Flash back to Donald Trump’s first campaign for president. It should have been doomed when he mocked John McCain’s years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Or when he fantasized about one of his supporters shooting Hillary Clinton. Or when, on that “Access Hollywood” tape, he was heard reveling in the genital prerogatives of fame.
But no. And that wasn’t just because there were so many Americans so dissatisfied with conventional politicians and politics that Trump’s provocations seemed a necessary solvent for the status quo. It was also because his offenses were so numerous, and came along with such frequency, that no single scandal could get lasting attention. Each faded into the crowd.
Trump desensitized his audience as his improprieties became their own unremarkable norm. And while he may not have plotted it that way, he definitely learned his lesson.
His selections for senior jobs in his new administration attest to that education.
It’s galling that he chose a son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, who spent two years in prison for witness retaliation, tax evasion and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, to live in 60,000-square-foot splendor in Paris and swan around the Champs-Élysées as the next American ambassador to France.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
But is that any worse than Kash Patel storming around America’s capital in the role of F.B.I. director? As Garrett M. Graff, a historian and journalist, explained in a recent guest essay for Times Opinion, Patel’s disposition is as dangerous as his résumé is irrelevant to the post. He was chosen on the basis of his flamboyant obsequiousness to Trump, in defiance of a long tradition of F.B.I. directors who were steadfastly independent from the presidents they served. And he has vowed repeatedly to seek vengeance against Trump’s opponents and critics.
But there’s little sign of serious resistance to Patel’s confirmation from Republicans in the Senate. They have slimier fish to fry — for example, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s designee for defense secretary.
Hegseth was a comely Fox News host. He has a great head of hair. But as head of two different advocacy organizations, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America? He was apparently a disgrace. In an article in The New Yorker this week, Jane Mayer reported that Hegseth was forced out of both jobs “in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety and personal misconduct.” That allegedly included incidents of intoxication so severe that “at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team.”
Such charges might be less credible were Hegseth’s own mom not so censorious of his sloppy and sexist ways. Sharon LaFraniere and Julie Tate of The Times reported that in 2018, she sent him an email “on behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way,” in her words. She wrote: “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.”
On Wednesday, she attempted damage control in an interview on Fox News, saying that her son had changed. Her son, meanwhile, ricocheted around Capitol Hill trying to get skittish senators not to look at what he’s done but to look at how he looks. He also spoke at length with Megyn Kelly for her SiriusXM show. He told her that the accusations against him reflected “the art of the smear.”
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
But Trump himself was reportedly having second thoughts and toying with the idea of swapping out Hegseth and swapping in Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom Trump despised and disparaged until three seconds ago. Object of ridicule to object of affection: “Meatball Ron” would be traveling one of the most well-trod paths in TrumpLand.
But Hegseth’s troubles better the odds that the conspiracy theorist and carcass fetishist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. winds up the secretary of health and human services and that the al-Assad apologist and Putin fangirl Tulsi Gabbard gets to run national intelligence. There’s only so much resistance that Republican senators can muster. Only so many times that lap dogs this thoroughly muzzled can bark.
Trump’s picks for lofty posts speak to his veneration of scoundrels — to his belief that rules are for sissies and the strong take what they want however it must be taken. He embraces one binary above all others: If you’re not predator, you’re prey.
And government is for gloating. That’s what he’s doing with his planned nominees — showing what he can get away with, whom he can stick it to.
But his choices are also a tactic. As Peter Baker wrote in The Times on Monday, Trump “appears to be following a sort of swarm strategy, flooding the Senate with many contentious nominations that might not pass muster in normal circumstances and forcing the incoming Republican majority to choose which, if any, to block and which to let through.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
It’s overkill meant to overwhelm: a blitz approach. And with this surfeit of sordid cabinet prospects, Trump has created a yardstick that generously measures anyone without, say, a criminal conviction, a rape accusation or a fortune amassed by highly suspicious means.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In a cabinet of such wretchedness, Kristi Noem is Snow White.
But no. And that wasn’t just because there were so many Americans so dissatisfied with conventional politicians and politics that Trump’s provocations seemed a necessary solvent for the status quo. It was also because his offenses were so numerous, and came along with such frequency, that no single scandal could get lasting attention. Each faded into the crowd.
Trump desensitized his audience as his improprieties became their own unremarkable norm. And while he may not have plotted it that way, he definitely learned his lesson.
His selections for senior jobs in his new administration attest to that education.
It’s galling that he chose a son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, who spent two years in prison for witness retaliation, tax evasion and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, to live in 60,000-square-foot splendor in Paris and swan around the Champs-Élysées as the next American ambassador to France.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
But is that any worse than Kash Patel storming around America’s capital in the role of F.B.I. director? As Garrett M. Graff, a historian and journalist, explained in a recent guest essay for Times Opinion, Patel’s disposition is as dangerous as his résumé is irrelevant to the post. He was chosen on the basis of his flamboyant obsequiousness to Trump, in defiance of a long tradition of F.B.I. directors who were steadfastly independent from the presidents they served. And he has vowed repeatedly to seek vengeance against Trump’s opponents and critics.
But there’s little sign of serious resistance to Patel’s confirmation from Republicans in the Senate. They have slimier fish to fry — for example, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s designee for defense secretary.
Hegseth was a comely Fox News host. He has a great head of hair. But as head of two different advocacy organizations, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America? He was apparently a disgrace. In an article in The New Yorker this week, Jane Mayer reported that Hegseth was forced out of both jobs “in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety and personal misconduct.” That allegedly included incidents of intoxication so severe that “at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team.”
Such charges might be less credible were Hegseth’s own mom not so censorious of his sloppy and sexist ways. Sharon LaFraniere and Julie Tate of The Times reported that in 2018, she sent him an email “on behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way,” in her words. She wrote: “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.”
On Wednesday, she attempted damage control in an interview on Fox News, saying that her son had changed. Her son, meanwhile, ricocheted around Capitol Hill trying to get skittish senators not to look at what he’s done but to look at how he looks. He also spoke at length with Megyn Kelly for her SiriusXM show. He told her that the accusations against him reflected “the art of the smear.”
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
But Trump himself was reportedly having second thoughts and toying with the idea of swapping out Hegseth and swapping in Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom Trump despised and disparaged until three seconds ago. Object of ridicule to object of affection: “Meatball Ron” would be traveling one of the most well-trod paths in TrumpLand.
But Hegseth’s troubles better the odds that the conspiracy theorist and carcass fetishist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. winds up the secretary of health and human services and that the al-Assad apologist and Putin fangirl Tulsi Gabbard gets to run national intelligence. There’s only so much resistance that Republican senators can muster. Only so many times that lap dogs this thoroughly muzzled can bark.
Trump’s picks for lofty posts speak to his veneration of scoundrels — to his belief that rules are for sissies and the strong take what they want however it must be taken. He embraces one binary above all others: If you’re not predator, you’re prey.
And government is for gloating. That’s what he’s doing with his planned nominees — showing what he can get away with, whom he can stick it to.
But his choices are also a tactic. As Peter Baker wrote in The Times on Monday, Trump “appears to be following a sort of swarm strategy, flooding the Senate with many contentious nominations that might not pass muster in normal circumstances and forcing the incoming Republican majority to choose which, if any, to block and which to let through.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT
It’s overkill meant to overwhelm: a blitz approach. And with this surfeit of sordid cabinet prospects, Trump has created a yardstick that generously measures anyone without, say, a criminal conviction, a rape accusation or a fortune amassed by highly suspicious means.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In a cabinet of such wretchedness, Kristi Noem is Snow White.
