Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Trump is an ass Part DLXXXIV:

According to the Trump-friendly cable news channel, Trudeau’s visit to Trump’s Florida home had the Canadian playing timid defense. Trump’s threat to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from Canada, the Fox report suggested, prompted a complaint from Trudeau that such a move would “kill the Canadian economy completely.” Trump offered that maybe Canada could just become a U.S. state, which prompted Trudeau to “laugh nervously,” Fox reported.

That part’s probably accurate. When a leader who has repeatedly expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin starts coveting your nation’s land, it’s fair to be a bit worried.

Trump’s suggestion to Trudeau was that he could become governor of this new state of Canada. When someone else present suggested that this would mean adding a state that would probably vote Democratic, Trump submitted that Canada could be annexed as two states: one conservative, one liberal.

Coming from the guy who offerened to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland, I wouldn’t laugh too hard. Orange Julius Caesar is feeling his oats.

He was doing his Silverback Gorilla thing of dominating Trudeau in his typically crude way but as the author Philip Bump points out ,if that were to happen it would be a big mistake:

If somehow Canada were to become part of the United States, though, the effect would not be that we tacked on a light-blue version of Montana. It would, instead, be an enormous boon to the American left.

Canada has its wingnuts but they’re not MAGA and they are much smaller in number overall.

It’s stupid. It won’t happen. But it does suggest that we can expect more embarrassing and dangerous behavior from Trump on the world stage as he swings his giant *hands* around.

There is a coup underway in South Korea and we don’t know at this writing if it’s going to succeed or not. The right wing would-be dictator President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and the parliament immediately convened and countermanded it which means it cannot hold under the law. The military and police are on the scene and nobody knows what will come next.

After the election here I was thinking about misogyny (I wonder why) and how it affects politics and today I was reminded of this. It’s a story in the BBC from a couple of years ago about the South Korean elections:

His fingers relentlessly tap the keyboard as he replies to dozens of their messages at his desk in the centre of a busy campaign office for one of South Korea’s main presidential candidates, Yoon Suk-yeol.

“Nearly 90% of men in their twenties are anti-feminist or do not support feminism,” he tells me.

South Korea has one of the worst women’s rights records in the developed world. And yet it is disgruntled young men who have been the focus of this country’s presidential election.

Many do not see feminism as a fight for equality. Instead they resent it and view it as a form of reverse discrimination, a movement to take away their jobs and their opportunities.

It is a disparaging development for the tens of thousands of young women who took to the streets of Seoul in 2018 to shout “Me Too” after several high profile criminal cases involving sexual harassment and spy camera crimes known as “molka”.

But now that cry is being drowned out by men shouting “Me First”.

The country’s gender politics is a minefield the country’s next leader will have to navigate – if they can first win the battle to get into office.

Conservative candidate Mr Yoon and his liberal rival Lee Jae-myung are neck and neck in a contest to become the next leader of Asia’s fourth largest economy.

Voters’ top concerns are skyrocketing house prices, stagnant economic growth, and stubborn youth unemployment.

Neither have any experience as legislators in the National Assembly which is a first in South Korea’s democratic history.

And neither appear to have a strong female voting base. Both parties have been accused of misogyny.

Mr Lee’s ruling Democratic Party has seen a number of high-profile sexual harassment scandals, with the mayor of Busan sent to prison for sexual assault.

Mr Yoon, of the People’s Power Party, has made abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family a central pledge of his campaign.

The ministry largely provides family-based services, education, and social welfare for children and spends around 0.2% of the nation’s annual budget – less than 3% of which goes towards the promotion of equality for women. But Yoon knows this move will be popular among a key demographic – young men.

A survey last year by a local newspaper found that 79% of young men in South Korea feel “seriously discriminated against” because of their gender.

As I walk with Min-young to a cafe to meet some of these young men, he tells me that “feminism has been going in the wrong direction”.

He says many men he’s spoken to feel “let down”, adding that he believes it is “necessary to pacify, to convince and to appease them first”.

These men claim that they are not trying to drown out the voices of women, but simply to amplify the voices of young men.

Sound familiar?

Authoritarianism is many things but patriarchy is at the heart of it. It’s the oldest organizing principle in human history and it isn’t going quietly.

