Here's an odd story that popped back to mind recently. It happened one day in seventh grade when my English teacher decided to hold an impromptu spelling bee. A classmate and I picked the teams, and after a few picks my teacher blurted out, "Are you trying to lose?"
I wasn't, but for some reason I had the idealistic notion that a lot of the bad students were actually pretty bright underneath their facades of indifference. So I picked them. Needless to say, it turned out I was wrong and we got walloped.
Anyway, Trump's cabinet choices triggered this old memory. I have a feeling Trump is going to learn that under their clownish facades, all these guys really are clowns. They're going to get walloped too.
Kevin may be right but one difference is that losers in a spelling bee don’t take others down with them. Trump’s cabinet may get “walloped” but they will wallop innocent others in the process.
On the face of it Trump's cabinet picks are so incompetent that they are likely to end up just being office ornaments while the professional bureaucrats get on with the job of running the country.
They have specific destructive plans that allow even incompetent people to cause a lot of damage. For example, getting rid of generals/admirals that are not loyal to Trump:
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-draft-executive-order-would-create-board-to-purge-generals-7ebaa606
Yup, across all departments. It's insane.
It's my understanding is that the military decides who should be court martialed and the courts are military courts. I can't see how the Army is going to go along with court martialing Generals who did nothing wrong.
At the highest ranks, they can be replaced at the whim of the President. No court-martial necessary. They just relieve the officer from command.
But the actual plan is to put together a board of retired generals and have them select the existing generals who are to be canned. And sure, there re a tiny number of morally bankrupt retired generals (see the Flynn brothers) . But as Trump found with McMaster, Mattis and Kelly, most generals, even the most conservative ones, won't dance to Trump's tune.
Maybe it will not go far, but Trump clearly try to get more "loyal" generals, and that is the purpose of the appointment of the foxnewser and creating this new board.
I think he wants at least ot have a "neutral" army, to make sure it does not intervene even when Trump clearly violates the constitution with violent actions.
Why do you think this board will cooperate. It will be really difficult to actually put together a board of retired generals who want to destroy the US military.
You’re assuming that the professional bureaucrats aren’t ousted and replaced with more incompetent sycophants.
There are a finite number of sycophants and a very large number of professional bureaucrats. A sycophant who is nominally in charge would have to be competent enough to figure out which bureaucrats to oust and replace, and then go through the procedure of ousting them, with the bureaucrats who would actually carry out the work slow walking the whole process to a stand still. When the bureaucrats don't want something done, it will get done very slowly if at all.
But isn't that part of what the Trumpers want, to get nothing done? Especially if the bureaucrats are involved in oversight, federal policy, or regulation of any sort.
Maybe and hopefully, but what about when Trump orders Matt Gaetz to begin investigations of a list of Trump enemies? Gaetz just has to then tell Trump-appointed DOJ lawyers and investigators to get on it.
That isn't quite right. They can get on it, but when they find nothing criminal that is not going to be a great victory for Trump.
They can still harass people anyway, and find helpful judges to make it worse. They can also just invent stuff. That is how dictators do things.
Just being innocent is not enough against a government without respect to truth and laws.
Exactly this. Opposing investigations is not costless, and most of Trump's enemies are going to have limited resources.
This is even more the case when the "enemies" are relatively normal civil servants, who have everyday concerns about things like affording putting their kids through college and paying the mortgage. How many folks are equipped to not only get suspended from their job, but then have to pay lawyers to fight for months or years in court? How many will just quietly toe the line or keep their heads down to avoid that risk?
Where's Joseph Welch when we need him?
Sure, and it's not just the cost to those under investigation and to democracy. It's not even less than victory. It will be trumpeted as a victory by Trump and his party, and it will seem like one to the yahoos looking yet again for someone to hate.
"when they find nothing criminal"
1) The investigation and the harrassment itself is a victory, since it sidelines opponents, turns the public against them, and wastes their resources. Securing a conviction is a cherry on top: a nice potential bonus, but wholly unnecessary.
2) An underappreciated aspect of the social compact is that law enforcement generally doesn't come after you for every little infraction. Who among us hasn't maybe messed up something on a tax return, driven above the speed limit, etc.? If your goal is to enforce the law and minimize crime, you don't waste time with the minor, gray area stuff. But if your goal is to go after your enemies and make an example, then, yeah, it's entirely possible that a determined law enforcement agency can "find [some]thing criminal" and make it stick.
