Surprise! Competence Doesn't Matter to Trump
Monday, March 31, 2025
As if the President's hiring of an anti-vaxxer to head the HHS, a buddy of Bashar al Assad to head intelligence, and a media figure to head defense weren't enough of an indication, his handling of the fallout of SignalGate should show that Trump values personal loyalty to the point that he scorns merit.
Consider the following from the Times-Union:
A responsible administration would want to immediately get to the bottom of this. Instead, from President Trump on down, the response has been, at various turns:Like a bad punchline, the next sentence is, "That leaves any hope for accountability, once again, to Congress." Congress? You mean the guys who went along with these horrendous choices in the first place?We would normally urge the inspector general for the Department of Defense to review this failure. But Mr. Trump fired the person in that post in January, part of a purge of 17 inspectors general in various agencies and one of many actions the president has taken to reduce accountability in government.
- to deny the seriousness of the matter;
- to falsely state that no war plans were discussed;
- to parse the meaning of the word "classified";
- to deflect responsibility;
- to refuse to answer questions from Congress; and -- of course --
- to attack the journalist who reported the story.
This is alarming and I am largely in agreement with the editorial, although I would also like to add a point I gleaned from Yaron Brook's commentary on the matter.
I unfortunately do not remember which episode of his podcast this came from, so cannot point you to it or verify my recollection. The gist was that the main government actors in SignalGate failed to respond even like adults to their exposure by the Atlantic: An adult would admit the mistake and pledge not to let anything like it happen again from the outset. (And I think Brook may have a point that the original breach alone might not have been worthy of a firing had they chosen this course.) Instead, we have gotten the childish pattern displayed above, which the President himself adopted over the weekend when he said:
"I don't fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts," Trump said, calling the story "fake news" throughout the interview.We got away (this time) with planning a strike over a channel known to be of interest to (and possibly already compromised by) hostile regimes.
"I do," the president said when asked whether he still has confidence in Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also in the Signal chat and sent a detailed timeline of the planned strikes before they happened.
"I think it's just a witch hunt and the fake news, like you, talk about it all the time, but it's just a witch hunt, and it shouldn't be talked [about]," Trump added. "We had a tremendously successful strike. We struck very hard and very lethal. And nobody wants to talk about that. All they want to talk about is nonsense. It's fake news."
Faced with proof of a security lapse that could have cost the lives of servicemen, all Trump does that we can tell is pretend nothing went wrong. This isn't the same thing at all as, say, We are conducting our own investigation of this breach and putting a plan in place so that nothing like it happens again.
It's just more "owning" the "leftist" establishment, rather than defeating the left, much less doing his job or, heaven forbid, using his bully pulpit to promote a positive agenda of returning our nation to the founding ideals that make it great.
-- CAV
12 comments:
It seems like multiple times a week you have negatives about the Trump administration. Nothing positive. "a buddy of Bashar al Assad to head intelligence" - The fact that she visited a dictatorship and communicated with them, that can be a legitimate function, fact-finding, issuing a warning, etc. Her a buddy. Please do not make the mistake of swallowing uncritically all of the criticisms of the mainstream media. Please go read contrary opinions on each of these issues. Not that the contrary opinions are always correct or the defenses. But you seem to be gullible with regard to any anti-trump administration piece of supposed News.
The Trump Administration screws up way more often than I have time for, and since it does, yet is supposedly 'saving' us from the left, it both deserves scrutiny and should be judged by a higher standard than the left, which is already well-known among non-leftists to be anti-American.
Contrary to your assertion, I have several times mentioned positives from (even) this administration, especially its energy policy (which its trade and foreign policy are already putting at great risk).
Let's spot you Gabbard for a moment and throw in Hegseth. How in hell is RFK Jr. an example of what we need leading our country? The government shouldn't be setting scientific, medical, OR agricultural policy, but until it stops, someone halfway competent should be in charge, even of a phase-out.
While I can understand some skepticism of my judgement of Gabbard, your MAGA-ish phrase (and capitalization) "supposed News" causes you to "seem gullible," and a drinker of the Trump Kool-Aid at that.
Setting that aside, there is no denying a security breach, although as I stated, perhaps (initially) one that didn't merit a firing.
It's one thing to defend a subordinate. It is quite another to pretend (all at the same time) that (a) he didn't screw up, (b) his screwup didn't matter, and (c) the journalist is engaging in a "witch hunt."
Our military and our nation deserve better than such kettle logic.
"Let's spot you Gabbard for a moment and throw in Hegseth. How in hell is RFK Jr. an example of what we need leading our country?"
I grant you that the mainstream media and even some of the conservatives have called all of these people unqualified. But I wouldn't conclude that they are all three bad choices unless I had looked for some attempt to defend them and seen If it had any plausibility.
Here's one defense, and I don't necessarily buy it entirely, nor do I have a fully formed opinion on all three of these people. I'm letting them be in office for a while but the point is defenses of his appointments are out there
And I wonder if you looked into them? In a court of law, it's always important to not form your conclusions immediately after only having heard the prosecution case.