Looks like it. In fact the Senators don’t seem to even be slightly concerned about the imminent firing of Christopher Wray for no good reason. It’s all good:

As the Senate returned Monday evening from the holiday recess, Republican senators voiced little to no concern over Donald Trump’s corrupt plan to fire FBI Director Chris Wray and showed no signs of being ready to torpedo Kash Patel’s presumptive nomination as Wray’s replacement.

Even GOP senators who might be expected to sound some feeble caution – Thom Tillis (R-NC), Joni Ernst (R-IA), and Susan Collins (R-ME) – offered no reservations and expressed confidence in Patel’s prospects for confirmation.

Garret Graff, author of “The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War” and “Watergate: A New History” wrote this in the NY Times:

To understand the full scope of the damage Mr. Patel could inflict, you have to understand how uniquely powerful and dangerous the F.B.I. can be — and why a Patel directorship would probably corrupt and bend the institution for decades, even if he served only a few years.

Choosing anyone new at this point is concerning because it is a flagrant break with tradition. There is no vacancy at the head of the F.B.I. After J. Edgar Hoover’s decades-long tenure, Congress set into law in 1976 a 10-year term for the F.B.I. director, fireable only for cause. It is meant to isolate the job from political influence, and Christopher Wray — nominated by Mr. Trump in 2017 — still has two years left to serve.

Before Mr. Trump, no incoming president had replaced the F.B.I. director on a whim; it’s a role that’s meant to exist outside the normal structure of political appointments. He now wants to fire and replace the man he selected to lead the institution because he seems to believe that Mr. Wray, a longtime Republican official, is not sufficiently loyal or willing to wield the bureau’s immense powers against Mr. Trump’s political opponents and perceived domestic enemies.

Unlike Mr. Patel, who has never been nominated for a Senate-confirmed position, every F.B.I. director in modern times has been vetted and confirmed (often repeatedly) by the Senate to another position first. Three F.B.I. directors were federal judges before being selected. Robert Mueller had been nominated by both Republican and Democratic presidents and confirmed by overwhelmingly bipartisan votes in the Senate; James Comey, Barack Obama’s nominee, had been in front of the Senate twice for confirmation. Mr. Wray had been the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, a role that earned him the department’s highest award for leadership and public service.

[…]

What this independence illustrates is that the F.B.I. is not, as many MAGA loyalists believe, some liberal bastion of wokeness. No Democrat has ever served as an F.B.I. director. Even Democratic presidents appoint Republican officials to head the bureau, as Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton did in their presidencies.

[…]

Mr. Trump has been clear in what he is trying to do with a nominee like Mr. Patel: He wants to bend and break the bureau and weaponize it against those he sees as his political enemies and domestic critics. Mr. Patel said last year that he hopes to prosecute journalists.

We should take such threats seriously. Weaponizing the F.B.I. against domestic opponents doesn’t have to end with jail time. The F.B.I. can do immense damage to people’s lives even if they are never accused of a crime. In recent decades, it has mistakenly zeroed in on the wrong suspects in high-profile cases such as the Atlanta Olympics bombing, where its spotlight ruined the life of the security guard Richard Jewell, and the post-9/11 anthrax investigation that turned the biodefense researcher Dr. Steven Hatfill’s life upside down before the bureau realized it had the wrong man. Being the target of an F.B.I. investigation, even if it leads nowhere, can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills, upend families, end careers and lead to federal charges, like lying to a federal agent, that are all but unrelated to the original investigation.

He says that the FBI can survive Patel but the damage will be long lasting. I’m not so sure it will survive. We are losing out grip on what is considered acceptable and I’m not sure we will ever get it back.

But it appears we are going to see it tested. Republican Senators seem to be fine with it.

🚨🚨🚨Last night, Sen. Mike Lee wrote a blueprint for destroying Social Security. Lee’s thread was quickly amplified by Elon Musk, who Donald Trump has put in charge of slashing our earned benefits.This is a declaration of war against seniors, people with disabilities, and the American public.

— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) 2024-12-03T14:47:44.926Z

Here is that thread:

 1. Of all the deceptive sales techniques the U.S. government has used on the American people, one of them—the Social Security Act—gets far too little attention. Buckle up because this is a wild ride.

2. In 1935, the American people were sold a bill of goods. They were told, “Pay into this system, and it’ll be YOUR money for retirement.” Sounds great, right?

