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The awful circus is back in town.
Hoo boy. The new orange king is busy choosing his viper's den of crooks, rapists, misfits and "comically inappropriate" zealots, aka bootlickers to "run" his "government": A Russian asset to head national intelligence, a rabid TV host to helm the world's largest military, an anti-science crank for HHS, a child-sex-trafficking "foreheadful MAGA pustule" as A.G - a bid so demented it wasn't even on our Apocalypse Bingo card. Shockingly, these are not serious people, but loyalty tests: "The absurdity is the point."
Thus does our new era of governance by nihilist sociopaths open with mind-blowing headlines like, "Trump Names Fox News Host to Lead Defense Department." After the most vicious, hollow, bonkers campaign in this country's history, nobody's surprised Trump is choosing to reward the sycophants, culture warriors and "incompetent fascists" who will do his malevolent bidding. Still, his Cabinet appointments for the three jobs most vital to him - control over the military, intelligence secrets and the DOJ's power to prosecute - are preposterous enough many argue he's not even pretending to want a real government, but simply playing perilous chicken with a GOP Congress to see how much he can get away with, each name worse than the last.
First up was his choice of "stunningly unqualified" former Hawaii congresswoman, National Guard reserve and new bestie Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, even though she has no experience in intelligence work - "literally, none" - or managing anything. She also made a dubious 2017 "fact-finding" trip to Syria and met twice with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who's accused of killing hundreds of thousands of his own people; critics deemed the meeting "an outrage" and she is widely viewed as a Russian flunkie who "cozies up to dictators." While Trump praised her "fearless spirit," many blasted the nomination, charging she's not just ill-prepared for the job but such a national security risk that Putin might as well have gotten it.
Continuing his shamble toward national insecurity, next was Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old veteran and co-host of a Fox & Friends weekend show Trump likes, so hey why not make the guy on it Secretary of Defense to run the world's largest and most powerful military establishment with 1.3 million active-duty troops, 1.4 million National Guard members, nearly a million civilian workers, access to the nuclear codes and a budget of over $800 billion, about half of all federal discretionary funding, thus rendering an extremist, adulterous, belligerent culture warrior and former prison guard at Guantánamo with no managerial experience "undoubtedly the least experienced nominee for Secretary of Defense in American history."
A graduate of the University of St. Thomas, Hegseth served in Iraq and Afghanistan, then worked as a guard at Gitmo while in the Minnesota National Guard. That gig primed him for excusing and successfully lobbying "President" Trump to pardon several war criminals serving long prison sentences for murder in Iraq, including a "freaking evil" Navy Seal "perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving." At Biden's inauguration, he was one of 12 Guardsmen removed from duty after men in his unit said he was a white nationalist, maybe because of his tattoos; they include the Join or Die snake; Deus Vult, God Wills It, the cry of the Crusaders; a flag and the AR-15 he carried in Iraq; and across his pecs a huge Jerusalem Cross - a celebrated white nationalist symbol.
In his new book, he's still bitter about the rebuff: "Twenty years, (and) the military I loved, I fought for, I revered...spit me out. The feeling was mutual - I didn’t want this Army anymore." He calls new diversity efforts "garbage - any general, admiral involved in the DEI, woke shit's gotta go." He thinks the Black head of Joint Chiefs of Staff got his job by being Black. He's called liberals "domestic enemies," praised Jan. 6, cited a “desperate need" for Christian kids to get "a Christian education," once said he didn't wash his hands in ten years because germs aren't real, and said the 225,000 women now in combat shouldn't be. Tammy Duckworth says he's "dangerously unqualified" and so ignorant about war he thinks he can keep women behind an imaginary line; she'd ask him, "Where do you think I lost my legs?"
In 2017, Hegseth got passed over for head of Veterans Affairs; he'd just divorced and had an out-of-wedlock child with his second and "ultimate" wife, who turned out not to be when she filed for divorce a month after he had another child with Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet. He was also investigated after a Minnesota PAC he started, supposedly to support conservative candidates, was found to have spent less than half the money it raised on candidates, while dropping about a third of it on two lavish Christmas parties and nebulous "reimbursements" to Hegseth. He still seems to harbor anger issues: In a recent meltdown, he seethed about vaccines and screamed that a "dirtbag" reporter was just part of the "trash heap of left-wing media."
This week on Fox Business, he was calmer but no smarter. Celebrating Trump’s vow to leave the Paris Climate deal and the decimation of our only planet, he raved, "Good! Think of the exact opposite of what the woke left has been advancing, and that's what (he's) about to do. We're awake to (the) Utopian, globalist schemes, of what they're trying to peddle...All these burdensome regulations (are) a total sham meant (to) hold us back in the name of climate science, which has proven to not be true." (Hmm.) When the host mused it's like 1980 when Reagan got the Iran hostages released, a dazed Hegseth agreed, claimed "Hamas is crying uncle," and brayed, "The adults are back, and our enemies are taking notice." And, "Trump is making bitcoin great again!"