That's how things happen in Russia, for example--biggish fish of all types are invariably arguably getting on the wrong side of Russia's hazy tax laws. But you only face prosecution if you get on the wrong side of Putin. Same thing could start happening here.
"could" => "will"
The problem with any large organization is that you can give orders but if the organization as a whole doesn't want to carry them out, Murphy's Law takes over and everything takes much longer than expected. Never underestimate the power of the bureaucracy to frustrate the will of their political "masters".
If the "Trump-appointed DOJ lawyers and investigators" are as incompetent as the clowns Trump has nominated so far, they won't get anything done, and even if Trump manages to replace the whole top layer, or even the top couple of layers, the actual investigating still has to be done by career FBI agents, who are likely to report that the investigations are proceeding and action can be expected within a couple of years.
"if the organization as a whole doesn't want to carry them out"
The problem with this is that there is no "organization as a whole"--just a whole organization with, in the case of the FBI for example, 35,000 employees. Some (maybe most!) of them are no doubt principled and will refuse to undertake bogus investigations, in which case the investigations will just be turned over to more willing agents.
Others may be principled but also cowards, and will slow-walk investigations (or convince themselves that it's better that they the investigations, lest some Gaetz-puppet do them); still others are amoral climbers who will see an opportunity for promotion if they do what the boss says. And, finally--as hard as it may be to believe about law enforcement people--some folks will actually be hardcore rightwingers/hippie punchers/fascists who are excited at the prospect of jackbooting political enemies.
The org as a whole may well be basically decent, but that doesn't mean there won't be elements that Gaetz or whoever can get to do Trump's bidding. And that's even before new hires in the first 6-12 months are brought on board, or before a few choice folks are fired or transferred.*
_________
*"Agent Jones, I'm afraid that you aren't really a team player, so we're transferring you to the field office in outer Bismark. Don't worry--I'm sure your highschool kid will make new friends, and while I understand your spouse has a career here, I'm sure they'll be a happy homemaker in Bismark for you. Or you could quit. That would mean a bit hit to your retirement benefits, but hey, we tried to help you out, but you just wouldn't play ball."
Trump doesn't get to appoint the DOJ lawyers besides the US attorneys and the very top handful at DOJ. And those top handful, don't do any day to day work. They just try to decide policy. . The actual people doing prosecution are career civil servants. Remember, the first time around, one of the first things Trump did was to order Jeff Sessions to reopen the criminal case against Hillary. And Sessions complied. And 9 months later, the career prosecutors came back with the same conclusion they had before, Hillary had broken no laws.
Yes, but meantime, a number of DOJ lawyers and investigators were tied up not pursuing actual criminals. But they sure helped to intimidate other ‘enemies’ of TFG.
From your lips to the Flying Spaghetti Monster's orecchiette, Kevin.
As Timothy Snyder says, Trump's cabinet picks aren't just unqualified, they are anti-qualified - they are specifically qualified to destroy the institutions they would be put in charge of.
Destroying the institutions is likely the plan. We need to understand that. There is a wing of Republicans who hate government authority and want to control it. Another hates government authority and wants to destroy it. Trump and his backers are in the second group.
Maybe he thinks the economy can hum along with government in tatters. But we may sadly discover the truth about that: not for long.
Trump doesn't want to destroy government authority. He wants to concentrate all of it in his hands.
The role of the incompetents to ensure there is nobody that can resist Trump's authority. The incompetents themselves are "loyal" (to Trump), and they are going to try to get rid of anybody that is "disloyal".
I'd say Trump is most interested in three areas of government: justice, intelligence, and the military. He'll corrupt and weaponize each for his own purposes.
On the economy, he's somewhat more normal. He'd like to keep money and regulation loose.
The administrative state? Huge cuts. Vivek is talking about 75% reductions and using Milei as a model. Argentina, fwiw, had 290%+ inflation in April, not exactly a good comparison to the US. Maybe they'll be using Twitter as an example of the kind of great success extreme shrinkage can bring.
"On the economy, he's somewhat more normal."
If "normal" means a simultaneous blind conviction that tarriffs are amazing and complete lack of comprehension as to what tarriffs are.
