A cabinet of dunces
In the
Trump regime, incompetence is a job requirement.
May 23, 2025
As the second Trump administration passed its 100 day mark,
pundits expressed awe at the “astonishing” amount the president had
purportedly accomplished.
Trump and his cronies have certainly engaged in more
flagrantly illegal and wantonly destructive activities than any modern
presidential administration, and in a strikingly brief time. But as we head
toward the sixth month of Trump 2.0, it is becoming increasingly clear how
little there is to it apart from self-enrichment and nihilism.
In his second term in office, Trump is, truly, being Trump.
He’s rigorously demanding that the government be “operated” the way he
conducted business for decades — that is, solely and exclusively for short-term
gain and self-aggrandizement. The result, it is becoming clear, is a regime
that leaves chaos in its wake instead of creating anything approaching the
foundation for a legacy.
Thus, far from setting out to institutionalize a
sustainable right-wing revolution — like Ronald Reagan did, with some
pernicious success — Trumpers are engaged in a project directed at sabotaging
as much of the nation’s government, and destroying as much of its economic and
political power, as possible.
While the consequences of this nihilistic assault are
likely to be catastrophic, the hopeful possibility is they could also be
remarkably short-lived.
The incompetence is the point
To meet his nihilistic standards, Trump has systematically
stocked the government with cronies that he demands perform incompetently.
For instance, during Senate testimony this week, Trump
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared that the habeas corpus clause,
a bedrock constitutional guarantee against illegal detention, protects the
“constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from
this country." (Watch below.)
In this and other contexts, Noem — who purportedly manages
the agency responsible for carrying out Trump’s lynchpin immigration policies —
has established that she’s not simply a bad faith actor, but also a genuinely
and willfully stupid person.
She’s not alone. Profound inability and/or unwillingness to
perform competently are job requirements for service as a senior member of the
Trump regime.
Democratic senators who voted to confirm the few Trump
cabinet nominees who had minimal qualifications for their jobs — such as
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — have
appeared shocked to see these Trump officials strenuously endeavoring to be
just as incompetent, and morally obtuse, as Noem. But they should not have been
surprised.
In an administration in which the sole consistent goals are
valorizing Trump and making him as rich as possible, any official who
demonstrates an ability to effectively administer and carry out the business of
the US government is viewed with profound suspicion. On the other hand, those
who are willing to learn incompetence and moral obtuseness are promoted.
Trump is now, absurdly, speaking of Rubio as his potential
successor to the presidency. This comes after the longtime Russia hawk and
promoter of American international leadership has become the willing instrument
of Trump’s campaign to undermine it and turn our nation’s longstanding allies
into enemies, aligning the United States with pariah nations like Russia and
undemocratic ones like El Salvador. Rubio is also serving as the figurehead of
Trump’s shambolic gutting of American soft power infrastructure that has left
vast numbers of children around the world at risk of starving as food rots in
warehouses, and HIV sufferers to die in desperation for lack of lifesaving
medication.
Trump has similarly rewarded Bessent — who business leaders
claimed was well positioned to serve as a steward of the American economy
because of his experience working for George Soros — for choosing to become a
pathetic stooge whose primary function is to make nonsensical claims in support
of his boss’s full bore assaults on the US economy.
Most recently, Bessent was heard parroting Dear Leader by
contending that the panic in the bond markets induced by Trump’s irrational and
constantly shifting tariffs — and the resulting increases in interest rates —
should be of no concern to consumers because oil prices are falling. Left out
of that “analysis” is the reality that oil prices have declined rapidly in
anticipation of a potential recession.
Nobody, including the credit rating agency Moody’s — which
just downgraded the US government’s longstanding AAA credit rating — takes
anything Bessent says seriously anymore. But his deep and abiding commitment to
being willfully stupid on Trump’s behalf has resulted in the president
affording him increasing “responsibility” for what passes as MAGA economic
“policy.”
Nihilism as a job requirement
Most of the cronies Trump has placed “in charge” of other
critical agencies of the US government did not have to learn to be stupid like
Rubio and Bessent. Instead, they were chosen precisely because had established
track records of being lazy, ignorant, incurious, and morally obtuse, thus
giving Trump confidence they would not bat an eye as the institutions they are
charged with administering are destroyed. The examples are becoming chillingly
familiar.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was selected to “head”
the Department of Health and Human Services — a sprawling agency responsible
for everything from Medicare and Medicaid to pharmaceutical regulation and food
assistance — precisely because he’s a conspiratorial wacko who’s perfectly
willing to preside over the dismantlement of much of the federal healthcare
infrastructure so long as he’s given free rein to pursue his paranoid assaults
on vaccinations, fluoride, and lifesaving medical treatments.