The response in the defense and military community to the nomination of a Fox carnie to run the military has variously been called "stunned" and "bewildered," a feeling possibly best summed up by one member with, "WTF. Who is this fucking guy?"Another blasted Hegseth as "an unserious person for an incredibly serious post during an incredibly serious time in the world." Dem Adam Kinsinger called the nod "the most hilariously, predictably stupid thing. Yes, he's a veteran, and...?" Brace yourself, America," warned Paul Rieckhoff of Independent Veterans of America. Because we live in a time of morons when up is down, Elizabeth Warren tried to explain it in the simplest terms possible: “A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense."
Finally, having drained the proverbial swamp and bafflingly transformed it into a cesspool, the old ringmaster dug as deeply as he could with his stubbly little hands into the GOP dung pile and tugged out what's been deemed "the worst nomination for a Cabinet position in American history," tapping for the job of highest law enforcement official in the land a "unanimously loathed," singularly unqualified chaos agent, greasy provocatuer and "person of moral turpitude" who's not only never served as a government attorney, judge, arbiter or overseer of any kind but has himself long been accused of heinous sex crimes along with protean creepiness - a bid eliciting, by way of response from a stunned public, myriad variations on, "Oh. My. God" and, "Oh, for fuck's sake."
The nomination of alleged pedophile, drug snorter and child sex trafficker Matt 'Butthead' Gaetz as Attorney General is so insane it launched a host of possible theories by observers desperate to carve logic from dystopian mayhem. It's pure provocation, an elaborate troll. It's "a big 'Fuck You' to everyone who believes in the rule of law," demonstrating "maximum contempt for 99% of the human race and every decent thing we’ve ever stood for." It's "a canary in the recess appointment coal mine," a lunatic litmus test "from a man who offers none in return," like making Sean Spicer say the inauguration crowd was bigger than MLK's." It's "an open flame being considered for Secretary of Gasoline." It's "a crawl test" for the Senate: "Autocrats like to make minions crawl."
The leering alleged sexual predator brazenly picked by a serial sexual predator and adjudicated rapist is above all a bullying tactic, an effort to simultaneously degrade and weaponize the DOJ while punishing those who pursued charges against him, and Gaetz too. Among his rogues' gallery of unqualified loyalists, the ghastly Gaetz, who'd "turn the DOJ into a petting zoo for Trump," is the pinnacle, the "gauntlet thrown in America’s face," the sneering challenge daring weak-kneed Senate Republicans to challenge him: "Who's gonna stop me? You and whose army?" It's "as close as you can get to putting Sean Hannity in charge of the DOJ." It's more bleak proof there is no bottom, that he's "not assembling a Cabinet to run the government, but to break it. Let them eat Gaetz."
Gaetz, a 42-year-old "series of unfortunate events, and weird hair too," serves a deep red district in Florida; his X bio reads, "Florida Man. Built for Battle." The son of a rich GOP donor, he first became a state legislator known for playing a "points game" in which he and other GOP jerks earned sexual points for sleeping with women: One point for a lobbyist, three for a fellow legislator, six for a married legislator. Trump didn't mention the game in his rambling post praising Gaetz as "a deeply gifted and tenacious" - or "deeply grifted and mendacious" - attorney with an unimpressive resume consisting mostly of disrupting the House, sucking up to Trump and once barging into a secure facility where Dems were holding a deposition hearing he was mad he wasn't invited to.
Trump also ignored allegations Gaetz often accosted House members to show them nude photos of women he'd slept with or to brag about crushing Viagra in Red Bull to "go all night"; one repulsed colleague: "That’s great, Matt. Like, what kind of a reaction do you want?" And he overlooked a two-year investigation by the DOJ into allegations Gaetz trafficked and sexually exploited a 17-year-old girl he took across state lines to pay for sex, and attended sex-and-drug-fueled parties - why he'd be hounded by media shouting, "Are you a pedophile?" Last year, the DOJ dropped the trafficking charges without comment; the House Ethics Committee was still investigating him for sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, accepting improper gifts, dispensing favors and obstructing their investigation.
Gaetz also joined about 150 Republicans and the white supremacist Proud Boys - "Standing back and standing by, Mr. President" - to protest the 2020 election results and his hush money trial, invited a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, launched an “America First” tour with Klan Mom MTG to repeat election lies, sought a blanket pardon from Trump before he left the White House, and, according to Kevin McCarthy, asked him to kill the ethics probe of his exploits. He's reportedly so widely disliked that his new job offer prompted even staunch right-wingers to savage him as "a sex trafficking drug-addicted piece of shit." Ben Domenech wrote a Substack post titled, “Matt Gaetz is a Vile Sex Pest and Any Senator Who Votes For Him Owns That."
The news of his nomination was said to be greeted with "an audible gasp” from Republicans, many of whom thought it was a joke. A reporter: "Safe to say GOP senators are stunned - not in a good way.” One was "laughing so hard in a group he’s wiping away tears"; another had "no good comment." “We wanted him out of the House (but) this isn’t what we were thinking,” said Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson. Asked if he thought Gaetz had the character or experience to be A.G., Simpson stared incredulously, laughed loudly, and said, "Are you shitting me? No." Even as some conceded it could "make for a popcorn-eating confirmation hearing," even GOP heathens evidently felt the concept of a plan for an A.G. Gaetz "took the cake at the ongoing 'This Country Is Over' party.