"and they are going to try to get rid of anybody that is "disloyal"." Which is why back in the 1880s, we passed a bunch of laws that make it difficult to fire civil servants without good reason. And the incompetents Trump is hiring aren't capable of finding or manufacturing good reason.
Exactly what I think. Make the gov't incompetent so that they they can point at it and whine about how incompetent it is. Self-fulfilling prophecy to perpetuate a downward spiral into oblivion.
Not oblivion, plutarchy.
The question is how much damage they are going to cause before that.
Ahh but the difference is that with a few rare exceptions spelling has a correct answer. Running an agency is not like that. This difference matters even more with some like Trump who is not particularly outcome driven. He just cares if people are paying attention to him. The chaos will be blamed on the deep state.
I think you mean that we're going to get walloped.
The world already has a few kakistocracies. You do not want to live in one of them.
I have no confidence of this. Creating chaos from order is vastly easier than creating order from chaos, or even maintaining existing order.
You don't need any driving experience to total a Lamborghini.
yes and no. The experience under Trump's first administration at EPA is maybe instructive. Pruitt did far less damage than Wheeler, because Puitt was a clown and ineffective; Wheeler knew what he was doing, and was able to accomplish it far more readily.
That said, that sort of dynamic only applies if there is some objective that the Trump administration wants to achieve besides chaos. If dangerous clowning is the goal, nobody clowns better than a clown.
In the first term Trump had to worry about impeachment, and about being able to win the elections again. In this term neither of these issues apply, so everything (repeat: everything) is going to be different. You cannot project anything from the first term to this one.
"In the first term Trump had to worry about impeachment, and about being able to win the elections again"
Fear of impeachment had zip to do with how Pruitt was generally incompetent at rolling back environmental protections, and Wheeler was significantly more skilled at it.
The question is not whether it affetcs them, the question is whether you can project from what they did to the new term.
The answer is no.
+1
I came here to say this.
Big deal. The nomination battles will create the kind of spectacle on which Trump thrives. (Are you not entertained??!!) If Trump’s horrific picks are rejected, that clears the way for a grateful senate to approves the 2nd wave of nominees, the merely terrible. It shouldn’t be difficult to find 2nd picks who are willing to sit in their offices, doing nothing and collecting a decent paycheck, while their new deputies, the rejected horrifics, do the real work. “Secretary” is a nice title to put on your resume, but Gaetz doesn’t have to hold that title to be the guy in charge of using the DOJ to attack his and Trump’s enemies.
I think he seriously expects the Senates to skip 'the nomination battles' completely.....
I agree, and I think he will probably be right. It's going to be so bad.
Yes they are incompetent clowns, but they are also confident and self-righteous. Have you ever had such a person as a boss? They can bring down an organization in pretty short order. Indeed they will fail in accomplishing their goals, but the first thing that will happen is the good people will leave or be ousted. Dysfunction and chaos is what will remain. It’s shaping up to be a level of dysfunction and chaos far surpassing the first term. Four years of it may not break the United States (although it may at that) but it will certainly create damage enough to take decades to repair.
+10. And why would one assume the First Felon wants "competent" people? Self righteous clowns who look good on the teevie. What they do isn't the Felon's fault, right? One day, they're "the best people"; next day, "the worst morons" and gone. Rinse and repeat. The Felon's hands remain clean.
Vlad has a felon who "owes" him. Need I say more?
I have wondered about this. Gaetz is the best example. Obviously it is bad to have an attorney general who is known to have attended drug fueled sex parties with underage women. But it is not worse than having a president who has been found liable for rape and is credibly charged with molesting dozens of other women.
But from a damage perspective there is little question that Gaetz will be eager to turn the Justice department into a tool for persecuting Trump critics. But Gaetz' history suggests he is loud an ineffective. The effectiveness of going after Trump critics, like Schiff and Smith, partly tends on not being obvious about what one is doing. Barr was most helpful to Trump when he was subtle. The best thing Barr did for Trump was to put out a summary of the Mueller Report that misrepresented its contents. When he tried to go after Trump's critics with a non-independent independent prosecutor it was an expensive failure. The best thing that can be said about it from Trump's perspective is that it was such a failure that people not tuned into politics missed that it happened at all.
We should expect Gaetz to publicly faceplant repeatedly until he gets replaced. It is not good for the US to have a buffoon as AG, but in a Trump administration it could be better than the alternative.
