JANUARY 17, 2016
Photo: Getty
It was a lovely vacation. For the past two months, I’ve been in radio silence on this esteemed blog on the subject of one Donald J. Trump, about whom I used to write every other day during the campaign. While he was picking fights with a revered civil rights icon as well as an Oscar-winning actress, Trump’s flailings in the pre-inaugural period were put in the back of my brain because, frankly, I couldn’t bear to consider what was ahead of us all over the next four (or, shudder, eight years) or to crack jokes about what was all the good that is about to be destroyed.
But now, however, we’ve gotten to the real deal. It’s Inauguration Week! The confirmation hearings for Trump’s cabinet nominees (stacked together in one week to avoid both publicity and ethics research) are mostly over, and boy what a collection of cuckoo birds we have here.
Actually, some are supposed to be OK . Despite the ridiculous nickname, James “Mad Dog” Mattis (sounds like a WWE wrestler) is highly-regarded by both his military colleagues and those on the left and appears to be an acceptable candidate for heading the Department of Defense. He has already assured the American people that he will protect “don’t ask, don’t tell” (which in this administration is at least something).
But look at the rest of these lovelies.
Jeff Sessions (Attorney General) — The Democratic Senator from Alabama is the person whom Trump feels is the best person to enforce the nation’s laws, including civil rights. How devoted is he to protecting civil rights?
- He once called an African-American attorney “boy.”
- He described the Voting Rights Act as “intrusive.”
- He thought the Ku Klux Klan was fine until he learned that they smoked pot.
- He called both the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American.”
- He described a white attorney who took up civil rights cases as “a traitor to his race.”
Just remember. Sessions’ job will be to be the free world’s leading enforcer of civil rights. God help us.
Dr. Ben Carson (Secretary of Housing & Urban Development) — Dr. Snoozy is back! What better job could could a pediatric neurosurgeon have than a position managing the nation’s housing crisis? How in God’s earth is he qualified for this job? Let’s see…maybe …because…he lived in a house once? And he just decreed that there should be no “extra rights” for gay Americans. Nighty night, doctor.
Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State) — Tillerson, head of Exxon/Mobil, is, after his Senate testimony, shaping to the the weakest and most uninformed Secretary of State in recent memory. (Lots of variations of “I’ll get back to you on that” as answers in his testimony.) But he does have one crucial qualification for Trump — he’s friends with Vladimir Putin, who once awarded him the coveted (in Putin’s mind) honor of the “Order of Friendship.” Diplomacy be damned! Just as in the real world, it’s all about who you know.
Rick Perry (Secretary of Energy) — Remember the notorious “oops” moment when Gov. Perry in a debate couldn’t remember the third useless cabinet department that he was determined to wipe out? Do you recall what cabinet department it turned out to be? The Department of Energy! –the very department that Trump thinks Perry is the best person in the world to lead! You can’t write this stuff!
The nominees who are opposed to the very things that the department is supposed to protect —
Andy Pudzer (Secretary of Labor) — Yeah, nominate to head the department that’s supposed to protect American workers the head of the fast-food chain Hardee’s (is that even in business anymore?) who is adamantly opposed to any raise in the minimum wage. That’s protection!
Betsy DeVos (Secretary of Education) — Yeah, nominate to head the department that’s supposed to raise the level of quality in American public schools the Amway executive who is a Christian advocate of charter schools and has shown little interest in American public schools. That’s protection!
Scott Pruitt (Head of the Environmental Protection Agency) — Yeah, nominate to head the department that’s supposed to stop the increasing threat posed by global warming the Attorney General of Oklahoma who is a fervent climate change denier who has vowed to eliminate all of the environmental rules that have been put in place by President Obama. That’s protection!
This is just scratching the surface of some of Trump’s more fascinating gems among his appointments. Maybe you have one I haven’t mentioned. (There’s plenty more.) Please let us know your own picks in our comments section below.