Gaetz abruptly resigned Wednesday from the House. But with the Ethics Committee scheduled to vote Friday on whether to release their reportedly "highly damaging" findings on him, a number of nervous GOP senators are calling for access to the report "by whatever means necessary," including a possible subpoena. Said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, "I don't think any of us want to fly blind." Still, Maine's Susan Collins already says she's "shocked" by Gaetz' pick and she'll probably reject him. Then again, it's Collins. Some speculate she'll mull, pray, come to accept Gaetz' promise he won't do "any crazy stuff," and vote for him. Once confirmed, he'll arrest her as an enemy of the state; Collins will be "concerned," but ultimately soothed by his assurance it's a very nice gulag.
Thursday, in an "act of uttter hubris," Trump tapped crackpot fabulist and anti-vaccine-and-fluoride conspiracist RFK Jr. to head, per Tiedrich, the Dept. of Dying of a Preventable Disease. Trump says he'll let RFK's brain worm "go wild on the medicines," and we can't wait. Also, at an Oversight Committee hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth" - your tax dollars at work - Colorado's somehow re-elected Lauren Boebert said Americans "are being kept in the dark" and pressed four UFO "experts" for more federal transparency on rumored space aliens operating underwater bases in the oceans, and secret experiments creating “hybrid” humans with enhanced capabilities. "Are you familiar with that? Yes or no?" she shrieked. They were not. Still, she vowed she "will not relent until we get those answers to the American people." The Internet: "She''ll probs be made head of NASA now." Also, "Absolute circus America is."
How America feels right now.Art by Buddy Swenson.
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Hoo boy. The new orange king is busy choosing his viper's den of crooks, rapists, misfits and "comically inappropriate" zealots, aka bootlickers to "run" his "government": A Russian asset to head national intelligence, a rabid TV host to helm the world's largest military, an anti-science crank for HHS, a child-sex-trafficking "foreheadful MAGA pustule" as A.G - a bid so demented it wasn't even on our Apocalypse Bingo card. Shockingly, these are not serious people, but loyalty tests: "The absurdity is the point."
Thus does our new era of governance by nihilist sociopaths open with mind-blowing headlines like, "Trump Names Fox News Host to Lead Defense Department." After the most vicious, hollow, bonkers campaign in this country's history, nobody's surprised Trump is choosing to reward the sycophants, culture warriors and "incompetent fascists" who will do his malevolent bidding. Still, his Cabinet appointments for the three jobs most vital to him - control over the military, intelligence secrets and the DOJ's power to prosecute - are preposterous enough many argue he's not even pretending to want a real government, but simply playing perilous chicken with a GOP Congress to see how much he can get away with, each name worse than the last.
First up was his choice of "stunningly unqualified" former Hawaii congresswoman, National Guard reserve and new bestie Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, even though she has no experience in intelligence work - "literally, none" - or managing anything. She also made a dubious 2017 "fact-finding" trip to Syria and met twice with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who's accused of killing hundreds of thousands of his own people; critics deemed the meeting "an outrage" and she is widely viewed as a Russian flunkie who "cozies up to dictators." While Trump praised her "fearless spirit," many blasted the nomination, charging she's not just ill-prepared for the job but such a national security risk that Putin might as well have gotten it.
Continuing his shamble toward national insecurity, next was Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old veteran and co-host of a Fox & Friends weekend show Trump likes, so hey why not make the guy on it Secretary of Defense to run the world's largest and most powerful military establishment with 1.3 million active-duty troops, 1.4 million National Guard members, nearly a million civilian workers, access to the nuclear codes and a budget of over $800 billion, about half of all federal discretionary funding, thus rendering an extremist, adulterous, belligerent culture warrior and former prison guard at Guantánamo with no managerial experience "undoubtedly the least experienced nominee for Secretary of Defense in American history."
A graduate of the University of St. Thomas, Hegseth served in Iraq and Afghanistan, then worked as a guard at Gitmo while in the Minnesota National Guard. That gig primed him for excusing and successfully lobbying "President" Trump to pardon several war criminals serving long prison sentences for murder in Iraq, including a "freaking evil" Navy Seal "perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving." At Biden's inauguration, he was one of 12 Guardsmen removed from duty after men in his unit said he was a white nationalist, maybe because of his tattoos; they include the Join or Die snake; Deus Vult, God Wills It, the cry of the Crusaders; a flag and the AR-15 he carried in Iraq; and across his pecs a huge Jerusalem Cross - a celebrated white nationalist symbol.
In his new book, he's still bitter about the rebuff: "Twenty years, (and) the military I loved, I fought for, I revered...spit me out. The feeling was mutual - I didn’t want this Army anymore." He calls new diversity efforts "garbage - any general, admiral involved in the DEI, woke shit's gotta go." He thinks the Black head of Joint Chiefs of Staff got his job by being Black. He's called liberals "domestic enemies," praised Jan. 6, cited a “desperate need" for Christian kids to get "a Christian education," once said he didn't wash his hands in ten years because germs aren't real, and said the 225,000 women now in combat shouldn't be. Tammy Duckworth says he's "dangerously unqualified" and so ignorant about war he thinks he can keep women behind an imaginary line; she'd ask him, "Where do you think I lost my legs?"
