251) Day 19 -- Reason #19 to revolt against Predatory Capitalism: Political Corruption, Part 3 -- Trump's Nominees for Top Positions
In the previous essay, we looked at one of Trump’s picks, his Number 1 person, for one of the most important jobs in the US government, Matt Gaetz. And we used Matt Gaetz as a kind of symbol, a symbol of what Trump’s motivations are, and a symbol of the profound level of corruption that MUST exist, or someone like Matt Gaetz, someone with such horrible character, such lack of judgement, such utter lack of qualifications, would NEVER get even close to wielding such power. The fact that Matt Gaetz was even allowed to be chosen, (let alone that Donald Trump was even allowed to run for office again, as a convicted and many-times-alleged sexual assaulter and felon), is about the clearest testament for corruption I can imagine.
It was also noteworthy because, with such a clear, horrible case as Matt Gaetz, EVEN THE REPUBLICANS had enough basic human decency and common sense (or possible just calculated risk, who knows?), that people stood up, said “no”, and resisted this choice until Matt Gaetz resigned.
(Note: And then started selling Ivermectin online. Like, no shit, for real. He’ll give you a discount code!)
Today we’ll look at three more of Trump’s picks for top spots in the government. Obviously, I can’t write a book here, so we’ll focus on just a few, and narrow our scope to some of the absolutely most important positions in government, the ones that deeply and universally affect Americans’ lives and their security and health as a nation. And on Jan 21st, we’ll look at the final two in our mini-series on corruption.
And again, we ask ourselves, what were Trump’s motivations for these picks? Were they TRULY the best, most brilliant and accomplished people for the job? Or were they ideological bed-mates, with a track record of zero ethics, such that Trump can count on them to carry out his orders?
Is Trump really building a Presidential Team to make the United States enter some Age of Greatness? Or is Trump becoming, quite simply, a dictator, seeking to reshape the world in his self-perceived image? Is this to be America’s Golden Age? Or the American Reich?
* * * * *
Pamela Bondi — Attorney General
Replacing Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, Pamela Bondi was one of the defense lawyers for Trump’s impeachment trial in 2020. She then headed the legal team for the pro-Trump “America First Policy Institute.” It’s no surprise that Trump would trust her, given that she repeatedly amplified Trump’s claims that there was large-scale voter fraud in the 2020 election, especially in key swing states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. So confident was Pam Bondi, or perhaps so eager to curry Trump’s favour, that she even claimed Pennsylvania had been WON (past tense), despite votes still being counted, despite the state not yet having been called, and, indeed, despite Joe Biden winning that state in the end. A Trump supporter, she certainly seems to be.
But actually, her loyalty was birthed a long time before all this, it would seem. Way back in 2013, when Pam Bondi was Attorney General for the state of Florida, she was considering a lawsuit against Trump, regarding tax fraud bound up with the disgraced Trump University. Pam was well aware of the depth of these charges, having received 22 different complaints about fraudulent practices at Trump’s “university”.
Suddenly, Trump donated $25000 to support her re-election campaign, and poof, magic — she changed her mind and none of the charges were pursued. Although nothing can be proven (maybe it was just a coincidence?), it appears that for $25000, Trump effectively bought her. And so now, she HAS to be loyal, because she has that decision hanging over her head, and more than a decade later, having enjoyed positions of power facilitated by Trump, just think of what she has to lose….
And, surprise surprise, in 2016, after a lengthy investigation, the IRS determined that the “donation” was illegal, and fined Trump. Pam Bondi faced no consequences however, except perhaps to be forever loyalty-bound to Trump.
Then again, It’s probably pretty easy for her to be loyal anyway, given the similarities between Trump’s views and her own. For example, Pam Bondi has:
Tried to overturn Obamacare, thereby depriving millions of Americans of health care.
Led “Lock Her Up” chants against Hilary Clinton at the Republican National Convention.
Tried to allow insurance companies to deny health coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Supported the banning of same-sex marriages.
And what has she been focused on for the last few years, with AFPI (the American First Policy Institute)? Oh, you know, Trump-y things, like:
Getting rid of civil service protections for federal employees, so they can be fired without any rights to appeal;
Expanding domestic oil and gas production, opening up new federal lands for fast-tracked petroleum exploration and drilling, and building pipelines;
Imposing barriers and hoops-to-jump-through, for people seeking to have an abortion;
Ending federal funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood;
Freeing The Gun by opposing “red flag laws” that would restrict gun ownership for high-risk individuals, and supporting legislation that would allow people with a concealed carry permit in ANY STATE to conceal-carry across all 50 states;
Imposing tariffs on imports;
Reducing corporate taxes;
Canceling climate change initiatives;
Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement
Opposing transgender rights;
Completing the US-Mexico wall;
And she sure does love fighting those hordes of immigrants that Trump’s always talking about; she was even a lobbyist for The GEO Group, a private prison company. They love detaining people; it’s their entire business model.