This week, Kennedy angrily declared to a Senate
subcommittee that he denied daycare funding to the children of working parents
(even as he and Trump threaten to deny Medicaid to people who don’t work)
because Sen. Patty Murray is somehow responsible for Americans suffering from
an “epidemic of chronic disease,” a contention so bizarre and defamatory that
it led the presiding Republican senator to intervene and bring an end to
Kennedy’s rant. (Watch below.)
Pam Bondi was selected be the nation’s attorney general
because she’s happy to devote her term to serving as a near daily guest on Fox
News, where she proudly describes the efforts of Trump cronies to break nearly
every core function of the Department of Justice, including its policing of
financial crimes, government corruption, flouting of environmental laws, and
violations of civil and voting rights.
Meanwhile, Linda McMahon, a pro wrestling mogul who has no
apparent knowledge or interest in the activities of the Department of Education
she was chosen to “administer,” is content to serve as figurehead of the
illegal Trump scheme to dismantle that department without congressional
approval. In the process, she’s happily presiding over a rapidly growing
cascade of chaos as uncertainty grows over the administration of the federal
government’s massive student loan program. Often entirely unexplained delays and
cancellations of grants to educational institutions are already contributing to
the collapse of colleges and universities, and causing hardships in many
already underfunded local school districts.
For her part, Noem — whose mélange of utter laziness and
amorality makes her the ideal type of a Trump crony — is doing her best to
exacerbate actual disasters. Apparently anticipating that it would please
Trump, she declared that she will — once again, entirely illegally — dismantle
the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is primarily responsible for
coordinating and assisting in relief efforts by other federal agencies, without
establishing any replacement for it.
As Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who led Florida’s Director of
Emergency Management in the wake of a major hurricane, has warned, Noem’s actions have already set the
stage for the potential disappearance of some rural communities, which are
unlikely to have the resources required to recover from future hurricanes.
Once again, this is not simply bad governance — it is
systematic stupidity. And Trump, who has praised Noem’s gutting of FEMA, loves
it.
Governance by arson and sabotage
Trump is unique among the nation’s presidents in having no
interest in presiding over a functioning government, let alone building
institutions that will survive his term in office.
That is why the analogies pundits have attempted to draw
between the early periods of other presidencies, including those of FDR and
Ronald Reagan, fall entirely flat. Unlike all of his predecessors, Trump is not
even attempting to build a legacy that will survive beyond the last days of his
regime.
What is shaping up to be Trump’s single substantial
legislative “achievement” is a “big beautiful” bill that is largely comprised
of the continuation and expansion of hugely regressive tax cuts (which were
unpopular the first time the GOP passed them in 2017, setting the stage for the
loss of the Republican House majority the next year) and an even less popular
assault on Medicaid.
Hence, while the party-line passage of this legislation
will kill and otherwise harm many children and other vulnerable Americans while
transferring even more wealth to the rich, it is highly likely to be rejected
by voters, and to be substantially undone when Trump leaves the scene.
The Trump administration’s illegal sabotage of the nation’s
government, while hugely destructive, could also prove largely transitory.
When Trump exits the White House (or is forced to exit)
office in a few years, he and his cronies will leave a huge swath of damage in
their wake, likely including a record of avoidable epidemics, natural disasters
followed by recovery debacles, and a US economy that is facing unprecedented
challenges to its international preeminence. Furthermore, entire government
departments will have been rendered empty shells, with many still reeling from
damage inflicted upon them by Trump and his cronies.
But unlike either FDR or Reagan, Trump the governmental
arsonist is highly unlikely to leave behind any substantial institutional or
ideological legacy that his successor will have to grapple with. Rather, the
next president will be tasked with a massive rebuilding project, much as
nations — including this one — have had to reconstruct themselves, sometimes
for the better, in the wake of major wars.
The possibility that Trump’s assault will be so cataclysmic
as to leave the United States without the democratic institutions required to
move beyond the disaster that comprises his regime can not be discounted. But
if we succeed in keeping our nation from imploding between now and 2029,
putting Trumpism behind us may prove easier than some imagine.
