Mike Waltz and government by sycophantic clowns
Elect Trump, expect a circus.
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At a cabinet meeting commemorating Trump’s 100th day in office, administration officials indulged in a sickening orgy of sycophancy as they attempted to top each other in preposterous praise of the orange gasbag in chief.
Attorney General Pam Bondi won the day with the ridiculous lie that without Trump’s tighter border restrictions in his first 100 days, 258 million Americans, or 75 percent of the population, would have died of fentanyl overdoses.
"President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of ANY other presidency in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you,” Bondi claimed at another point in a scene that would make Kim Jong Un blush.
Simultaneously, meanwhile, Trump engaged in a sad, desperate reshuffle of top administration roles, incompetently attempting to address his national security staff’s farcical incompetence without actually addressing it or holding anyone accountable, least of all himself.
The sycophancy and the personnel failures are of course intertwined. Trump surrounds himself with craven toadies and believes the sole function of his advisers and cabinet officials should be to crawl on their bellies before King Trump.
Competent officials need to be willing to tell the president when he’s wrong, but Trump doesn’t want to hear anything other than praise and flattery. That leaves him surrounding himself with fools, grifters, conspiracy theorists, and whatever you call the spineless sack of gelatin that is Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The “you’re fired” guy won’t actually fire anyone
One of the most foolish of those fools was National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, whose foolishness was so great that Trump finally defenestrated him — in the least effectual, most counterproductive manner possible.
Waltz came to the Trump White House with a resume which was not exactly stellar, but was less ridiculous than some; he’s a former Green Beret and served as an adviser for Defense Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates before spending three terms as a congressman from Florida.
However, like all of Trump’s other second term appointees, Waltz’s fitness was mostly based on his ability to gas up Trump and spew conspiratorial bilge. Fittingly, one of his final acts as national security adviser was to slather the president with Pyongyang-style praise during last week’s cabinet meeting.
Waltz flip-flopped on Ukraine to please his orange master, abandoning calls to provide more aid in line with Trump’s pro-Putin stance. During the 2024 campaign, Waltz auditioned for an administration role by showing up at Trump’s Manhattan hush money trial along with other MAGA goons. He’s enthusiastically joined in on Trump’s neo-segregationist assault on DEI policies, insisting that the promotion of women, Black people, and other non-white men in the armed forces undermines a “merit-based culture.”
During his short tenure as national security adviser, Waltz demonstrated that there is at least one national security appointment that is not merit-based: his own. In March, he organized a Signal chat to coordinate a US military strike on Yemen. Signal is a commercial app and can be accessed easily through phone hacking; it should not be used for highly sensitive military operations.
Underlining the problems with using the app in these situations, Waltz accidentally added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat … which is how his (dunderheaded) use of Signal became public. (Goldberg provided all the details in a bombshell article titled, “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”)
Waltz made some sad efforts to defend himself and smear Goldberg, suggesting that the Atlantic editor had “deliberately” hacked into the chat. But it wasn’t very convincing, and the debacle continued to haunt him and fellow oblivious Signal-chatter Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared war plans in the group.
This week, Trump seems to have finally attempted to defuse the situation by firing Waltz — though in a very half-assed way.
Instead of leaving the administration in shame, Waltz is to become UN ambassador. (Notably, instead of acknowledging he fired Waltz, Trump has been preposterously insisting that his new role actually represents a promotion.) Marco Rubio is going to take over Waltz’s former position at least on an interim basis, meaning he’s currently the secretary of state, national security adviser, USAID administrator, and acting archivist of the United States.
You couldn’t make it up if you tried.
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The incompetence is the point
Past presidents have weathered scandals and improved their administration’s performance by removing problematic appointees and finding better personnel.
For instance, when the Iran-Contra scandal broke in 1986 and the world learned that Colonel Oliver North had been diverting funds from arms sales to Iran to support Contra rebels in Nicaragua, President Reagan acted swiftly. National Security Adviser John Poindexter resigned and North was fired.
Reagan’s moves to contain the damage didn’t prevent a congressional investigation, and it certainly didn’t end the scandal — numerous other administration officials were charged with crimes. But the firings did at least signal to the public that Reagan cared (whether or not he actually did is debatable to this day) and helped him move forward and regain his popularity.