3. But here’s where it gets juicy, in a really ugly way. Two years later, when the Supreme Court was considering the constitutionality of the Social Security Act, the government did a complete 180.

4. The government—through Assistant Attorney General Robert Jackson—argued in essence, “Oh no, this isn’t YOUR money at all. This is a TAX, and we can do whatever we want with it.” Classic bait and switch.

5. Let’s not forget the ruling in Helvering v. Davis, where the Supreme Court upheld the Social Security Act by embracing the government’s argument / admission that what people pay into Social Security is tax revenue—available to be used as Congress may direct—and not at all money belonging to those who paid it.

6. So, to summarize: the proponents of the Social Security Act told American workers that what they paid into the system would remain *their* money, not the government’s—to get Congress to pass it—and then told the courts the exact opposite when defending the Act’s constitutionality. The Supreme Court accepted the government’s argument, to the great detriment of the American people.

7. Now, let’s talk about what happens to “your money” once it’s in the government’s hands. Spoiler alert: it’s not managed like your IRA or 401(k). 

8. First of all, this money doesn’t sit in a nice, individual account with your name on it. No, it goes into a huge account called the “Social Security Trust Fund.” 

9. But here’s the kicker—the government routinely raids this fund. Yes, you heard that right. They take “your money” and use it for whatever the current Congress deems “necessary.” 

10. Every few years, there’s talk in Congress about “saving Social Security.” I’ve introduced and cosponsored a number of measures over the years that would fix it. But most in Congress show little desire to fix it, and are instead constantly looking for ways to “borrow” from it—with no plan to put it back. 

11. And the returns? Forget about compound interest or stock market gains. Your “investment” in Social Security can give you a return lower than inflation. 

12. If you had put the same amount into literally ANYTHING else—a mutual fund, real estate, even a savings account—you’d be better off by the time you reached retirement age, even if the government kept some of it! 

13. Do the math: with Social Security, you’re looking at a return that’s pathetic compared to market averages. It’s not even an investment; it’s a tax. 

14. And let’s talk about how this system is set up to fail. The demographic shift? More retirees, fewer workers. It’s almost fair to compare it to a Ponzi scheme that’s running out of new investors. 

15. Every dollar you pay into Social Security, only to see it gobbled up by the government itself, is a dollar you can’t invest in your own future. It’s government dependency at its worst. 

16. Remember, this isn’t just about retirement. It’s about independence, about controlling your own destiny. With Social Security, you control nothing. 

17. The government promises you security but gives you dependency. It promises ownership but gives you a tax receipt. 

18. And don’t get me started on the management. The Social Security Administration is a bureaucratic behemoth, not exactly known for its efficiency or innovation. 

19. If you think your money is safe there, you’re in for a rude awakening. The mismanagement, the waste, the deception—it’s all on display. 

20. So, what’s the solution? We need real, genuine reform. Within the Social Security system, Americans should be able to invest in their own future, and not be shackled by the worst parts of this outdated, mismanaged system. 

21. It’s time we acknowledge the truth: Social Security as it now exists isn’t a retirement plan; it’s a tax plan with retirement benefits as an afterthought. 

22. We were sold a dream, but received a nightmare. It’s time for a wake-up call. We need real reform. 

23. It’s time for Americans to know the true history of the Social Security Act. The more people learn the truth, the more they’ll start demanding answers, options, and real reform from Congress. Please help spread the word. 

24. The history of the Social Security Act—which sadly must include the deceptive manner in which it was sold to the American people—is yet another reason why America’s century-long era of progressive government must be brought to a close.

I’m not going to take the time to rebut all that. I’m sure you know it’s bullshit and that Social Security is a social insurance plan which is paid for the way all such programs are paid for.

But go ahead Elon. Try it.

Would you buy a used covert operation from this man?

Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence and national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC, flagged this on the hellsite. (Yes, I still monitor.):

A self-described “deep state” wrecking ball, Kash Patel is a favorite of Trump’s MAGA base. However, during the first Trump administration, Patel’s actions revealed him as a bombastic fool who put SEAL Team Six in harm’s way through his ineptitude. open.substack.com/pub/theicema…

— Seth Hettena (@hettena.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T16:08:46.292Z

Kash Patel’s knees are scabbed from making obeisance to Donald Trump. And he’s got a fanatic’s zeal (check the eyes) for punishing Trump’s enemies. Which is why Trump wants to make him director of the FBI next year.

