With the withdrawal of Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan as nominee for Secretary of Defense over domestic violence revelations, it should be clear to any sentient person that the Trump regime has problems checking out the backgrounds of their political appointees. Think of the list of nutjobs, accused wife beaters, and grifters that corrupt, incompetent liar Donald "Rump" Trump has foisted on us. There are the grifters: former EPA head Scott "Screw It" Pruitt, former HHS Secretary Tom "Name Your" Price and former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, all with ethics problems stemming from their expensive tastes and sense of entitlement. There are the abusers and alimony deadbeats: former White (Supremacist) House strategist Steve "Loose Cannon" Bannon, former Trump aide Rob "Left Hook" Porter, failed Secretary of Labor hopeful Andy "Putz" Puzder, failed Federal Reserve hopefuls Stephen Moore and Herman "999" Cain. We've only identified the most noteworthy ones.
They were not the "best and brightest" to begin with, and Trump is having a difficult time finding new people to appoint that can walk and chew gum at the same time. As Dan Drezner puts it in today's Washington Post,
"All of this is going to get worse. At this point, there are only two kinds of people willing to work in this administration. The first are those at the end of their career and want one last, meaningless hurrah. The others are dead-enders who would never get hired by anyone else."It appears that the desperation to fill key posts is so high that vetting consists of whether Rump likes the looks of them on the Fux Channel and whether they say "nice" things about him. His boast of hiring only "the best people" continues to be a sad joke on the rest of us.