Is she competent? Well, she definitely knows how to climb the right-wing ladder. And she is most definitely ideologically ’tilted’. But Trump believes in her competence, 100%. As part of his justification for nominating her to be the US Attorney General, Trump claimed that in Florida, she had “worked to stop the trafficking of deadly drugs, and reduce the tragedy of Fentanyl Overdose Deaths, which have destroyed many families across our Country.” Plus, he confidently stated, she had done “an incredible job”.
Although strangely, during her term at the helm in Florida, drug deaths due to fentanyl doubled. That was her “incredible job”.
Pete Hegseth — Secretary of Defense
So Pete Hegseth is going to be Trump’s right-hand man when it comes to issues of the military eh? How interesting. He fits right in, along with Trump and almost-Matt, all of them professing their faith in Jesus.
But yes, first of all, he DOES have a military career behind him, having served in Guantanamo Bay, one year in Iraq, and two years training Afghan security forces.
Plus, he DOES have some experience running organizations; not as big as say, the US Military, but he’s not completely wet behind the ears in executive positions.
But how well did those experiences go, you might wonder? Well, he was Executive Director of Vets For Freedom (VFF). However, one year after Hegseth being hired, it came to light that the organization was fiscally in deep shit, about half a million in debt and unable to pay its creditors. Where did all the money go? Apparently, an unknown amount went to the parties that Hegseth organized. As a result, he was demoted, his salary dropping from $45000, to $5000. In his last year, 2012, the organization managed to garner a whoppingly impressive $81 in grants. Yes, that’s right — $81. It’s not a typo.
He also spent some time running Concerned Veterans for America (a Koch brothers organization). He promptly hired his brother, who had just graduated from university, for a salary of $108 000. However, he was forced to step down from both VFF and Concerned Vets for America, after serious allegations arose of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.
Personal misconduct? Well, he was drunk all the time, so intoxicated during official events that he would pass out, have to be restrained when he ‘“got out of hand”, and liked to shout slogans calling for death to ALL MUSLIMS. He was reported to have sexually harassed female employees, but under his watch, of course, the organization simply ignored any allegations of sexual assault and other “improprieties”.
What a great pattern for the person overseeing the US Military eh? They NEVER have problems with sexual assault!
Ever the enterprising lad, he formed a political action committee, MN PAC. The PAC raked in a whole $15000 in donations. Now I’m not sure exactly how much an organization can accomplish with $15000. But he threw some good parties. $5000 worth of parties. Great use of the budget, Pete!
A big fan of pressuring Trump to pardon vets with war crimes, Pete doesn’t seem to care much what those WAR CRIMES are. Especially if they’re against Muslims. One guy shot at CIVILIANS, indiscriminately, and fatally stabbed a teenager while he was receiving medical treatment. Definitely someone deserving a Presidential pardon, right?
He joined the National Guard, but was flagged as a potential insider threat, and kicked out of the group that provided security for Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration. One of the unit’s leaders had noticed, in addition to Pete’s reputation as unstable, that he had a White supremacist tattoo, “Deus Vult”, on his bicep. (Pete denies the tattoo is about White supremacy, of course, although….um….White Supremacists would recognize him from a mile away as one of their own.)
It makes you wonder, what would Jesus-loving Pete think if he found out that Jesus wasn’t a White Supremacist? Or White, for that matter? And that the glorious Nordic past his tattoo hearkens back to, was about people who believed in Odin. Not the Bible. What a mind-fuck that would be! Although he probably just would deny it. After all, that’s like, education and science and history and stuff, and Pete most definitely is against those things. People shouldn’t learn from scientists and academics! They should learn The Truth.
So what does Pete Hegseth believe? Well, a short list:
The Left and the Right have irreconcilable differences that cannot be revolved through politics. A culture war is the only solution.
He wants an “American crusade”, a “Holy War for the righteous cause of human freedom”.
He’s radically opposed to (deep breath here), “feminism, secularism, globalism, socialism, environmentalism, Islamism, genderism and leftism”. In the upcoming Holy War, there are only two possible outcomes for Pete: Either “Americanism” will prevail or “death will”.