In 2017, Hegseth got passed over for head of Veterans Affairs; he'd just divorced and had an out-of-wedlock child with his second and "ultimate" wife, who turned out not to be when she filed for divorce a month after he had another child with Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet. He was also investigated after a Minnesota PAC he started, supposedly to support conservative candidates, was found to have spent less than half the money it raised on candidates, while dropping about a third of it on two lavish Christmas parties and nebulous "reimbursements" to Hegseth. He still seems to harbor anger issues: In a recent meltdown, he seethed about vaccines and screamed that a "dirtbag" reporter was just part of the "trash heap of left-wing media."
This week on Fox Business, he was calmer but no smarter. Celebrating Trump’s vow to leave the Paris Climate deal and the decimation of our only planet, he raved, "Good! Think of the exact opposite of what the woke left has been advancing, and that's what (he's) about to do. We're awake to (the) Utopian, globalist schemes, of what they're trying to peddle...All these burdensome regulations (are) a total sham meant (to) hold us back in the name of climate science, which has proven to not be true." (Hmm.) When the host mused it's like 1980 when Reagan got the Iran hostages released, a dazed Hegseth agreed, claimed "Hamas is crying uncle," and brayed, "The adults are back, and our enemies are taking notice." And, "Trump is making bitcoin great again!"
The response in the defense and military community to the nomination of a Fox carnie to run the military has variously been called "stunned" and "bewildered," a feeling possibly best summed up by one member with, "WTF. Who is this fucking guy?"Another blasted Hegseth as "an unserious person for an incredibly serious post during an incredibly serious time in the world." Dem Adam Kinsinger called the nod "the most hilariously, predictably stupid thing. Yes, he's a veteran, and...?" Brace yourself, America," warned Paul Rieckhoff of Independent Veterans of America. Because we live in a time of morons when up is down, Elizabeth Warren tried to explain it in the simplest terms possible: “A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense."
Finally, having drained the proverbial swamp and bafflingly transformed it into a cesspool, the old ringmaster dug as deeply as he could with his stubbly little hands into the GOP dung pile and tugged out what's been deemed "the worst nomination for a Cabinet position in American history," tapping for the job of highest law enforcement official in the land a "unanimously loathed," singularly unqualified chaos agent, greasy provocatuer and "person of moral turpitude" who's not only never served as a government attorney, judge, arbiter or overseer of any kind but has himself long been accused of heinous sex crimes along with protean creepiness - a bid eliciting, by way of response from a stunned public, myriad variations on, "Oh. My. God" and, "Oh, for fuck's sake."
The nomination of alleged pedophile, drug snorter and child sex trafficker Matt 'Butthead' Gaetz as Attorney General is so insane it launched a host of possible theories by observers desperate to carve logic from dystopian mayhem. It's pure provocation, an elaborate troll. It's "a big 'Fuck You' to everyone who believes in the rule of law," demonstrating "maximum contempt for 99% of the human race and every decent thing we’ve ever stood for." It's "a canary in the recess appointment coal mine," a lunatic litmus test "from a man who offers none in return," like making Sean Spicer say the inauguration crowd was bigger than MLK's." It's "an open flame being considered for Secretary of Gasoline." It's "a crawl test" for the Senate: "Autocrats like to make minions crawl."
The leering alleged sexual predator brazenly picked by a serial sexual predator and adjudicated rapist is above all a bullying tactic, an effort to simultaneously degrade and weaponize the DOJ while punishing those who pursued charges against him, and Gaetz too. Among his rogues' gallery of unqualified loyalists, the ghastly Gaetz, who'd "turn the DOJ into a petting zoo for Trump," is the pinnacle, the "gauntlet thrown in America’s face," the sneering challenge daring weak-kneed Senate Republicans to challenge him: "Who's gonna stop me? You and whose army?" It's "as close as you can get to putting Sean Hannity in charge of the DOJ." It's more bleak proof there is no bottom, that he's "not assembling a Cabinet to run the government, but to break it. Let them eat Gaetz."
Gaetz, a 42-year-old "series of unfortunate events, and weird hair too," serves a deep red district in Florida; his X bio reads, "Florida Man. Built for Battle." The son of a rich GOP donor, he first became a state legislator known for playing a "points game" in which he and other GOP jerks earned sexual points for sleeping with women: One point for a lobbyist, three for a fellow legislator, six for a married legislator. Trump didn't mention the game in his rambling post praising Gaetz as "a deeply gifted and tenacious" - or "deeply grifted and mendacious" - attorney with an unimpressive resume consisting mostly of disrupting the House, sucking up to Trump and once barging into a secure facility where Dems were holding a deposition hearing he was mad he wasn't invited to.
Trump also ignored allegations Gaetz often accosted House members to show them nude photos of women he'd slept with or to brag about crushing Viagra in Red Bull to "go all night"; one repulsed colleague: "That’s great, Matt. Like, what kind of a reaction do you want?" And he overlooked a two-year investigation by the DOJ into allegations Gaetz trafficked and sexually exploited a 17-year-old girl he took across state lines to pay for sex, and attended sex-and-drug-fueled parties - why he'd be hounded by media shouting, "Are you a pedophile?" Last year, the DOJ dropped the trafficking charges without comment; the House Ethics Committee was still investigating him for sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, accepting improper gifts, dispensing favors and obstructing their investigation.