Hettena points out at SpyTalk just how cavalierly Kash Patel operates in the security sphere:

On October 30, 2020, President Trump signed off on a mission to have SEAL Team Six rescue Philip Walton, a 27-year-old American who gunmen had abducted from his farm in the West African nation of Niger, near the border with Nigeria. The kidnappers had hustled Walton across the border to Nigeria and were demanding a $1 million ransom.

In their book Only I Can Fix It, journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported that the plan called for the SEALs to parachute into northern Nigeria and move three miles on foot to reach the compound where Walton was being held.

Overflying Nigeria required permission from thge Nigerian government. I know you are surprised that the Trump administration bothered. But the Pentagon thought it best not to violate another country’s sovereignty without asking.

Patel told Secretary of Defense Mark Esper that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “got the airspace cleared.”

Um, no. Pompeo later told Esper that he’d never spoken with Patel.

A few hours later, the Pentagon learned that Patel’s information was — what? — inaccurate. By this point, the SEALS were minutes away from crossing into Nigerian airspace. The aircraft circled for an hour while State obtained the necessary clearances.

The mission proceded successfully with no SEAL injuries.

But the Pentagon was still furious at Patel. Tony Tata, the Pentagon official to whom Patel had given the green light, confronted Patel in a rage.

“You could’ve gotten these guys killed!” Tata shouted at Patel, according to a report in The Atlantic. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Patel’s response was: “If nobody got hurt, who the fuck cares?”

Yes, put that man in charge of a federal law enforcement agency and his agent’s lives.

Like Trump’s loyalty is a one-way street. So is hypocrisy where the press is concerned.

Kevin Kruse, the Princeton historian, caught my attention Monday night when he posted the cancellation of his Washington Post subscription. Kruse posted a screenshot of the Post’s landing page making the Hunter Biden pardon out to be the biggest national story since Nov. 5. In disgust, Kruse threw up his hands and hit “cancel. “

The Post’s front page caught me by surprise because I was otherwise tied up with North Carolina Republicans trying to cancel 60,000 votes, including those of several friends. More on that in a minute.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) 2024-12-03T00:09:30.084Z

Marcy Wheeler has an explanation for the blanket coverage of a non-story:
How Jeff Bezos Smothered Pete Hegseth News because Hunter Biden Was Pardoned of Already Declined Charges

Author/journalist Mikel Jollet replied that the focus perfectly encapsulated what’s wrong with American journalism:

Is it a story? Sure.

But every newspaper in America devoting front page headlines to Hunter fucking Biden while Trump appoints a cabal of rapists, racists and con-men to positions of enormous power is MADNESS.

Donald Trump’s plans to spend his second term seeking vengeance against opponents, tanking the economy, ethnically cleansing nonwhite people, lining his pockets, selling out U.S. allies, and cozying up to brutish dictators is now background noise unworthy of the kind of attention the Post just gave the Bidens.

Know why? Because Democrats have a hypocrisy problem.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes responded: “A thing everyone has forgotten is that Donald Trump basically sprang Roger Stone from prison so he could help with the coup and it was maybe a one day story.”

Josh Marshall of TPM responded: “This is why I seriously don’t want to ever hear from anyone about this pardon. Politico says it’s the most consequential pardon since Richard Nixon.”

Here’s a list of Trumps truly corrupt pardons

— Rachel Bitecofer (@rachelbitecofer.bsky.social) 2024-12-02T02:31:26.664Z

You get the point. Had Kamala Harris actually won the presidency last month, the press narrative would be “bad news for Democrats.” As is, losing by a whisker is “bad news for Democrats.”

But back to Republicans backstabbing voters in North Carolina. This deserves headlines it will never get.

While you were inundated with stories about the Biden pardon, Judge Jefferson Griffin (remember him?), the Republican challenger for a North Carolina state Supreme Court seat, is trailing incumbent Democrat Justice Allison Riggs in the ballot counting. Something must be done, amirite?

Griffin trails Riggs by over 600 votes as recounts continue. Desperate, Griffin and GOP attorneys assembled a list of 60,000 voters statewide whose ballots they allege were improperly counted. On the Buncombe list (my county) are several friends who have voted for years: a former president of the local NAACP, a manager at a downtown hotel, a former Asheville talk show host.

Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, tells the Raleigh News and Observer that Griffin’s challenge is “a choose-your-own-adventure” gambit with no penalty for trying. “So the incentive is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.”

Griffin is not only attempting to stick it to Democrats. His attorneys can read election results. Throwing out 1,600 Buncombe votes in bulk will hurt Riggs more than Griffin. (Riggs won the county 64-36 percent.) Republican and unaffiliated votes Griffin cancels in pursuit of a win by any means necessary are simply collateral damage. They’ll always throw their own under the bus to win.

If you live in North Carolina, is your name on the GOP hit list? Here are the links by county.

UPDATE: Added the link to Marcy Wheeler’s post.

Remember this big 2020 lie?

On a warm evening in May, a small galaxy of MAGA stars in tuxedos and floor length sparkling gowns stood around a pool sipping cocktails, eating plates of risotto and clinking champagne glasses under perfect palm trees.

They had gathered there, at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, not for a campaign fundraiser or a holiday affair; but, rather, for a glitzy film premiere.

Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative provocateur, was releasing his documentary, “2000 Mules,” the most recent addition to the cannon of right wing conspiracy flicks questioning the well-established outcome of the 2020 election. And for the first formal viewing, he had chosen the site dubbed by the 45th president as the “Winter White House.” In doing so, D’Souza joined a growing list of those dabbling in MAGA film noir to turn to Mar-a-Lago for their coming out party.

[…]

“I mean, if you’re going to do a movie about the 2020 election, I don’t think you’re going to do it at the Javits Center in New York,” said conservative activist Charlie Kirk, one of the main figures in the D’Souza documentary.

The transformation of a Palm Beach club into a MAGA movie destination is yet another way in which Trump has managed to keep himself at the epicenter of modern conservatism. Barack Obama may have joined Netflix to help produce documentaries about climate change and the planet. Trump is convincing the documentarians to cover his election gripes and to come to him.

Well guess what?One theory Trump has cited often, based on a report he shared six times and deemed “fully verified,” outlines an “avalanche of irregularities” in five swing states. The document’s author and origin are unnamed and much of its evidence disproved. A more well-known lie he has frequently shared on Truth Social is the debunked “2,000 Mules” conspiracy theory, which he referenced eight times.

As Election Day 2022 approached, elections officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, were grappling with an unanticipated problem. Voters returning ballots to official drop boxes were being harassed and confronted. In one incident, men dressed in tactical gear were stationed near a drop box in Mesa.

There was an obvious trigger for the pattern: the release earlier that year of the film “2000 Mules.” The film asserted that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by “mules,” people hired to stuff drop boxes with ballots. The claim, filling demand for a narrative explaining Donald Trump’s loss that year, was taken seriously by his supporters. As NPR reported at the time, one Republican official in Arizona, responding to the film, encouraged state residents to police drop box locations in precisely the manner that was demonstrated in Maricopa.

But there was never any reason to take the film’s claims seriously. Over the weekend, one notable figure belatedly acknowledged that the film misled its audience: its creator, Dinesh D’Souza.

Oops.

One theory Trump has cited often, based on a report he shared six times and deemed “fully verified,” outlines an “avalanche of irregularities” in five swing states. The document’s author and origin are unnamed and much of its evidence disproved. A more well-known lie he has frequently shared on Truth Social is the debunked “2,000 Mules” conspiracy theory, which he referenced eight times.

Never mind…

The Trumpers think they’re a joke and that Biden has been a joke for adhering to them:

Donald Trump and his incoming administration officials think Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are suckers. They’re not shy about saying it.

Within the past month, Biden, Harris, and the current administration have repeatedly vowed an orderly, peaceful, fully cooperative transfer of power between Biden and Trump — a twice-impeached former president and convicted felon whom the president, vice president, and Democratic leaders regularly denounced as a “fascist” tyrant and clear threat to the constitutional order. 

It hasn’t just been the legal transfer and procedures to which Democrats have committed themselves. Biden has promised to attend Trump’s 2025 inauguration, even though Trump refused to grant him the same grace after the 2020 election. Of course, then-President Trump actively sought to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory and even helped foment a violent coup at the U.S. Capitol as part of his monthslong effort to cling to power.