He thinks worrying about climate change is silly. Kids should be educated to worry about “real threats”, specifically “Islamic extremism”.
He spread beliefs, during COVID, that Democrats “were rooting for coronavirus to spread. They’re rooting for it to grow. They’re rooting for the problem to get worse.”
Instead, he ENCOURAGED healthy people to get the virus, so they’d build immunity. And he just loved getting a little racism into his interviews, calling COVID, the “Wuhan virus”, “Chinese virus”, and “Kung Flu”.
He wants to withdraw from NATO, and the United Nations, believing they are ineffective, “woke” and anti-American. He also wants to stop funding Ukraine. After all, the Russian invasion “pales in comparison to wokeness and crime”.
And really, he hates Islam. He says it “is not a religion of peace, and it never has been”. No, “Islamists” plan to “conquer” Europe and North America, allying with secularism to destroy “our nation’s Judeo-Christian institutions.” A key part of their “Islamist” plan is to have as many babies as possible, and out-populate the “native” (by which he means Christian white people) populations of Europe and North America. And let’s not forget, when he gets super-drunk, he likes to chant “Kill all Muslims”.
He supported the Jan 6th insurrection, calling the rioters “patriots who had re-awoken to the reality of what the left has done”. Contradicting himself, he also believes the riots were instigated by “Antifa”, who he hates and thinks are racists trying to take over White society.
The gays? Oh, they’re “abnormal”. Most def they shouldn’t have the right to marry! Like, duhhh, right? In fact, he hates LGBTQ+ people so much he has co-published editorials saying that same-sex marriages had opened the floodgates to incest, polygamy, pedophilia, child marriage, bestiality, and zoophilia. “What if we ‘loved’ our sister and wanted to marry her? Or maybe two women at the same time? A 13-year-old? The family dog?” “Boys can wear bras and girls can wear ties until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the reality that the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral”.
Pete is hell-bent on removing diversity from the military. He has said that the military slogan “our diversity is our strength” is the “dumbest phrase on planet Earth”. And he wants to get rid of all military leaders who support such programs: “Any general that was involved—general, admiral, whatever—that was involved in any of the DEI, woke shit has got to go.”
Under his watch, he’s a big fan of torture, apparently, arguing that the US should ignore the Geneva Conventions. After all, gotta get those Muslims any way you can, right? Torture, after all, must be what Jesus would’ve supported…or something.
Back to his faith in Jesus for a second…So, in 2017, a female staffer for the California Federation of Republican Women told police that Jesus-loving Pete had raped her in a hotel room after a Republican event. She’d been with him at the hotel bar, when “things got fuzzy” and she believed he had slipped something into her drink. Next she remembers, she’s in a hotel room with Pete Hegseth, who has taken away her phone, and blocked her from leaving the room. She told police she remembered “saying NO a lot, but he had sex with her anyway. Afterwards she went to the ER for a rape-kit test.
Hegseth told the police, yes, they did have sex, but it was consensual. And that was that. Until the woman launched a civil lawsuit, so Pete paid her off to shut her up with a non-disclosure agreement.
While we’re talking about faith in Jesus, Pete married his high-school sweetheart, who divorced him after he ADMITTED to five affairs. Then he married his second wife and had three kids. But, while married to her, he had another child with an executive producer on FOX.
Which is exactly “What Jesus Would Do”! Right?
The Republicans have wildly supported his nomination. I mean, clearly, he is one of their own….
Kristi Noem – Secretary of Homeland Security
Kristi Noem works tirelessly to ban abortion. An extreme pro-lifer (except when it comes to dogs, goats, and wildlife — see below…), she believes “life begins at fertilization”. Thus, abortion should be banned, even in cases of rape, incest, child-rape, you name it. The only exception is if the mother’s life is in danger. Because life is sacred, right?
She also wants to ban medical research on embryonic stem cells and ban in-vitro fertilization. And her “100% anti-abortion voting record” is a matter of personal pride that she has stated she intends to maintain.
When pressed on her anti-abortion views, she has been specifically asked about a well-known case of a 10-year-old rape victim who had to cross state lines to get an abortion. And yep, if Kristi had her way, that child would’ve been a mommy. It’s God’s will, right?
Ever the paragon of honesty, Kristi ran for Governor on a campaign of “government transparency”. In her first State of the State address she pledged to “work toward building the most transparent administration South Dakota has ever seen”. However, since becoming Governor, she has been sued and critiqued many times for denying people access to public records. This one’s a long story; you can look it up if interested. She even pulled all the powerful strings of her Administration to halt an ethics committee investigation into her daughter. No wonder Trump likes her so much.
