THE MIDDLE FINGER APPOINTMENTS

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” – Hannah Arendt

Journalist and scholar John Stoehr wrote of Trump’s picks for his cabinet: “A rapist for AG….a spy for DNI … a zealot for Defense … an anti-vaxxer for Health … A criminal for president. This is what Orwellian means.”

Anne Appelbaum wrote, “... the threat from leaders like Trump is not that they will turn America into a movie about the Third Reich. The threat is what political scientists call autocratic state capture - that they will take control of institutions that should belong to everyone, and transform them into institutions that serve them and their cronies, either politically or financially.”

Just as disconcerting should be the fact that Trump appears to be focusing on the worst choices, failures and misdeeds of his previous administration and doubling down on them in making these choices. He’s creating a Confederacy of Sewer Clowns.

During Trump I, law enforcement and intelligence officials concluded Donnie Dipshit colluded with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election, leaked secrets to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador, and at the Helsinki G8 summit, he defended Putin’s views over the U.S. intelligence community. O of course he would decide to nominate Russian stooge Tulsi Gabbard, who has been credibly claimed as being a Russian Asset - by the Russians! On their state TV!

Going through the list of Broken Toys Donnie Dumbfuck has appointed to destroy the departments they have been charged with leading has already been done ad nauseam last week.

These choices are each menacing on multiple levels and none of them would have survived bi-partisan confirmation hearings and a confirmation vote by bi-partisan majorities in the Senate any time in our past.

These nominees are not only grossly inappropriate choices for the jobs they’re being nominated for, not only are their views anathema to our institutions and the country itself; forcing these outrageous, incompetent choices into offices they should never be considered for, let alone hold, allow Trump is to establish himself as a strongman, above the traditional advise and consent checks on presidential authority granted the Senate by the U.S. Constitution, unchecked by ny possible way of holding him to account for the crimes against the country he will commit every day he is in office.

If Thune and the Republican Senate majority capitulate (as I expect, based on their histories) and these Trump loyalists assume control of the critical agencies of government, protected by Trump operating within the protection of the immunity given him by the traitors in the Unsupreme Court, this past week’s theater of the absurd could very quickly the template for tragedy regarding American democracy.

And the 40 percent of American adults who cannot successfully comprehend the written instructions on a bottle of aspirin will cheer as all those “smarties” they just know have looked down on them all their lives and actively worked to prevent their achievement of the success they just know they are due will cheer as those “elites” get what they deserve for all that offense.

Donald Trump’s picks are so deeply flawed and dangerous that he and his team knew from the outset they would not get confirmed, which is why he demanded Senate Republicans surrender their constitutional power of “advice and consent” required by the Constitution. The goal is so blatant that even the Wall Street Journal editorial board came out against it, correctly identifying it as “anti-constitutional.”

In order to bring senators to heel, Trump is threatening to start a super PAC to undermine the Senate Leadership Fund. A member of rump’s circle warned that Senate Republican leaders “should reflect current leadership and the future, not the past.” And Trump has access to the piggy bank owned by the richest man in the world to fund this existential threat.

The point of each of thee outrageous nominations is that each possesses a quality that is in complete opposition to the stated purpose of their assigned agency. The intention is not to fulfill the obligations of the office, but to destroy them.

It is no accident that Steve Bannon calls himself a Leninist. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too," Bannon said in 2013. "I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Last week, election conspiracy theorist Cleta Mitchell wrote on Xitter: “Every lawyer in the Voting Section and likely in the Civil Rights Division needs to be terminated. They are not supportive of Pres Trump or MAGA. There has to be a reckoning. These are leftwing activists who have come from and should return to their leftwing organizations.”

Mitchell, a longtime election denier and Trump adviser who was responsible for urging Trump to find nonexistent votes in Georgia to overturn the results of the 2020 election, will be in a position in two months to do on the inside what she was trying to do from the outside four years ago.

On Sunday, Trump announced his selection of Brendan Carr, to be the FCC's chairman. A Republican on the Federal Communications Commission who wrote a chapter on that agency and how to use it to go after the companies who “deplatformed” MAGA supporters in the Project 2025 playbook, Carr argued in the chapter that the agency should prioritize “reining in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.” He thinks NBC’s broadcast license should be lifted over the appearance by Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live.

On Monday afternoon, Trump announced that the “advice” from Elmo Muck and Vivek Ramasamy’s “Departmen” ofGovernment Efficiency would not be submitted to the Congress, to take action as the congressmen and senators wee fit, but would be submitted to him as president; “I will then carry these out and make adjustments as necessary.”

So, in addition to wiping out the Senate’s power to “advise and consent” regarding Tyrump’s appointees, he intends to take from the House of Representatives the most central of all governmental power - the Power of the Purse. He would then take the “savings” identified by the Muck and Vivek show, and apply those funds to financing his “massive deportation program.”

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike will acquiesce in the desruction of the American Republic more thoroughly than even Caesar planned for the Roman Republic.

As Joyce Vance put it in an article at her Substack, “We are entering a moment where it is either the Constitution or Donald Trump. You cannot have both.”

That the only word I can come up with for all this is “astonishing,” is astonishing. This is so far beyond what even I imagined that I can only sit here holding onto my desk with both hands as the world spins. This is on the level of Hitler’s transformation of the Weimar government in the 90 days following his becoming Chancellor of Germany.

That’s Another Fine Mess has learned that the new lease here, effective January 1, 2025, contains a substantial increase in rent (It’s L.A., surprise surprise) and in the security deposit. There are 3,600 free subscribers here. If 10% of you were to become paid subscribers at the $7/month level, this problem would be permanently solved. Please consider this. Your support now in these times is crucially important. So far, we have seen 10% of the hoped-for new paid subscribers step up to these challenging times.

Comments are for paid subscribers.