Gaetz also joined about 150 Republicans and the white supremacist Proud Boys - "Standing back and standing by, Mr. President" - to protest the 2020 election results and his hush money trial, invited a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, launched an “America First” tour with Klan Mom MTG to repeat election lies, sought a blanket pardon from Trump before he left the White House, and, according to Kevin McCarthy, asked him to kill the ethics probe of his exploits. He's reportedly so widely disliked that his new job offer prompted even staunch right-wingers to savage him as "a sex trafficking drug-addicted piece of shit." Ben Domenech wrote a Substack post titled, “Matt Gaetz is a Vile Sex Pest and Any Senator Who Votes For Him Owns That."
The news of his nomination was said to be greeted with "an audible gasp” from Republicans, many of whom thought it was a joke. A reporter: "Safe to say GOP senators are stunned - not in a good way.” One was "laughing so hard in a group he’s wiping away tears"; another had "no good comment." “We wanted him out of the House (but) this isn’t what we were thinking,” said Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson. Asked if he thought Gaetz had the character or experience to be A.G., Simpson stared incredulously, laughed loudly, and said, "Are you shitting me? No." Even as some conceded it could "make for a popcorn-eating confirmation hearing," even GOP heathens evidently felt the concept of a plan for an A.G. Gaetz "took the cake at the ongoing 'This Country Is Over' party.
Gaetz abruptly resigned Wednesday from the House. But with the Ethics Committee scheduled to vote Friday on whether to release their reportedly "highly damaging" findings on him, a number of nervous GOP senators are calling for access to the report "by whatever means necessary," including a possible subpoena. Said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, "I don't think any of us want to fly blind." Still, Maine's Susan Collins already says she's "shocked" by Gaetz' pick and she'll probably reject him. Then again, it's Collins. Some speculate she'll mull, pray, come to accept Gaetz' promise he won't do "any crazy stuff," and vote for him. Once confirmed, he'll arrest her as an enemy of the state; Collins will be "concerned," but ultimately soothed by his assurance it's a very nice gulag.
Thursday, in an "act of uttter hubris," Trump tapped crackpot fabulist and anti-vaccine-and-fluoride conspiracist RFK Jr. to head, per Tiedrich, the Dept. of Dying of a Preventable Disease. Trump says he'll let RFK's brain worm "go wild on the medicines," and we can't wait. Also, at an Oversight Committee hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth" - your tax dollars at work - Colorado's somehow re-elected Lauren Boebert said Americans "are being kept in the dark" and pressed four UFO "experts" for more federal transparency on rumored space aliens operating underwater bases in the oceans, and secret experiments creating “hybrid” humans with enhanced capabilities. "Are you familiar with that? Yes or no?" she shrieked. They were not. Still, she vowed she "will not relent until we get those answers to the American people." The Internet: "She''ll probs be made head of NASA now." Also, "Absolute circus America is."
How America feels right now.Art by Buddy Swenson.
Hoo boy. The new orange king is busy choosing his viper's den of crooks, rapists, misfits and "comically inappropriate" zealots, aka bootlickers to "run" his "government": A Russian asset to head national intelligence, a rabid TV host to helm the world's largest military, an anti-science crank for HHS, a child-sex-trafficking "foreheadful MAGA pustule" as A.G - a bid so demented it wasn't even on our Apocalypse Bingo card. Shockingly, these are not serious people, but loyalty tests: "The absurdity is the point."
Thus does our new era of governance by nihilist sociopaths open with mind-blowing headlines like, "Trump Names Fox News Host to Lead Defense Department." After the most vicious, hollow, bonkers campaign in this country's history, nobody's surprised Trump is choosing to reward the sycophants, culture warriors and "incompetent fascists" who will do his malevolent bidding. Still, his Cabinet appointments for the three jobs most vital to him - control over the military, intelligence secrets and the DOJ's power to prosecute - are preposterous enough many argue he's not even pretending to want a real government, but simply playing perilous chicken with a GOP Congress to see how much he can get away with, each name worse than the last.
First up was his choice of "stunningly unqualified" former Hawaii congresswoman, National Guard reserve and new bestie Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, even though she has no experience in intelligence work - "literally, none" - or managing anything. She also made a dubious 2017 "fact-finding" trip to Syria and met twice with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who's accused of killing hundreds of thousands of his own people; critics deemed the meeting "an outrage" and she is widely viewed as a Russian flunkie who "cozies up to dictators." While Trump praised her "fearless spirit," many blasted the nomination, charging she's not just ill-prepared for the job but such a national security risk that Putin might as well have gotten it.
Continuing his shamble toward national insecurity, next was Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old veteran and co-host of a Fox & Friends weekend show Trump likes, so hey why not make the guy on it Secretary of Defense to run the world's largest and most powerful military establishment with 1.3 million active-duty troops, 1.4 million National Guard members, nearly a million civilian workers, access to the nuclear codes and a budget of over $800 billion, about half of all federal discretionary funding, thus rendering an extremist, adulterous, belligerent culture warrior and former prison guard at Guantánamo with no managerial experience "undoubtedly the least experienced nominee for Secretary of Defense in American history."
