3 days Ago
A wise man once said you can judge the quality of a leader by the quality of the people he hires. Well, by that standard the next four years don’t look promising for our country. Trump’s first term was bad enough with the botched COVID response and his child separation policy on the border, but his second term is likely to be far worse.
Judging by his cabinet picks, excellence in governance is not one of his objectives. For national security Trump has chosen Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense and Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence — and it is hard to imagine worse choices for either position. Hegseth not only has no leadership experience — he was also kicked out of the Army Guard’s response on January 6 because of their fears of his white nationalist ties with extremist organizations.
DOD has 3.4 million personnel and a budget of $841 billion, just right for a novice with no management experience, eh? Hegseth also lobbied on the behalf of three soldiers punished for war crimes, and now we find out he was investigated for sexual assault. No charges were filed but he did pay off his accuser to get a non-disclosure agreement.
Obviously, Hegseth has demonstrated his character, and Trump has found him desirable. Gabbard has a history of promoting false conspiracy theories and parroting Russian propaganda, and again has no management experience. She travelled to Syria and met with Assad while he was committing war crimes against his own people.
Sounds like a valid pick to coordinate all the intelligence agencies, eh? How about Trump’s selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services? A vaccine skeptic who has little understanding of science, RFK, Jr also has promoted many conspiracy theories which have been debunked extensively.
Like Hegseth and Gabbard, he also has no management experience and extensively abused drugs and likely even pushed them during his young adult life. For character, think about his dropping a dead bear carcass in Central Park and cutting the head off a dead whale he found on the beach. Like Trump, he is a convicted felon, in his case for heroin possession during his 14 years as an addict.
Sounds like a good choice to lead a trillion-dollar budget with wide-ranging responsibilities from cancer research to food and drug safety, eh? And finally, Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General. A congressman from Florida whose main claim to fame has been as a flame-thrower and disrupter, but also one who has been investigated by the FBI and the House Ethics Committee for sex-trafficking a minor and illicit drug use. Although the DOJ did not press charges, Gaetz was so concerned about the House Ethics report he abruptly resigned from Congress before the report could be released.
Again, like the others he has no management experience and never worked as a prosecutor and only minimally as an attorney as he did argue seven minor cases in Florida while serving in the Florida legislature. It's obvious that Trump’s objectives are not good governance, but rather to get retribution against government institutions and individuals he has a grievance with. Unfortunately, Republicans on the Supreme Court, the Senate and the House have now established that Trump is above the law so there is not much that can be done.
The only question now is how long it will take to fix the damage he is about to inflict. — Mike Corbett, Rome.
