Talk of who will fill President-elect Donald J. Trump’s new Cabinet has already inspired rampant speculation, and a chart of potential picks from CNN revealed “a deep bench of idiots, freaks and wannabe tough guys,” according to John Oliver.
“That chart f---ing sucks,” The Last Week Tonight host said Sunday. “It looks like a ‘choose your fighter’ screen where the only thing they’re fighting is the arc of the moral universe. It looks like an advent calendar where every circle opens up to a tiny piece of literal shit. It looks like a game board for Guess Who? Oops! All a--holes.”
Trump already has named Susie Wiles as his incoming chief of staff. And he’s expected to formally name New York congresswoman and chair of the House Republican Conference, Elise Stefanik, to become the new United Nations ambassador.
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But Oliver zeroed in on the question marks over the headshots of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk, declaring: “Even the chart itself is surprised that they’re there, and honestly, chart: Same.”
Oliver described RFK Jr. as an “enemy to all animals, friend to all measles” and reminded viewers that “Trump plans to let him go wild on medicines, you know, really get in there and mix things up, like a worm in a frontal cortex.”
Oliver seemed more skeptical about plans to put Musk in charge of cutting wasteful government spending, even though Musk once boasted he could easily trim the federal budget by $2 trillion, even if it means a period of “temporary hardship” for many Americans. “And seeing a man worth $300 billion telling the country to endure hardship and live within their means fills me with a feeling that apparently I cannot say out loud for legal reasons,” Oliver said, adding: “Look, ultimately I don’t see Musk going through the federal budget line by line because he’s just going to get bored and go back to something more his speed like, I don’t know, finding a place to do another big-boy jump.”
Some other potential Cabinet-level positions under Trump’s second term could include Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as U.S. attorney general, despite not only coming under federal investigations for bribery as well as settling a state securities fraud case against him earlier this year by agreeing to pay $300,000 in restitution, and perform hundreds of hours of community service and another 15 hours of legal ethics training.
More concerning for Oliver, however, was was Paxton’s refusal to sign a letter condemning violence on the eve of the election.
Among qualifications for AG, Oliver said, “I would argue that horny for another insurrection shouldn’t be one of them.”
Oliver also exposed potential CIA director Kash Patel as “a man so devoted to Trump he even has a series of children’s books called The Plot Against The King,” about King Donald fighting “Hillary Queenton.” Trump reportedly considered Patel as a deputy FBI director during his first term, only to have then AG Bill Barr reject the idea. “Well, Bill Barr isn’t there to stop it anymore,” Oliver said, noting how Patel told Steve Bannon on his podcast last year that he would go after the media, saying: “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
“Well, I don’t love the sound of that,” Oliver said.
“But that is just scratching the surface of a deep bench of idiots, freaks, and wannabe tough guys eager to get into the White House and start breaking things. In January, things can get very bad very fast.”
