Over the holiday weekend,
President-elect Trump continued to name the people he wants in his incoming
administration. His picks seem designed to destroy the institutions of the
democratic American state and replace those institutions with an authoritarian
government whose officials are all loyal to Trump.
Congress—which represents the
American people—designed governmental institutions like the Department of
Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), and the Department of Defense to support the mission of the
Constitution, which is the fundamental law of the United States of America.
The Constitution is not partisan,
and in 1883, after a mentally ill disappointed office seeker assassinated
President James A. Garfield, Congress passed a law requiring that the people
who staff government offices be hired on the basis of their skills, not their
partisanship.
The people who work in governmental
institutions—and therefore the institutions themselves—are rather like the
ballast that keeps a ship upright and balanced in different weathers.
Nonpartisan government officials who clock in to do their job keep the government
running smoothly and according to the law no matter whom voters elect to the
presidency.
It is precisely that stability of
the American state that MAGA leaders want to destroy. In their view, the modern
American state has weakened the nation by trying to enforce equality for all
Americans, making women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious
minorities equal to white, Christian men. But they have been unable to persuade
voters to vote away the institutions that support the modern state.
Even in the 2024 campaign, voters
so hated the blueprint for destroying the modern government and replacing it
with a super-strong president who would impose Christian nationalism that Trump
and his allies ran away from that blueprint: Project 2025.
Now, though, with Trump having won
the 2024 presidential election by a razor-thin margin, MAGA leaders are
claiming a mandate to destroy the American state and replace it with an
authoritarian government staffed with partisans whose most obvious quality is
their loyalty to Trump.
Russian specialist and military
scholar Tom Nichols of The Atlantic notes that the Russians
talk about “power ministries,” which are “the departments that have significant
legal and coercive capacity.” Nichols notes that in the U.S., those include the
Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence
community, all of which Trump is attempting to destroy by placing unqualified
loyalists at their head.
For the crucially important post of
attorney general, who is responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the rule
of law across the nation, Trump first tapped former Florida representative Matt
Gaetz, whose association with drug use and sex trafficking forced him to
withdraw, and then named Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who has
insisted that the legal cases against Trump are proof that the justice system
has been “weaponized” against Trump.
To head the FBI, the bureau Trump
has long insisted was persecuting him through its investigation of the ties
between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives—ties that Republicans on the
Senate Intelligence Committee have confirmed in detail—Trump has tapped
loyalist and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, who has vowed to use the FBI to
exact revenge on those Trump considers his enemies.
That Patel’s appointment is
designed to destroy the FBI is clear not least because installing him would
require Trump to fire current FBI director Christoper Wray. FBI directors serve
ten-year terms precisely, so they are not tied to any administration, and Wray
was Trump’s own appointee in his first term.
Indeed, the idea that the FBI is
insufficiently right wing for Trump’s new administration speaks volumes: in its
entire history, the FBI has never had a Democrat in charge of it. Under Patel,
the nation’s chief law enforcement agency would be a tool of the president.
For director of the CIA, Trump has
tapped unqualified loyalist attack dog John Ratcliffe; for director of national
intelligence, the person who oversees all American intelligence agencies, Trump
has tapped former representative Tulsi Gabbard, whose ties to Russian president
Vladimir Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad make her loyalties suspect.
Taken together, Trump’s
appointments to these powerful departments amount to an attempt to destroy the
nation’s fundamental institutions.
As Charlie Sykes points out,
Trump’s appointments are not only a “[m]assive Fuq U to institutions…[b]ut also
a huge FU to the Supreme Court because Trump doesn’t think they will be a check
on his campaign of lawless retribution.”
The Atlantic’s Nichols told
MSNBC today that Trump’s appointees are “there to build an
authoritarian cadre and to put themselves beyond the reach of the rule of law.”
With loyalty trumping ability and
merit under an autocrat, the quality of government officials plummets. This
pays off for an autocratic leader because those appointed to serve in an
autocratic government are usually unemployable in a merit-based system, making
them fiercely loyal to the leader who has elevated them beyond their abilities.
Autocrats start by rewarding
family, and Trump has certainly followed that suit. After years in which
Republicans went after President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who was never a
government employee, over the weekend, Trump announced that he intends to appoint
his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, New Jersey real estate developer Charles
Kushner, as ambassador to France.
In 2004, Kushner pleaded guilty to
16 federal crimes and served time in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2020.
Trump also announced that he will appoint his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law,
Lebanese-born billionaire Massad Boulos, as White House senior adviser on Arab
and Middle East affairs.
This weekend, an email from the
mother of Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, came to light.
Written in 2018, when Hegseth was in the middle of a divorce from his second
wife, who filed for divorce after Hegseth got a co-worker pregnant, the email
told Hegseth to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself.” Writing
“[o]n behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some
way,” Penelope Hegseth said: “I have no respect for any man that belittles,
lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are
that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and
embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”
Penelope Hegseth has since praised
her son.
Meanwhile, those loyal to a rising
regime attack public servants to make others afraid to speak out. On Friday,
billionaire Elon Musk posted on X that Alexander Vindman, former National
Security Council director for European affairs, is “on the payroll of Ukrainian
oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he
will pay the appropriate penalty.”
Vindman was a key figure in Trump’s
first impeachment after being on the phone call in which Trump tried to get
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear the Democratic opponent he
considered most dangerous to his reelection prospects, then–former vice
president Joe Biden, before Trump would release money Congress had appropriated
for Ukraine’s defense against Russian incursions.
But Vindman, who famously told
Congress that he had assured his father that he was safe speaking up against
the president because “here, right matters,” wasn’t taking such an attack
quietly.
“Elon, here you go again making
false and completely unfounded accusations without providing any specifics,”
Vindman posted back. “That’s the kind of response one would expect from a
conspiracy theorist. What oligarch? What treason?
“Let me help you out with the
facts: I don’t take/have never taken money from any money from oligarchs
Ukrainian or…otherwise.
“I do run a nonprofit foundation.
The HereRightMattersFoundation.org to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s
unprovoked attack on Feb 24, 2022. I served in the military for nearly 22
years and my loyalty is to supporting the U.S. Constitution against all enemies
foreign and domestic. That’s why I reported presidential corruption when I
witnessed an effort to steal an election. That report was in classified
channels and when called by Congress to testify about presidential corruption I
did so, as required by law.
“You, Elon, appear to believe you
can act with impunity and are attempting to silence your critics. I’m not
intimidated.”
As Trump sets out to turn the
government into an instrument for his own power and vengeance, President
Biden tonight pardoned his son Hunter Biden. Laying out the history
of Republicans’ persecution of Hunter to weaken his father, the president said
in a statement, “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases
can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is
my son—and that is wrong.... [A]nd there’s no reason to believe it will stop
here. Enough is enough…. I believe in the justice system, but as I have
wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and
it led to a miscarriage of justice…. I hope Americans will understand why a
father and a President would come to this decision.”
—Heather Cox Richardson
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/trump-project-2
025.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/30/donald-trump-charles-kushner/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c079y0r1j8po
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/pete-hegseth-mother-email.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/kash-patel-principle/680838/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/us/politics/trump-kash-patel-fbi-republicans.html
X:
AVindman/status/1861912067508257069
Bluesky:
sykescharlie.bsky.social/post/3lc7eq6wkbs22
georgetakei.bsky.social/post/3lcb4qzephe2j
rpsagainsttrump.bsky.social/post/3lcbjzqytg225