A graduate of the University of St. Thomas, Hegseth served in Iraq and Afghanistan, then worked as a guard at Gitmo while in the Minnesota National Guard. That gig primed him for excusing and successfully lobbying "President" Trump to pardon several war criminals serving long prison sentences for murder in Iraq, including a "freaking evil" Navy Seal "perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving." At Biden's inauguration, he was one of 12 Guardsmen removed from duty after men in his unit said he was a white nationalist, maybe because of his tattoos; they include the Join or Die snake; Deus Vult, God Wills It, the cry of the Crusaders; a flag and the AR-15 he carried in Iraq; and across his pecs a huge Jerusalem Cross - a celebrated white nationalist symbol.
In his new book, he's still bitter about the rebuff: "Twenty years, (and) the military I loved, I fought for, I revered...spit me out. The feeling was mutual - I didn’t want this Army anymore." He calls new diversity efforts "garbage - any general, admiral involved in the DEI, woke shit's gotta go." He thinks the Black head of Joint Chiefs of Staff got his job by being Black. He's called liberals "domestic enemies," praised Jan. 6, cited a “desperate need" for Christian kids to get "a Christian education," once said he didn't wash his hands in ten years because germs aren't real, and said the 225,000 women now in combat shouldn't be. Tammy Duckworth says he's "dangerously unqualified" and so ignorant about war he thinks he can keep women behind an imaginary line; she'd ask him, "Where do you think I lost my legs?"
In 2017, Hegseth got passed over for head of Veterans Affairs; he'd just divorced and had an out-of-wedlock child with his second and "ultimate" wife, who turned out not to be when she filed for divorce a month after he had another child with Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet. He was also investigated after a Minnesota PAC he started, supposedly to support conservative candidates, was found to have spent less than half the money it raised on candidates, while dropping about a third of it on two lavish Christmas parties and nebulous "reimbursements" to Hegseth. He still seems to harbor anger issues: In a recent meltdown, he seethed about vaccines and screamed that a "dirtbag" reporter was just part of the "trash heap of left-wing media."
This week on Fox Business, he was calmer but no smarter. Celebrating Trump’s vow to leave the Paris Climate deal and the decimation of our only planet, he raved, "Good! Think of the exact opposite of what the woke left has been advancing, and that's what (he's) about to do. We're awake to (the) Utopian, globalist schemes, of what they're trying to peddle...All these burdensome regulations (are) a total sham meant (to) hold us back in the name of climate science, which has proven to not be true." (Hmm.) When the host mused it's like 1980 when Reagan got the Iran hostages released, a dazed Hegseth agreed, claimed "Hamas is crying uncle," and brayed, "The adults are back, and our enemies are taking notice." And, "Trump is making bitcoin great again!"
The response in the defense and military community to the nomination of a Fox carnie to run the military has variously been called "stunned" and "bewildered," a feeling possibly best summed up by one member with, "WTF. Who is this fucking guy?"Another blasted Hegseth as "an unserious person for an incredibly serious post during an incredibly serious time in the world." Dem Adam Kinsinger called the nod "the most hilariously, predictably stupid thing. Yes, he's a veteran, and...?" Brace yourself, America," warned Paul Rieckhoff of Independent Veterans of America. Because we live in a time of morons when up is down, Elizabeth Warren tried to explain it in the simplest terms possible: “A Fox & Friends weekend co-host is not qualified to be the Secretary of Defense."
Finally, having drained the proverbial swamp and bafflingly transformed it into a cesspool, the old ringmaster dug as deeply as he could with his stubbly little hands into the GOP dung pile and tugged out what's been deemed "the worst nomination for a Cabinet position in American history," tapping for the job of highest law enforcement official in the land a "unanimously loathed," singularly unqualified chaos agent, greasy provocatuer and "person of moral turpitude" who's not only never served as a government attorney, judge, arbiter or overseer of any kind but has himself long been accused of heinous sex crimes along with protean creepiness - a bid eliciting, by way of response from a stunned public, myriad variations on, "Oh. My. God" and, "Oh, for fuck's sake."
The nomination of alleged pedophile, drug snorter and child sex trafficker Matt 'Butthead' Gaetz as Attorney General is so insane it launched a host of possible theories by observers desperate to carve logic from dystopian mayhem. It's pure provocation, an elaborate troll. It's "a big 'Fuck You' to everyone who believes in the rule of law," demonstrating "maximum contempt for 99% of the human race and every decent thing we’ve ever stood for." It's "a canary in the recess appointment coal mine," a lunatic litmus test "from a man who offers none in return," like making Sean Spicer say the inauguration crowd was bigger than MLK's." It's "an open flame being considered for Secretary of Gasoline." It's "a crawl test" for the Senate: "Autocrats like to make minions crawl."
The leering alleged sexual predator brazenly picked by a serial sexual predator and adjudicated rapist is above all a bullying tactic, an effort to simultaneously degrade and weaponize the DOJ while punishing those who pursued charges against him, and Gaetz too. Among his rogues' gallery of unqualified loyalists, the ghastly Gaetz, who'd "turn the DOJ into a petting zoo for Trump," is the pinnacle, the "gauntlet thrown in America’s face," the sneering challenge daring weak-kneed Senate Republicans to challenge him: "Who's gonna stop me? You and whose army?" It's "as close as you can get to putting Sean Hannity in charge of the DOJ." It's more bleak proof there is no bottom, that he's "not assembling a Cabinet to run the government, but to break it. Let them eat Gaetz."
