It would be funny ...
... if it weren't so damn serious
Legend has it that in the 1950s the Cole Bros. Circus blazed a new trail in entertainment by giving us the clown car. The idea was to stuff as many comic fools as possible into a car from which the door panels, engine and seats had been removed.
We’re now seeing a recreation of that in Washington.
The buffoon-in-chief is fashioning a Cabinet packed with as many unqualified and inexperienced bootlickers as he can find. While it helps to hail from Fox News, the dominant characteristics required by Donald J. Trump seem to be ineptitude and sycophancy (and then there’s immorality, too).
No more will we have potential challengers to Trump’s whims. As The New York Times pointed out in a pre-election editorial, the top dolt’s inner circle “has been purged of people who say no.”
There’s no secretary of state from Exxon or secretary of the Treasury from Goldman Sachs. “The smart — and courageous — people have left the room,” the paper noted. “What remains are loyalists and ideologues and a decision-making process that begins and ends with the question of what is most expedient for Mr. Trump.”
Instead, we have folks that Trump-backing evangelicals would likely not want around their daughters.
Consider Matt Gaetz, the Floridian who Trump wants to put atop the Justice Department. His resume seems to include experiences that even the party-animal-in-chief would envy. Sex with a 17-year-old, paying women to have sex with him on trips to Fox News appearances, drug fueled parties in New York and in the Bahamas – all allegedly have been part of his repertoire.
Then there’s Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News breakfast program host up for the top job at Defense. Like Trump, he’s been married three times and, like Trump, has been quite the philanderer beyond that. Hegseth, who is also a member of a Christian nationalist church, fathered a daughter by a Fox News producer while married to his second wife. He also may have raped a woman at a, surprise, Republican Party event in 2017 and then paid her to remain silent about it.
Let’s not forget Elon Musk, who won’t officially be in the Cabinet but will co-lead a “department,” as Trump calls it, charged with rooting out inefficiencies in government. In addition to pursuing “several” female employees at at least one of his companies, Musk has been a fan of illegal drugs, including LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine, using them with some Tesla board members, all documented by The Wall Street Journal. Thrice-married (though only to two women), Musk has fathered 12 children with an array of partners.
Then there are Trump candidates who seem to lack the sexual prowess that Trump seems to like, but offer other qualities.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, provides some compelling policy nuance. As Time has reported, RFK Jr. has falsely claimed that vaccines cause autism and argued that adding fluoride to the water supply causes IQ loss, bone cancer and more. He also accused the FDA of “aggressive suppression” of raw milk for cautioning that that it can contain dangerous bacteria, including E. coli and listeria. Oh, a worm ate part of his brain and he once dumped a bear cub carcass in New York’s Central Park.
And Lee Zeldin, Trump’s candidate to head the Environmental Protection Agency, seems likely make the EPA echo George Orwell’s ministries of Truth, Peace, Plenty and Love. As a congressman in 2019, Zeldin opposed extending a moratorium on drilling off Florida’s coast and voted against a bill that would have protected the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A big fan of fossil fuels, he earned a score of 14 percent from the League of Conservation Voters for favoring fossil fuel expansion, slashing environmental funding, rescinding U.S. participation in international climate change politics, according to The Nation. He also voted against disaster aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Perhaps most of all, Zeldin is a fawning defender of Trump, going so far as to oppose creation of a commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Just to balance the scales, a few leading ladies will share the limelight in the Trump circus, too.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is up for Secretary of Homeland Security. Her bid to serve as Trump’s VP crumbled amid a public backlash after Noem acknowledged in a memoir that she shot and killed her dog Cricket for being "untrainable," as USA Today reported. Noem also claimed to have met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while she served as as congresswoman, but that was all made up.
And Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s tap for director of national intelligence, is a favorite of Russian officials for her pro-Russian views. “The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. are trembling,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian newspaper, wrote in a glowing profile of the former Hawaii congresswoman, as reported by The New York Times. The Russian paper noted that Ukrainians consider her “an agent of the Russian state.” And Rossiya-1, a state television channel, called her a Russian “comrade.”
These are just a few of the intellectual and political giants, the organizational geniuses and paragons of decency, who will help manage our country in the next four years. Unlike others close enough to Trump in his first term to see how vile and stupid the man is, these folks will surely kiss his, ahem, ring on a regular basis.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether any of the folks in the Senate charged with confirming most of these bozos will grow spines. Perhaps some of these luminaries will not find themselves in the White House. But, for now, the 53-GOP Senate member majority appears firmly ensconced under Trump’s big tent, cheering at every circuit that the clown car makes.
A sense of humor will be indispensable over the coming four years. But G-d help us.