Not long after the election this early November, Biden hosted Trump at the White House for a pleasant photo opportunity. The president and vice president congratulated Trump, and Biden told him “welcome back” to his face, as the two men sat down for the news cameras, as if they were old pals who had just resolved a mildly heated argument.

These actions are all far, far above and beyond what Trump and his first administration were willing to do during the last U.S. presidential transition for Biden — including in its commitment to basic decorum and photo ops that don’t even technically affect the legal transfer of power. 

And — in the same way that top Trump adviser Stephen Miller privately found it funny that Biden actually preserved some of his and Trump’s preferred immigration crackdown methods — members of Team Trump find this asymmetrical level of commitment to norms, well, funny. 

“Some of us have been laughing about it,” an incoming Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. 

It doesn’t matter if they are laughing. They’re just assholes, we know that. But it does say something about our current situation. The idea that norms can be upheld by Democrats alone is sophistry. Norms by definition cannot be norms if they are only upheld by one party.

I think Biden should have agreed to the the transition, as he did, but refused to meet and hold a photo op. And while he should go to the inauguration to show there is a peaceful transfer of power, plenty of other Democrats including dignitaries like Obama and Clinton should decline. Norms for thee but not for me just doesn’t work. (And yes, as I wrote earlier, Biden was right to pardon Hunter under the circumstances. Political pardons have been done by most presidents and there is no reason for Biden to sacrifice his son on the alter of “norms” that don’t apply to anyone but Democrats. Fie on that.)

Former Defense Secretary @MarkTEsper tells @kasie of Pete Hegseth: "It's one thing to have your political opponents attack you, but it's pretty damning when… a letter is uncovered where your mother is talking about your character and integrity and how you treat women." pic.twitter.com/zwuY0DcTRc

— CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt (@CNNThisMorning) December 2, 2024

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper: “It’s one thing to have your political opponents attack you, but it’s pretty damning when… a letter is uncovered where your mother is talking about your character and integrity and how you treat women.”

Over the weekend two bombshells hit the Pete Hegseth nomination for Defense Secretary. The first was that story in the NY Times revealing an email his mother sent to him a few years back castigating him for his grotesque treatment of his second wife and women in general. She has since repudiated it but admits that she sent it. And all the available evidence shows that she was absolutely right about her son’s lack of character and integrity. He’s a misogynist through and through.

Then last night The New Yorker dropped a story by Jane Mayer about Hegseth’s time running a couple of veteran’s groups, his only previous management experience. It’s not good. In fact, it’s very, very bad. Not only did he mismanage millions of dollars from the donors, he was a racist, abusive, drunk on the job and at many events in which was representing the group:

A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.”

In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

Only the best people.

Trump is allegedly hostile to drunks so we’ll see. aybe Hegseth has gone through rehab and can claim that he’s reformed. But this should still be a disqualifier sionce he isn’t qualified in the first place. He’s an accused rapist, which this story would indicate is more than believable. And we know that he couldn’t run a 7-11 much less the largest employer in the country. His nomination is absurd on its face.

The fact that this man and his fellow Trumpers are on a literal crusade against “DEI” saying that it results in people being hired into jobs for which they are unqualified is just:

Once upon a time there was a Trump toadie who wrote a fatuous children’s book about a good king being persecuted by an evil queen named Hillary Queenton until one day a virtuous wizard comes to his rescue and saves the day:

FBI Director nominee Kash Patel has published 2 children’s books that lionize Trump. “The Plot Against the King” features a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton as the villain going after “King Donald,” while Kash, a wizard called the Distinguished Discoverer, exposes a nefarious plot. pic.twitter.com/mdJshTpUKj

— John Tures (@JohnTures2) December 1, 2024

One might not think too much of such a silly little project except the “writer” of those books, Kash Patel, has been nominated to run the FBI in the new Trump administration. The story is a thinly veiled narrative of Patel’s original claim to fame, working for former congressman Devin Nunes’s House Intelligence Committee investigation into the origins of the Russia probe back in 2016. They weren’t written to entertain kids. They were written to cozy up to Trump and demonstrate his loyalty by literally portraying him as a king.

