Trump Demands A Blood Sacrifice
Nov 18, 2024
If you’re a GOP Senator, few nominations in your career
will carry the historical weight—or the stench—of Matt Gaetz, Robert F. Kennedy
Jr., Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard. Once the master of the Senate, Mitch
McConnell has been reduced to a bitter old man muttering ineffectually about
“no recess appointments” in a last, sad burble before he drowns in the toxic
legacy he so carefully curated.1
Behind closed doors, even the Trumpiest of Senate Republicans pray for the
reprieve of a Trump tantrum that sends Congress into recess, sparing them the
political horror of voting for any of these four rodeo clowns.
And why not? The other names bubbling up from Trump’s Team of
Lackeys are worse than you think—dangerous, unqualified, and breathtakingly
unfit—but less visible.
Yet Trump, in his monarchical fervor, doesn’t just want the Senate to confirm
this gallery of grotesques; he demands it. He wants their names in blood, their
votes on the record. He wants them on their knees, not as co-equals, but as
collaborators in his crusade to shatter the guardrails of democracy.
This isn’t about
governance; it’s about submission.
It’s a spectacle designed to crush what’s left of Senate resistance, while
Trump’s sycophantic media enablers sanitize these choices into just another
“Washington appointment fight.” The stakes—democracy, stability, the rule of
law—are drowned out by the daily horse race coverage.
Trump’s bet? The media will do what it has always done: focus on the noise and
ignore the existential threat Trump poses. Yes, Trump won the election; no,
nothing about who and what he is changed with that victory. It says more about
the parlous state of the American Republic than about him.
And so far, he’s right.
The Senate’s quiet, nervous whispers are mainly off the record, while the
public statements of even his critics carry the same spineless refrain: “Well,
the President has a mandate, and we will advise and consent…” Translation?
“Please, sir, don’t send the mob to burn me alive.”
There’s a plan here; it
is sinister, not stupid. Trump’s picks aren’t just about trolling the libs or
owning the deep state. They’re the foot soldiers in a very deliberate campaign
to dismantle the Constitution, weaponize the government, and monetize the
wreckage.
Breaking the
Constitution
Trump’s obsession with
unchecked power—think Louis XIV but dumber—clashes directly with America’s
constitutional framework.
His solution? Smash it. For decades, the GOP has claimed to be the party of the
Constitution while gazing wistfully into the middle distance as Trump openly
declares his intent to undo it.
Trump doesn’t see the
Constitution as a guiding document but as an obstacle to his impulses. Why
shouldn’t he? The post-Constitutional ethos of the Red Caesar clique—Thiel,
Yarvin, Deneen, and their ilk—defines the mindset and philosophy of his
enablers, and it’s frankly Trump’s fantasy world. In this place, power is
reposed in the hands of a post-modern king by the new tech royalty. Shame about
those serfs.
After skirting consequences for everything short of cannibalism and incest (the
jury’s still out on the last), Trump knows the law will never touch him.
Between a corrupt Judge Cannon and an utterly impotent Merrick Garland, he
knows he’s legally impervious. Why should constitutional limits bother him?
Expect immediate,
aggressive challenges to checks on executive power, especially concerning the
military. Today’s Constitution-breaking experiments will become tomorrow’s
playbook.
Trickle Down Terror
Authoritarians know one
thing: fear is the glue that holds their empires together. Trump’s strategy is
clear: create an atmosphere of uncertainty and dread. Special counsels,
regulatory investigations, tax audits, committee subpoenas, secret probes —it’s
all fair game in the coming chaos. It will start with his name-brand enemies,
and the era of trickle-down terror will begin.
His deportation fantasy
of rounding up 25 million “illegals” isn’t just about immigrants; it’s about
normalizing the use of military power against civilians. Anyone who thinks the
slow-witted but snappily dressed Pete Hegseth will say, “No, Mr. President.
That’s against the law,” is living in a dream world. He’ll eagerly endorse it.
As election attorney and LP General Counsel Mario Nicolais wrote: “Once the military is mobilized to act with force within our
own country's borders, Trump will use it in any way he sees fit against
‘threats’ he proclaims.”
Once those doors start getting kicked down, it’s not a stretch to imagine that
power being turned on political opponents. Mission creep is a feature, not a
bug.
Weaponizing the
Government
In Trump’s world,
loyalty isn’t just expected; it’s enforced. By weaponizing the DOJ, FBI, DHS,
the Intelligence community, and the IRS, Trump will create an unholy program of
vengeance, fear, and reward.
Despite knowing full well why he was investigated for the various Russia
matters, the Flynn/Comey matter, January 6th, stealing classified documents,
state and Federal election fraud, and his corrupt Ukraine shakedown scheme
Trump persisted in bleating about the weaponized Deep State.
It must have been a mysterious cabal of Deep State Trump
haters, not his behavior, right?
It’s because every lie about the government being weaponized against Trump was
pure projection.
