of what the woke left has been advancing, and that's what (he's) about to do. We're awake to (the) Utopian, globalist schemes, of what they're trying to peddle...All these burdensome regulations (are) a total sham meant (to) hold us back in the name of climate science, which has proven to not be true." (Hmm.) When the host mused it's like 1980 when Reagan got the Iran hostages released, a dazed Hegseth agreed, claimed "Hamas is crying uncle," and brayed, "The adults are back, and our enemies are taking notice." And, "Trump is making bitcoin great again!"
The response in the defense and military community to the nomination of a Fox carnie to run the military has variously been called "stunned" and "bewildered," a feeling possibly best summed up by one member with, "WTF. Who is this fucking guy?"Another blasted Hegseth as "an unserious person for an incredibly serious post during an incredibly serious time in the world." Dem Adam Kinsinger called the nod "the most hilariously, predictably stupid thing. Yes, he's a veteran, and...?" Brace yourself, America," warned Paul Rieckhoff of Independent Veterans of America. Because we live in a time of morons when up is down, Elizabeth Warren tried to explain it in the simplest terms possible: “A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense."
Finally, having drained the proverbial swamp and bafflingly transformed it into a cesspool, the old ringmaster dug as deeply as he could with his stubbly little hands into the GOP dung pile and tugged out what's been deemed "the worst nomination for a Cabinet position in American history," tapping for the job of highest law enforcement official in the land a "unanimously loathed," singularly unqualified chaos agent, greasy provocatuer and "person of moral turpitude" who's not only never served as a government attorney, judge, arbiter or overseer of any kind but has himself long been accused of heinous sex crimes along with protean creepiness - a bid eliciting, by way of response from a stunned public, myriad variations on, "Oh. My. God" and, "Oh, for fuck's sake."
The nomination of alleged pedophile, drug snorter and child sex trafficker Matt 'Butthead' Gaetz as Attorney General is so insane it launched a host of possible theories by observers desperate to carve logic from dystopian mayhem. It's pure provocation, an elaborate troll. It's "a big 'Fuck You' to everyone who believes in the rule of law," demonstrating "maximum contempt for 99% of the human race and every decent thing we’ve ever stood for." It's "a canary in the recess appointment coal mine," a lunatic litmus test "from a man who offers none in return," like making Sean Spicer say the inauguration crowd was bigger than MLK's." It's "an open flame being considered for Secretary of Gasoline." It's "a crawl test" for the Senate:"Autocrats like to make minions crawl."
The leering alleged sexual predator brazenly picked by a serial sexual predator and adjudicated rapist is above all a bullying tactic, an effort to simultaneously degrade and weaponize the DOJ while punishing those who pursued charges against him, and Gaetz too. Among his rogues' gallery of unqualified loyalists, the ghastly Gaetz, who'd "turn the DOJ into a petting zoo for Trump," is the pinnacle, the "gauntlet thrown in America’s face," the sneering challenge daring weak-kneed Senate Republicans to challenge him: "Who's gonna stop me? You and whose army?" It's "as close as you can get to putting Sean Hannity in charge of the DOJ." It's more bleak proof there is no bottom, that he's "not assembling a Cabinet to run the government, but to break it. Let them eat Gaetz."
Gaetz, a 42-year-old "series of unfortunate events, and weird hair too," serves a deep red district in Florida; his X bio reads, "Florida Man. Built for Battle." The son of a rich GOP donor, he first became a state legislator known for playing a "points game" in which he and other GOP jerks earned sexual points for sleeping with women: One point for a lobbyist, three for a fellow legislator, six for a married legislator. Trump didn't mention the game in his rambling post praising Gaetz as "a deeply gifted and tenacious" - or "deeply grifted and mendacious" - attorney with an unimpressive resume consisting mostly of disrupting the House, sucking up to Trump and once barging into a secure facility where Dems were holding a deposition hearing he was mad he wasn't invited to.
Trump also ignored allegations Gaetz often accosted House members to show them nude photos of women he'd slept with or to brag about crushing Viagra in Red Bull to "go all night"; one repulsed colleague: "That’s great, Matt. Like, what kind of a reaction do you want?" And he overlooked a two-year investigation by the DOJ into allegations Gaetz trafficked and sexually exploited a 17-year-old girl he took across state lines to pay for sex, and attended sex-and-drug-fueled parties - why he'd be hounded by media shouting, "Are you a pedophile?" Last year, the DOJ dropped the trafficking charges without comment; the House Ethics Committee was still investigating him for sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, accepting improper gifts, dispensing favors and obstructing their investigation.
Gaetz also joined about 150 Republicans and the white supremacist Proud Boys - "Standing back and standing by, Mr. President" - to protest the 2020 election results and his hush money trial, invited a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, launched an “America First” tour with Klan Mom MTG to repeat election lies, sought a blanket pardon from Trump before he left the White House, and, according to Kevin McCarthy, asked him to kill the ethics probe of his exploits. He's reportedly so widely disliked that his new job offer prompted even staunch right-wingers to savage him as "a sex trafficking drug-addicted piece of shit." Ben Domenech wrote a Substack post titled, “Matt Gaetz is a Vile Sex Pest and Any Senator Who Votes For Him Owns That."
The news of his nomination was said to be greeted with "an audible gasp” from Republicans, many of whom thought it was a joke. A reporter: "Safe to say GOP senators are stunned - not in a good way.” One was "laughing so hard in a group he’s wiping away tears"; another had "no good comment." “We wanted him out of the House (but) this isn’t what we were thinking,” said Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson. Asked if he thought Gaetz had the character or experience to be A.G., Simpson stared incredulously, laughed loudly, and said, "Are you shitting me? No." Even as some conceded it could "make for a popcorn-eating confirmation hearing," even GOP heathens evidently felt the concept of a plan for an A.G. Gaetz "took the cake at the ongoing 'This Country Is Over' party.
Gaetz abruptly resigned Wednesday from the House. But with the Ethics Committee scheduled to vote Friday on whether to release their reportedly "highly damaging" findings on him, a number of nervous GOP senators are calling for access to the report "by whatever means necessary," including a possible subpoena. Said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, "I don't think any of us want to fly blind." Still, Maine's Susan Collins already says she's "shocked" by Gaetz' pick and she'll probably reject him. Then again, it's Collins. Some speculate she'll mull, pray, come to accept Gaetz' promise he won't do "any crazy stuff," and vote for him. Once confirmed, he'll arrest her as an enemy of the state; Collins will be "concerned," but ultimately soothed by his assurance it's a very nice gulag.
Thursday, in an "act of uttter hubris," Trump tapped crackpot fabulist and anti-vaccine-and-fluoride conspiracist RFK Jr. to head, per Tiedrich, the Dept. of Dying of a Preventable Disease. Trump says he'll let RFK's brain worm "go wild on the medicines," and we can't wait. Also, at an Oversight Committee hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth" - your tax dollars at work - Colorado's somehow re-elected Lauren Boebert said Americans "are being kept in the dark" and pressed four UFO "experts" for more federal transparency on rumored space aliens operating underwater bases in the oceans, and secret experiments creating “hybrid” humans with enhanced capabilities. "Are you familiar with that? Yes or no?" she shrieked. They were not. Still, she vowed she "will not relent until we get those answers to the American people." The Internet: "She''ll probs be made head of NASA now." Also, "Absolute circus America is."
(Abby Zimet has written CD's Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues. Email: [email protected]. This article was first published in CommonDreams.org.)