Gaetz, a 42-year-old "series of unfortunate events, and weird hair too," serves a deep red district in Florida; his X bio reads, "Florida Man. Built for Battle." The son of a rich GOP donor, he first became a state legislator known for playing a "points game" in which he and other GOP jerks earned sexual points for sleeping with women: One point for a lobbyist, three for a fellow legislator, six for a married legislator. Trump didn't mention the game in his rambling post praising Gaetz as "a deeply gifted and tenacious" - or "deeply grifted and mendacious" - attorney with an unimpressive resume consisting mostly of disrupting the House, sucking up to Trump and once barging into a secure facility where Dems were holding a deposition hearing he was mad he wasn't invited to.
Trump also ignored allegations Gaetz often accosted House members to show them nude photos of women he'd slept with or to brag about crushing Viagra in Red Bull to "go all night"; one repulsed colleague: "That’s great, Matt. Like, what kind of a reaction do you want?" And he overlooked a two-year investigation by the DOJ into allegations Gaetz trafficked and sexually exploited a 17-year-old girl he took across state lines to pay for sex, and attended sex-and-drug-fueled parties - why he'd be hounded by media shouting, "Are you a pedophile?" Last year, the DOJ dropped the trafficking charges without comment; the House Ethics Committee was still investigating him for sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, accepting improper gifts, dispensing favors and obstructing their investigation.
Gaetz also joined about 150 Republicans and the white supremacist Proud Boys - "Standing back and standing by, Mr. President" - to protest the 2020 election results and his hush money trial, invited a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union, launched an “America First” tour with Klan Mom MTG to repeat election lies, sought a blanket pardon from Trump before he left the White House, and, according to Kevin McCarthy, asked him to kill the ethics probe of his exploits. He's reportedly so widely disliked that his new job offer prompted even staunch right-wingers to savage him as "a sex trafficking drug-addicted piece of shit." Ben Domenech wrote a Substack post titled, “Matt Gaetz is a Vile Sex Pest and Any Senator Who Votes For Him Owns That."
The news of his nomination was said to be greeted with "an audible gasp” from Republicans, many of whom thought it was a joke. A reporter: "Safe to say GOP senators are stunned - not in a good way.” One was "laughing so hard in a group he’s wiping away tears"; another had "no good comment." “We wanted him out of the House (but) this isn’t what we were thinking,” said Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson. Asked if he thought Gaetz had the character or experience to be A.G., Simpson stared incredulously, laughed loudly, and said, "Are you shitting me? No." Even as some conceded it could "make for a popcorn-eating confirmation hearing," even GOP heathens evidently felt the concept of a plan for an A.G. Gaetz "took the cake at the ongoing 'This Country Is Over' party.
Gaetz abruptly resigned Wednesday from the House. But with the Ethics Committee scheduled to vote Friday on whether to release their reportedly "highly damaging" findings on him, a number of nervous GOP senators are calling for access to the report "by whatever means necessary," including a possible subpoena. Said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, "I don't think any of us want to fly blind." Still, Maine's Susan Collins already says she's "shocked" by Gaetz' pick and she'll probably reject him. Then again, it's Collins. Some speculate she'll mull, pray, come to accept Gaetz' promise he won't do "any crazy stuff," and vote for him. Once confirmed, he'll arrest her as an enemy of the state; Collins will be "concerned," but ultimately soothed by his assurance it's a very nice gulag.
Thursday, in an "act of uttter hubris," Trump tapped crackpot fabulist and anti-vaccine-and-fluoride conspiracist RFK Jr. to head, per Tiedrich, the Dept. of Dying of a Preventable Disease. Trump says he'll let RFK's brain worm "go wild on the medicines," and we can't wait. Also, at an Oversight Committee hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth" - your tax dollars at work - Colorado's somehow re-elected Lauren Boebert said Americans "are being kept in the dark" and pressed four UFO "experts" for more federal transparency on rumored space aliens operating underwater bases in the oceans, and secret experiments creating “hybrid” humans with enhanced capabilities. "Are you familiar with that? Yes or no?" she shrieked. They were not. Still, she vowed she "will not relent until we get those answers to the American people." The Internet: "She''ll probs be made head of NASA now." Also, "Absolute circus America is."
How America feels right now.Art by Buddy Swenson.
"They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law," the Minnesota progressive said of the Trump administration.
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."
"Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day one executive order designating drug cartels including the Venezuela-based group as foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.
"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar cotended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."
Omar continued:
They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.
The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."
"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."
"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.
Echoing critics including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."
"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.
"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."
"The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening!" said Florida Immigrant Coalition's deputy director.
Two judges appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit by President Donald Trump issued a Thursday decision that allows a newly established but already notorious immigrant detention center in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, to stay open.
Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida sought "to halt the unlawful construction" of the site. Last month, Judge Kathleen Williams—appointed by former President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida—ordered the closure of the facility within 60 days.
However, on Thursday, Circuit Judges Elizabeth Branch and Barbara Lagoa blocked Williams' decision, concluding that "the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction."
Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a brief but scathing dissent. He wrote that the majority "essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court's determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities."
The 11th Circuit's ruling was cheered by the US Department of Homeland Security, Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declared in a video that "Alligator Alcatraz is, in fact, like we've always said, open for business."