Trump hired Patel to join his National Security Council after the Nunes report came out where he quickly established himself as a direct conduit to Trump feeding him whatever he thought he wanted to hear. According to Trump’s Russia and Ukraine expert on staff, Fiona Hill, Trump even thought Patel was the man in charge of Ukraine in the White House when he had nothing to do with it at all. He insinuated himself into Trump’s inner circle so tightly that as the term was winding down and the coup attempt was getting going after the 2020 election, Trump named him as chief of staff to Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller. Trump wanted to install him as either the Director of the CIA or the FBI the latter of which was met with Attorney General Bill Bar saying that he would do it “over my dead body.”

It looks like he’s finally going to get his wish, assuming the Senate goes along with the appointment. It’s always possible that they won’t. Considering Patel’s reputation for extremism and the threats he’s made during the time he was out of government, one would hope that at least a handful of Republicans would say it’s unacceptable. But it’s a very thin hope at this point.

All of this assumes that Trump fires the current director Christopher Wray, his own appointee, who still has three years to go on his term. That job is unique in that it was designed to be so above partisan politics that the 10 year term can extend even beyond an 8 year presidency. Presidents have the power to dismiss them but until Trump fired James Comey because he wasn’t “loyal” enough to drop the investigation into Russian interference, there had only been one other instance when it was a case of the Director facing serious ethical violations. Trump apparently plans to fire Wray for no reason at all except that he wants to install a personal henchman in the job. The idea of an apolitical FBI Director is no longer operative. From now on, they will always be seen as members of the president’s team, something that really was not true until Trump. It almost seems quaint to think about it now.

Patel has made the agenda clear with this clip that succinctly lays out what he believes his mission at the FBI would be:

Here is Trump’s nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel calling for “offensive operations” to jail Americans who they consider “the enemy.”

“We will go out and find the conspirators… Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media” pic.twitter.com/2PMNHWN5U7

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) December 1, 2024

A year ago, Trump appeared before a gala of young Republicans and he looked at Patel in the crowd, saying, “Get ready, Kash, get ready.” He’s ready.

During the Trump exile in Mar-a-lago Patel took advantage of the wingnut welfare racket and made himself some money. He worked for Trump, of course, along with various think tanks. But he also created a brand for himself (K$h) and sold those childrens books and another one called Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy  about his years fighting the against the evil cabal that wants to destroy America. He sold K$h wine, clothing, playing cards among other things. He endorsed products and even modeled them:

As history professor and author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote on X/twitter, “Note the K$H logo. I could update the masculinity chapter of #Strongmen with this image.”

The Atlantic published the definitive profile of Patel last year, a piece by Elaina Plott Calabro which delved deeply into his early years growing up in New York and time spent working as a lawyer. He was a public defender for a while and then became a federal prosecutor where early on he was apparently considered a bit of a showboating lawyer but generally a nice guy. But something happened along the way (beyond his burning ambition) when he found himself embarrassed in the courtroom one day and developed an intense grievance against the Justice Department for allegedly failing to defend him in the press. There were other perceived slights that followed and that resentment seems to have fermented into a poisonous hostility toward the institution and the goverment itself. Like Trump, he believes that he’s been persecuted and oppressed and is determined to wreak revenge on all those he believes have wronged him — and wronged the man to whom he has pledged his total fealty, Donald Trump.

That sense of persecution is what all of the Trump nominees for the law enforcement, intelligence and military institutions share. Their eagerness to burn it all down is what they have in common and I would imagine that after what they’re going to go through with the confirmation process and the media attention, those feelings will be even more intense. There is no reason to believe that any of them will moderate once they assume the mantle of responsibility.

Trump is drunk with power right now. According to Axios, he has Elon Musk beside him 24/7 whispering in his ear “pushing ‘radical reform’ of, well, almost everything. As he sits next to Trump discussing administration picks, Musk often asks if the person embodies “radical reform” — massive cuts and blow-it-up-to-rebuild instincts.” He’s no doubt telling Trump how he fired everyone at the companies he bought and rebuilt them from the ground up, something which Trump, with his little family business has never done having only played a real boss on a reality TV show. Trump wouldn’t want to look weak to the richest man in the world. He’s ready to blow it all up to impress him.

Kash Patel is a loyal true believer with a readiness to do whatever it takes to get revenge. Trump has finally found his Roy Cohn.

Kash’s Enemies List:

Salon