Some have had trouble processing why Trump would pick Matt Gaetz, a singularly
unqualified hack and low degenerate, as Attorney General. Not this writer.
His task? Punish enemies, protect Trump, and purge anyone who dares stand in
the way. Like all autocrats, Trump craves control over domestic intelligence
and law enforcement.
Gaetz will be the blunt instrument Trump wields with glee. Even if he’s stuck
with a recess appointment, he’ll launch a dozen special counsel investigations,
stack the DOJ with Trump stooges, throw open the FBI counterintelligence files
to Tulsi Gabbard (and thence, Russia), and deploy the FBI and DOJ against
anyone who
One thing Matt probably won’t do at DOJ is investigate teenage
sex trafficking.
Unless they take Venmo, of course.
The Death of Expertise,
Part Duh
Trump’s contempt for
expertise isn’t just personal; it’s cultural. Trump hated having people around
him in the first Administration who knew things. It’s not just
a disdain for intellectuals, scientists, and legal expertise; it’s his jealousy
of those with more intellectual horsepower than the average household
appliance. Remember, Trump is barely literate, lacks all intellectual curiosity,
and is a stranger to the world of ideas. He has feral cunning, but little else.
He has weaponized America’s addiction to algorithmically-reinforced stupidity,
elevating the loud and the trollish over the competent and the principled.
Appointing incompetent hacks to critical positions isn’t a bug; it’s a feature.
Modern fascism really, really depends on a large cohort of people who Can’t
Read Good and Don’t Want to Read Good. It’s easy to convince them
that their lives are somehow expertise, knowledge, and principle are their
enemies.
This is why RFK is the perfect Trump pick for the Department of Health and
Human Services; he combines crackpot pseudoscience antivax woo with outright
malice. The cost in lives won’t even register on his broken moral radar, but
the pwnage of experts will be priceless fodder for the MAGA media cloud.
When first hundreds, then thousands of American children die from his “just
asking questions” attacks on vaccines, the obvious, objective benefits
of vaccines in eliminating deadly childhood diseases will be nothing but
regrets.
One smart pharmaceutical executive I’ve known for decades said, “Watch who goes
in below him. They make RFK look like Edward
Jenner.”
Departments that require expertise will instead get zealots, dipshits,
arsonists, and sycophants—ideal for dismantling their functionality while
spinning populist fairy tales about bringing “common sense” to government.
Monetizing the
Presidency
Corruption isn’t just
incidental to Trump; it’s core to his crapulous ethos.
The grift of his first term was merely a preview. Protected by the Supreme
Court’s enabling decisions, Trump’s second term will be a master class in
turning the presidency into a cash cow for himself and his cronies.
Do you think Jared will settle for just $2 billion from the Saudis this time?
Think again. Trump will want much, much more than having
foreign governments just pay for overpriced rooms at his hotels? Hardly. Leave
the money on the nightstand.
The merger of political power and personal profit will be so blatant that it
will make his first term look quaint.
Breaking Systems
Trump thrives on chaos.
Breaking governmental, institutional, and societal systems isn’t a side effect;
it’s the entire disease. Every shattered norm is an opportunity to consolidate
power, punish enemies, and profit. Every broken social contract between the
citizens and the state makes it harder and harder to return to the Before
Times.
Expect a cavalcade of destructive, dumb, and impossible recommendations from
the unconstitutional Department of Government Oversight as Elon Musk and Vivek
Ramaswamy — whose primary goal will be to punish Trump’s enemies and enrich his
allies, like Elon himself —make endless, splashy pronouncements about how we
can easily cut government by 75, 85, maybe 95%.
Just be ready for some pain.
Oh, not pain for them, silly rabbit.
The pretense that this agency will somehow cut costs will come at a price for
millions of Americans; the only improved efficiency here will be in the
transfer of wealth to companies and allies of Trump and the deprivation and
cruelty it will deliver to veterans, the elderly, and the poor.
The Senate Won’t Stop
This.
They’ll barely even try.
Trump’s picks will largely sail through their incompetence and malice
rationalized as “the will of the people.” Gaetz and Gabbard may go down if Sen.
John Thune knows what’s good for him, but I’ve long stopped betting on the GOP
to do the right thing, even in their self-interest.
Mostly, no matter how far off the rails these nominees are proven to be, the
Senate will cheerfully and briskly impose them on America. The GOP isn’t just
complicit; they’re co-conspirators, gleefully enabling the destruction of the
systems that once restrained executive power. What’s left will be a
hollowed-out government run by lackeys, grifters, foreign assets,
neo-monarchists, and chaos agents.
And if you think they’ll
stop with just breaking the system, think again.
They’ll profit from its
ashes.
Chuck Schumer isn’t off
the hook, by the way. The idea of “give ‘em enough rope" doesn’t work
here: Schumer should be leading a loud, front-and-center fight over these
monstrous picks.