Now I don't know how that applies to other awful picks. Does having a head of our intelligence agencies who admires Putin and Assad have any upside? It is harder to see what it is. In the cases of Gabbard and Kennedy and the guy at Defense the best hope is simply that their orders to subordinates will be so incoherent that the subordinates will be able to simply ignore them.
“Does having a head of our intelligence agencies who admires Putin and Assad have any upside?”
Conceivably could lead to our allies not sharing intelligence with us about future terrorist attacks or our enemies’ capabilities, which would be catastrophic for the Americans killed. But he killed off a million plus during covid and nobody who mattered cared, so shrug.
I doubt our allies would not tell us about a terrorist attack. But I expect they will try to keep less urgent intelligence from the US. After all Trump exposed Israeli assets in Syria early in his first term. The more of a joke Trump makes our security agencies the less likely allies will be to share intelligence with us in general. And with Trump as president I'm not sure that is a bad thing.
Pretty sure Trump doesn't care about their performance. What he DOES care about is 1) their unquestionable loyalty, 2) they're being telegenic, and 3) someone to throw under a bus when the need inevitably arises.
Only the best people...
He also wants to be able to harass opposition, for which he needs some competent people in the hierarchy, and make sure nobody stops them.
"Are you trying to lose?"
Cripes, teacher! If these kids can't spell, is it my fault or yours?
I think his only definition of success is 'is sufficiently loyal to me personally not to 25th Amendment me when the billionaires decide they prefer Vance'.
By THAT standard, they are not likely to fizzle
But Trump himself is a clown, so he's not going to care if they are too. He may see it as a virtue.
My guess is that while we laugh and/or cringe at the bobbleheads in the top posts, Project 2025 infests the next level down in the bureaucracy and gets to the real work of destroying their respective departments.
I can see only one constraint on the madness. If voters are sufficiently put off, Congress-critters will have to pay attention. Even those in "safe" seats could be in jeopardy. It would take only a few flips to turn the House over to the D's and possibly the Senate.
Historically, the party in power loses seats in the midterms. The GOP can't afford to lose many seats. Will that instill fortitude in the GOP Congressmen? Nope. They're too afraid of being primaried to think about the general election.
Some of the senators are not that worry about primaries.
But they also have to worry about harassment and violence against them and their families. How serious they take this threat is the determining factor in their behaviour.
"I have a feeling Trump is going to learn...". Really?
But the teacher also just announced that the point of this spelling bee is to misspell every word. And 50.1% of the school board gave the thumbs up.
I think in Kevin's story, Kevin is the one analogous to Trump, not the teacher. The teacher is just an observer (so, the real Kevin now?)
The public is less kind in 2nd terms, as they get to know a president a little too well. Trump is a fuck-up who loses money running casinos and always self-destructs. It will become bloody obvious over the next two years, and may well save us.
He is the right buffoon at the right time, blessed with a narrow but profound understanding of others' weaknesses when weak people abound. among the media, politicians and the public.
He flailed and failed on COVID, but got the Bush 9-11 mulligan. Although it happened on his watch, it was unprecedented, so criticism is somehow impolite.
There are fresh faceplants coming. If he lives long enough, he will wish he had gone to prison instead of running in 2024.
+1
Better clown shoes than jackboots.
I work in a prestigious federal laboratory that is likely to be an early target (climate). While most of us can’t be fired, if the funding to do our work dries up we will lose people. Especially young people who have to be building their careers and can’t wait four years. These are people in demand who will find other positions.
It’s all very well to say we should hold the line through hard times but as the place gets hollowed out we’ll all be thinking that we came here to make a difference and start looking around too because we can’t wait four years either.
The result will be what the trumpists want: a formerly world class laboratory becoming a shell of itself. But building that capability back up is the work of decades.
For the love of Pete!!
Trump doesn't want to govern -- he wants to destroy. If you unleash a moron with a bat in a chinashop, it may not be as efficient as the bull, or as clever as undercutting the factory that made the china with tariffs, but the idiot will still do catastrophic damage if given enough time.
"Republicans complain government can't solve our probloems -- so they get elected and prove it."
THAT'S the goal -- hollow out our 250 democracy from the inside so that the foreign and domestic looting can proceed unencumbered.