It would pretty clearly be in Trump’s interest to follow Reagan’s approach and jettison Waltz altogether — and Hegseth along with him. When subordinates screw up, it reflects badly on the president who appointed them, especially in cases like Hegseth’s where the subordinates were clearly in over their heads from the jump. But presidents can regain stature — and prevent future screwups! — by holding the Poindexters and Norths minimally accountable.
Trump, though, doesn’t really care what his subordinates do as long as they kiss his ass. Bondi understands the brief; Trump thrives on ludicrous, obviously false praise. You can’t go wrong telling him he’s the bestest president ever. You can’t go wrong telling him he should be Pope, even if it pointlessly offends Catholics across the globe. The only way you can go wrong is by standing up to him or failing to lick his cheap shoes as assiduously as your rivals.
Columnist Michael A. Cohen, in fact, argues that Waltz’s real sin was not using Signal for war plans, but appointing vaguely competent staffers and continuing to advocate for Ukraine. Far right influencer and Trump intimate Laura Loomer recently got a bunch of national security appointees fired by accusing them of disloyalty to Trump during an Oval Office meeting where she also reportedly sowed doubt about Waltz.
Trump can’t really think that Waltz is disloyal, though, since he’s giving him the UN ambassador slot — a position where he will face a Senate confirmation hearing which will no doubt focus, embarrassingly, on his Signal nonsense. That nonsense is apparently ongoing. Waltz was photographed using an even less secure version of the app at a cabinet meeting just a day before he was ousted.
Meanwhile, Rubio — once a harsh Trump critic — has perfected the art of removing his skeletal structure and offering it to Trump in return for preferment and power. He’ll now get to spend even more time closeted with his boss and trying to explain national security issues to him, which will no doubt be fun for everyone.
Bad for Trump, bad for America
Watching Trump and his clown car of court jesters continuously snap their necks as they try to hawk up ever more ridiculous self-flattery definitely has a certain amusement value. Waltz, Hegseth, Bondi, Rubio, and really everyone associated with the administration have proven themselves to be incompetent bozos who will exacerbate the incompetent bozo-dom of their incompetent bozo in chief.
If the incompetence of the minions merely contributed to Trump’s ongoing polling freefall, we could all just step back and cheer it on. Unfortunately, the incompetence of the minions, like the incompetence of the boss, can have real and potentially nightmarish effects.
Waltz and Hegseth’s refusal to take national security at all seriously could easily end up getting US servicemembers killed. The fact that no one in Trump’s circle will explain to him how tariffs work could lead to a massive global recession. Billionaire co-president and expert Trump-fluffer Elon Musk has already engineered an evisceration of American foreign aid that could lead to 25 million deaths while Trump nods along and plays golf.
Trump has set up his administration as a haven for the biggest liars, frauds, marks, and ghouls on the planet. Anyone prepared to praise him for a living is someone who has sold their soul for power. Waltz showed that he was unfit to lead the moment he accepted a job offer from Trump. He’s reaffirmed that unfitness every day in his tenure as national security adviser. There’s little doubt that he will continue to do so at the UN, or wherever Trump puts him after he’s fucked up that job too.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
TFG and his administration is like a Monty Python skit.
From “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”:
King Arthur: I am your king.
Peasant Woman: Well, I didn't vote for you.
King Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
Peasant Woman: Well, how'd you become king, then?
King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king.
Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
It’s hard to believe that this is reality, that it isn’t a poorly written movie about a bumbling president, and his staff & advisors of toadies & idiots, and that I will wake up soon & see it’s just a bad dream. I continually ask myself how could this happen?
Living in Florida, I always saw Rubio as going whichever way the wind blows, in his desire for power & money. He once cashed in his retirement savings in the amount of $68,000 to buy a new refrigerator, replace his air conditioner, & pay for his children’s private school tuition, at a potential tax penalty of $24,000 for early withdrawal. In 2012 when he got an $800,000 advance on his book deal, he bought an $80,000 speedboat, & rented a $50,000 Audi SUV, among other such purchases. There are more examples of his poor financial decisions than these. I never voted for him, but didn’t think he was a traitor; now I know better. He’s sold his soul to gain power. I wonder if he’s happy.