(Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images) |
By Jill Filipovic | These choices aren’t just shocking. They’re sending the message that Donald Trump cares about loyalty over basic competence. And perhaps more importantly, they’re setting a norm from the beginning: No matter what Trump does, he expects Republicans to comply.
Trump is coming into his second term as an angry and vindictive authoritarian. But the U.S. does still ostensibly have a separation of powers; the executive can’t do everything on his own, despite right-wing efforts to vest the president with ever-more power. Trump may not be the most sophisticated president of all time, and he may lack even a recent viewer of Schoolhouse Rock’s understanding of government function, but he knows he sometimes needs the advice and consent of the Senate (or the consent of other branches of government) to get stuff done. And so he’s doing what has often worked for him: He’s establishing dominance early. He’s choosing objectively insane cabinet members to show Republican senators, and the country, that he is the boss—and that he can get others in Washington to comply with his demands, no matter how absurd.
It’s an act of dominance, and of humiliation. It is humiliating to be a competent member of the U.S. Senate and consent to the appointment of a vaccine skeptic to lead HHS, or a right-wing news personality to be defense secretary, or a woman who parrots Kremlin talking points and is suspected to be compromised by a foreign government to be director of national intelligence, or a man recently under investigation by DOJ for sex trafficking to lead DOJ.
The whole thing is a big public farce, and Trump is demanding that Republicans publicly play along—that they attach their names to this. It’s a signal that he expects to be treated as powerful beyond measure; that he is not to be questioned, no matter how dangerous or ridiculous his decisions. That he owns the government and everyone in it.
A whole lot of Republicans are about to go along. (Click here to read more) |
