Donald Trump has spent his first days in office issuing a flurry of executive orders. Read through them and you’ll notice a theme: One order, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” asserts that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle” and “is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” Another, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” claims that diversity initiatives and anti-discrimination laws “undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement” and “threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination.”
A third, “Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation,” claims that “the FAA betrayed its mission by elevating dangerous discrimination over excellence” by prioritizing diversity in hiring. (Trump also purged an FAA safety committee and dumped the TSA director; just days later, the United States experienced its first commercial airplane crash in almost two decades, leaving dozens dead.)
Honor, truth, and discipline are indeed important values for soldiers to hold—whether trans or cisgender—which makes Pete Hegseth, Trump’s narrowly-confirmed new Department of Defense chief, an all the more eyebrow-raising pick. This is a man who has a history of heavy drinking, has faced accusations of sexual misconduct and assault (which he has denied), has defended soldiers accused of serious war crimes and argued that the Geneva Conventions and other rules of war are too restrictive.
Hegseth has cheated on two wives, impregnating his current one while married to the second, with whom he had an affair while married to the first—not exactly the definition of honor, truthfulness, or discipline. (The president, too, is on his third marriage, having had a very public affair with his second wife, and haing been alleged to have cheated on his current wife, Melania Trump, with multiple women.) Hegseth is also the least-qualified Department of Defense chief ever confirmed. “Merit-based” is not how one can reasonably describe his ascendance to his Cabinet role.
The same can be said for a great many of Trump’s nominees, many of whom seem also to have come onto Trump’s radar simply by virtue of appearing on Fox News. Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to head the FBI, is so unexperienced he even members of Trump’s administration were shocked by his being installed in a role at the National Security Council—his primary qualification seems to be that he is endlessly submissive to Trump. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services, has no health expertise, other than declaring himself an expert based on his half-formed (and potentially deadly) opinions on vaccines, and his general hostility to processed food.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s choice for Director of National Intelligence, lacks much in the way of intelligence experience other than palling around with hostile foreign nations; Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, was the governor of one of America’s least-populous states and perhaps most ‘famous’ for boasting in her memoir about shooting her puppy (and a goat)—quite the defense of one’s homeland.
I could go on. It is, in fact, harder to find Trump cabinet picks who are objectively qualified for their roles than to identify one after another who obviously are not. Even many the ones who aren’t especially controversial aren’t exactly the cream of the crop—Kelly Loeffler, Trump’s choice to head the Small Business Administration, has been investigated for insider trading. They have all bought into Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
Which makes it all the more repulsive that Democrats are acting as if many of these nominees are normal. Yes, some are pushing back on some of the most extreme and awful among them. But others are being approved despite lacking the merit necessary for the role. Perhaps Democratic senators believe that they have to pick their battles, and they do—but why are they not picking these ones?
This very well may be the most immoral, least qualified cabinet in modern American history. And that’s on purpose: People who are qualified have reputations to maintain and professional futures to protect. Those who don’t understand that their fates are tied to Trump and Trump alone—and Trump understands that, too.
