Tremble In Fear of the Dumbest Cabinet We Have Ever Seen
Our saving grace may be that none of these morons actually know what they're doing.
Donald Trump’s second administration was always going to be part farce, part tragedy, but the swath of newly announced candidates for some of the most powerful appointed offices in the country is really something else.
Let’s just… look at the list of appointments thus far:
Susie Wiles - WH Chief of Staff
Marco Rubio - Secretary of State
Pete Hegseth - Secretary of Defense
Matt Gaetz - Attorney General
Kristi Noem - Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
Tulsi Gabbard - Director of National Intelligence
Elise Stefanik - Ambassador to the United Nations
Mike Huckabee - Ambassador to Israel
Steve Witkoff - Special envoy to the Middle East
Mike Waltz - National Security Advisor
John Ratcliffe - CIA Director
Lee Zeldin - Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
Bill McGinley - White House Counsel
Elon Musk - Department of Government Efficiency
Vivek Ramaswamy - Department of Government Efficiency
Tom Homan - Border czar
You’re scrolling down. There are some names you maybe did not know on there: Susie Wiles, CoS. Sure. She was his campaign co-chair, she works well with him clearly, fine. Mike Waltz for NSA, ok — he’s a China hawk and critical of Ukraine aid. Not particularly groundbreaking, we had to expect this. Elise Stefanik, UN Ambassador — mostly a vanity position where she can still make headlines for a rising Trump loyalist who was in the running for VP? It’s more glamourous than what Mayor Pete got, that’s for sure.
Huckabee for Ambassador to Israel, good god of course, the evangelicals get their wishes, this was always how it was going to go. These are, for Trump, sort of “normal” appointments. Little Marco Rubio getting Secretary of State is kinda a wild one but he’s done his little Marco best to kowtow for the past year or so and I guess it paid off. Tom Homan, friendly with white nationalists and almost certain to push for some of the most depraved immigration policies we have ever seen, is a horror, but not one that anyone could say they were surprised by. Ditto Lee Zeldin—awful for the environment, we knew this, we expected this, I do not want to downplay these things, but what did we expect. I’ll tell you what we didn’t expect. We didn’t expect this one:
Matt Gaetz - Attorney General
Matt Gaetz. Attorney General! My god. Did you laugh? I laughed. Matt Gaetz’s deepest-held legal opinion, I’m guessing, is probably that the age of consent laws in this country are too high, and now this man may become Attorney General? It’s so, so funny. And horrible. But mostly funny.
The saving grace here is that there’s only a slim chance Gaetz gets confirmed, as basically everyone hates him and the Republican senators were blindsided by his nomination. But you can never fully bet against the power that the MAGA movement has over spineless Republicans, so.
Here’s another plausible theory:
Gaetz is kinda the pinnacle of this stupidity — I didn’t bury the lead here that much, but it stays dumb as you go down the list even more. Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host who once said he never washes his hands, is our new secretary of defense. Kristi Noem, newly yassified and looking remarkably like Melania with the dark eyeliner, is DHS secretary. Tulsi Gabbard, the queen of the frothingly dumb Bernie-to-Trump moron brigade, is the new Director of National Intelligence, which is terrifying considering that she’s in a quasi-religious cult. Mahalo to her, I guess.
The bottom of the list is perhaps the stupidest of the bunch, though.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as co-members of the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE” for short, after Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, because the man will not do a single thing that is not associated with a 2011 Reddit meme. The DOGE allegedly will come up with a big list of budget cuts by June of 2026 in order to shrink the federal government, which is something that will definitely actually happen and not just be a way for Musk to grab some more idiotic headlines for a few months before quietly dissipating into nothing, like most of his endeavors. We love it!
There are two ways to look at this flood of circus casting. One is that it is a dangerous collection of political nihilists who will enact whatever depraved policies they think they can get away with to curry favor with the worst elements of American political, religious, and economic society. The second is that it is a collection of idiotic grifters who are not particularly efficient or motivated to enact actual policy, which, as the first Trump administration realized, is sort of difficult to actually do. These people are as evil as Stephen Miller was, that’s for sure. But do they have his drive? Are they actually going to govern? That remains to be seen. They’re certainly going to try, but for now, I think we can take some comfort in the fact that the kind of grifters and hangers-on that Trump often elevates are more effective at promoting themselves, and not at enacting the kind of dangerous national project the conservative movement is trying to build. One can hope, at least: and at the minimum, maybe remind the Pentagon press corps to stock up on hand sanitizer if they have to meet with Hegseth anytime soon.
This is roughly how I thought it would go, but lordy, Gaetz is a true astonishment. Speculation on MTG welcome......
The most positive aspect of this fully Trumpyfascist administration is going to be the ease at which foreign powers will be able to absolutely dogwalk them in the international arena, and they can be pitted against one another so easily. Domestic surveillance capabilities with straight up clowns is going to be laughable. It's going to be a speedy collapse with so many pilfering snakes at positions of leadership. China has got to just be rolling on the floor at the inevitable downfall.