Environmentally? She endorses free-reign over oil drilling, has opposed designating wilderness areas as “protected”, and has sought to block Environmental Protection Agency efforts to curb air pollution. In fact, she likes pipelines so much she has promoted anti-protest legislation to criminalize protesting against pipelines. So much for Freedom….
This really pissed off the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which has BANNED Kristi Noem from setting foot on their territory.
In fact, due to her horrid views on Native rights, all Native American tribes in her state of South Dakota have banned her from their territories. (One is in question; media reports are conflicting, so I’m not sure. But at least 8 out of 9 have banned her.). So, the Governor of South Dakota can’t enter approximately 20% of the land area of…South Dakota.
COVID response? Oh baby….this is a doozy. While COVID cases were surging in her state in 2020, Kristi redirected pandemic relief funds to instead fund TOURISM CAMPAIGNS.
She publicly DISCOURAGED people from wearing protective masks, ENCOURAGED large gatherings, ridiculed social distancing, and publicly denied the advice of the medical community. The Trump-y Republicans loved her response to COVID so much they gave her a chance to give a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
She also promoted evaluating hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that Trump was a big fan of as a COVID cure. It doesn’t cure COVID though; never has, never will. But it CAN give people fatal heart problems! Wheeee….
As a result of her policies, South Dakota had some of the worst COVID outbreaks in the country, with COVID spreading rapidly through workplaces like factories, hundreds of workers at a single pork plant contracting COVID, and food inspectors who entered these places then spreading it as they travelled. But Kristi claimed “99% of what’s going on today wasn’t happening inside the facility.” In other words, the uniquely awful outbreaks in South Dakota workplaces, not to mention schools and universities, had nothing to do (well, 1%) with the fact that there were no safety measures taken and people with COVID symptoms simply went to work, school, etc. And then were encouraged to have parties! Wheeee…. But nope, nothing to see here folks. It was “other things” that caused all the outbreaks. (Who knows, right? Maybe….Satan?)
When pressed on these seeming failures, Kristi said they were successes! The higher COVID cases, hospitalized people, deaths even, were “because of increased rates of testing”. …..I can’t even think of a witty response to that, it’s so unbelievably fucking stupid.
Later, in 2021 after the peak of the crisis seemed to pass, Kristi criticized other Republican governors for enacting mandatory measures against COVID-19, and warned that people were trying to “rewrite history” about what had happened. She argued that South Dakota had done a bang-up job and effectively combated the pandemic. In reality though, South Dakota had the 10th-highest death rate and third-highest case rate of any state at that time. Good job, Kristi!
In her other views, she OF COURSE opposes same-sex marriage. She opposes legislation that prevents discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
And she hates Obamacare and Medicaid! Who needs health care, right? Especially in South Dakota! (Note: her policies would reduce benefits for 55% of the people in South Dakota.)
She’s also a big fan of tax cuts to the rich. She has tried to “simplify the tax code” (which is double-speak for allowing loop-holes the wealthy can use to evade taxes). She wants to lower the corporate tax rate, and lower estate taxes.
And how would she make up for these short-falls in funding? Easy peasy — reduce funding of the Department of Veterans Affairs, public transit systems, carbon-emissions-reduction programs, and Republicans’ favourite punching bag, the Environmental Protection Agency.
Then there’s the weird-AF shit she wrote in her second autobiography. In “the chapter “Bad Day to Be a Goat”, Kristi talks about having weekend guests at her family’s hunting lodge, and them all going out for a final morning of hunting. She brought Cricket with them, her 14-month-old dog, so it could learn to hunt with the other dogs. But Cricket, not following the rules, messed up the hunt, scaring away the game. She wrote that she “hated that dog”, and after it attacked some neighbours chickens, concluded Cricket was “dangerous”, “untrainable”, and “less than worthless”. So she took Cricket to a gravel pit and shot her dead. Then she decided to kill the family goat, which was “disgusting, musky, rancid”, “nasty and mean”. So she “dragged him” to the gravel pit too, and shot him. Botching the first shot, she had to head back to the house and re-load, coming back and finishing the goat off with a second shot.
This would be a Class 2 offence under South Dakota law. Kristi has defended both actions saying that you have to make tough decisions in the country sometimes.
In any case, she’s a Christian. And Trump loves her.