Uthmeier's communications director, Jeremy Redfern, collected responses to the initial ruling by state and federal Democrats, and urged them to weigh in on social media. Florida state Sen. Shevrin "Shev" Jones (D-34) did, stressing that "cruelty is still cruelty."
In a Thursday statement, Florida Immigrant Coalition deputy director Renata Bozzetto said that "the 11th Circuit is allowing atrocities to happen by reversing the injunction that helped to paralyze something that has been functioning as an extrajudicial site in our own state! The Everglades Detention Camp isn't just an environmental threat; it is also a huge human rights crisis."
"Housing thousands of men in tents in the middle of a fragile ecosystem puts immense strain on Florida's source environment, but even more troublesome, it disregards human rights and our constitutional commitments," Bozzetto continued. "This is a place where hundreds of our neighbors were illegally held, were made invisible within government systems, and were subjected to inhumane heat and unbearable treatment. The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening! The only just solution is to shut this facility down and ensure that no facility like this opens in our state!"
"Lastly, it is imperative that we as a nation uphold the balance of powers that this country was founded on," she added. "That is what makes this country special! Calling judges who rule against you 'activists' flies in the face of our democracy. It is a huge tell that AG Uthmeier expressed this as a 'win for President Trump's agenda,' as if the courts were to serve as political weapons. This demonstrates the clear partisan games they are playing with people's lives and with our democracy."
While Alligator Alcatraz has drawn widespread criticism for the conditions in which detainees are held, the suit is based on the government's failure to follow a law that requires an environmental review, given the facility's proximity to surrounding wetlands.
In response to the ruling, Elise Bennett, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Associated Press that "this is a heartbreaking blow to America's Everglades and every living creature there, but the case isn't even close to over."
The report found that seven of America's biggest healthcare companies have collectively dodged $34 billion in taxes as a result of Trump's 2017 tax law while making patient care worse.
President Donald Trump's tax policies have allowed the healthcare industry to rake in "sick profits" by avoiding tens of billions of dollars in taxes and lowering the quality of care for patients, according to a report out Wednesday.
The report, by the advocacy groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst, found that "seven of America's biggest healthcare corporations have dodged over $34 billion in collective taxes since the enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that Republicans recently succeeded in extending."
The study examined four health insurance companies—Centene, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), and Humana; two for-profit hospital chains—HCA Holdings and Universal Health Services; and the CVS Healthcare pharmacy conglomerate.
It found that these companies' average profits increased by 75%, from around $21 billion before the tax bill to about $35 billion afterward, and yet their federal tax rate was about the same.
This was primarily due to the 2017 law's slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a change that was cheered on by the healthcare industry and continued with this year's GOP tax legislation. The legislation also loosened many tax loopholes and made it easier to move profits to offshore tax shelters.
The report found that Cigna, for instance, saved an estimated $181 million in taxes on the $2.5 billion it held in offshore accounts before the law took effect.
The law's supporters, including those in the healthcare industry, argued that lowering corporate taxes would allow companies to increase wages and provide better services to patients. But the report found that "healthcare corporations failed to use their tax savings to lower costs for customers or meaningfully boost worker pay."
Instead, they used those windfalls primarily to increase shareholder payouts through stock buybacks and dividends and to give fat bonuses to their top executives.
Stock buybacks increased by 42% after the law passed, with Centene purchasing an astonishing average of 20 times more of its own shares in the years following its enactment than in the years before. During the first seven years of the law, dividends for shareholders increased by 133% to an average of $5.6 billion.
Pay for the seven companies' half-dozen top executives increased by a combined $100 million, 42%, on average. This is compared to the $14,000 pay increase that the average employee at these companies received over the same period, which is a much more modest increase of 24%.
And contrary to claims that lower taxes would allow companies to improve coverage or patient care, the opposite has occurred.
While data is scarce, the rate of denied insurance claims is believed to have risen since the law went into effect.
The four major insurers' Medicare Advantage plans were found to frequently deny claims improperly. In the case of Centene, 93% of its denials for prior authorizations were overturned once patients appealed them, which indicates that they may have been improper. The others were not much better: 86% of Cigna's denials were overturned, along with 71% for Elevance/Anthem, and 65% for Humana.
The report said that such high rates of denials being overturned raise "questions about whether Medicare Advantage plans are complying with their coverage obligations or just reflexively saying 'no' in the hopes there will be no appeal."
Salespeople for the Cigna-owned company EviCore, which insurers hire to review claims, have even boasted that they help companies reduce their costs by increasing denials by 15%, part of a model that ProPublica has called the "denials for dollars business." Their investigation in 2024 found that insurers have used EviCore to evaluate whether to pay for coverage for over 100 million people.
And while paying tens of millions to their executives, both HCA and Universal Health Services—which each saved around $5.5 billion from Trump's tax law—have been repeatedly accused of overbilling patients while treating them in horrendous conditions.
"Congress should demand both more in tax revenue and better patient care from these highly profitable corporations," Americans for Tax Fairness said in a statement. "Healthcare corporation profitability should not come before quality of patient care. In healthcare, more than almost any other industry, the search for ever higher earnings threatens the wellbeing and lives of the American people."