A defense: Trump is appointing people who are often inexperienced in the particular role. But that means that they're likely to challenge the conventional wisdom. They are not captured by the institution. Instead more likely to be saying prove to me that we need to buy another aircraft carrier versus invest in drones. Or that we can't shut down redundant military bases in every Republican district. Prove to me that these healthcare measures are safe. Prove to me that you're doing a good job that government should do, and that you shouldn't be fired.
In corporations, quite often you bring in an outside head butter who doesn't know the field but will listen to good advice and hire people under him who do know the field. Someone who is willing to shake things up.
Does that not make sense to you?
1. It's "supposed" news because the mainstream media is biased on issue after issue relating to the right or to Trump. You can't trust it any more than you can trust media on the right like Fox News to not slant the news in the direction of the issues they favor.
2. When Trump's appointees are critiqued for being "unqualified" and "laughably inexperienced", you might want to look to see if anybody defends them and what evidence or argument they give. You don't draw conclusions after only hearing the prosecution side.
One obvious argument for the defense might by that it is legitimate in some cases to hire "disruptors" - people who want to deeply shake up a corrupt operation. It's like somebody hiring a 'takeover expert' to clean house in a business or corporation:
That hire may not have experience in that particular line of business, but he's capable of listening to good arguments and to retaining capable subject matter experts. Sometimes not having been "captured by the institution" is a plus. It's obvious that we have not had many department heads in Republican or Democratic administrations who change much of anything, even when it is needed.
I'm willing to wait many many months to see if the 3 people in charge of defense and healthcare and national security end up doing a good job.
Why aren't you?
Here's the kind of questions a no-nonsense, tough-minded "rock the boat" type department head might ask:
"I've never worked in the Pentagon or in healthcare or as a spy. Prove to me that we need another aircraft carrier rather than spending the equivalent amount of money on drones. Prove to me that we need redundant military bases in every Republican district. Prove to me that you're doing a job that benefits the country and is a legitimate function of government and that you shouldn't be fired or have your agency closed down. Prove to me - or to the undersecretaries I've appointed who do have medical knowledge or an MD in virology - that every healthcare measure you are advocating is necessary. I'm sick of all the hacking of our national security secrets, so prove to me that you long ago instituted bulletproof measures of cyber security. And if you can't do those things, box up your stuff and don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out."
1/7. Your position is what I would call a steel man argument in favor of Trump's appointees. If government were a business -- which it isn't -- and if Trump uniformly made good hires -- which he hasn't -- this would be a reasonable default position to take regarding his cabinet appointments in general.
2/7. The clearest-cut case to the contrary is Robert F. Kennedy as head of HHS. He has a lengthy public record of (a) anti-vaccine activism, (b) suing vaccine companies (when he can), and (c) opposing modern farming methods, such as the use of gyphosate (aka RoundUp) as an herbicide. His actions helped lead to a well-documented measles outbreak that killed more than 80 people in Samoa, and his ideas on agriculture have already been tried in Sri Lanka, where the caused an economic crash and a food crisis.
3/7. So he's a questionable hire to say the least to begin with, and he has confirmed this since taking the job. For example, his preferred course of action on the avian flu outbreak could easily lead to the evolution of a deadly new form of human flu if put into practice. I wouldn't bet on him fast-tracking a vaccine against it.
4/7. He has also put a known anti-vaxxer in charge of researching (AGAIN) the long-discredited vaccine-autism "link," so he's ignoring advice already out there and cherry-picking subordinates to push an agenda, rather than help him make an honest effort at abolishing his department or even reforming it.
So RFK isn't even the good-faith outsider you depict.
5/7. On top of this problem, there is the difference between government and industry. If an agricultural or medical firm made such an atrocious hire and stuck with him for too long, it would simply go out of business in a free market. But this is government, the only institution that can legally wield force against us. This means that he can force us to follow -- or lay the groundwork for doing so -- his ideas, no matter how batty they are. This would be a danger even if he were a good-faith actor ehaving exactly as you describe because even good-faith actors can make major mistakes. (This last is part of why the government shouldn't be regulating industry.)
7/7. To summarize and return to your question: You offer the most generous interpretation possible for Trump's cabinet picks. RFK is the poster child for why that strategy is not good in government. (1) He is obviously a crackpot, (2) he has a long-established agenda that conflicts with the legitimate aspects of the mission of the agency he heads, (3) his hires (especially in areas where there is a conflict) are not the experts someone like you envision would need, and (4) since there is no market, there will be no accountability to reality.
"He is obviously a crackpot".
You make a lot of claims which have been alleged in the media. But I would like to hear what the arguments in his defense are. As I pointed out, you can't assume the points that you made are true just because they've appeared in the times or the post or the guardian or wherever.
I'm not saying you're wrong about any of them, I'm just saying that you State them with great certainty as though the claims were obviously true. All of them
RE: Crackpot.
As I pointed out at length recently, there is a literature comparable in size to the Kennedy papers to the effect that vaccines don't cause autism. The original claim was retracted ages ago, and yet RFK continues to parrot this claim, even after doing so has cost lives.
I'm confident he's a crackpot, and people like him demonstrate that there is no reaching some people.
If your whole reaction to my arguments is to imply that I'm passively lapping up "claims" from "the media," I am afraid I am wasting my time continuing this conversation with you.
I am done. I am not your personal tutor.
You either don't want to process what I have said or are unable to. Perhaps what I have said will help others.
Good day.
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