WATCH: Never forget — it’s not the name of the agency (“DOGE,” Department of Eduction, etc.) or the title of the cabinet official that matters. It’s the mission they are harnessing that agency to serve. And just as in gerrymandered red states, what we’ll see from the new federal government are agencies serving private interests and not the public/common good.
Once you reframe things to see that it’s not about public service at all (naive me failed to see this for a long time), most of what they do is entirely predictable: their policies will reflect that private interest mission. So will the outcomes.
Day 3 — December 3, 2024
More Trump nominations woes only weeks into the process:
A second Trump nominee withdrew his nomination outright. A Florida Sheriff whom Trump had picked to lead the Drug Enforcement Agency stepped aside, stating cryptically that the “gravity of this very important responsibility set in.” What he didn’t explain was why he concluded he was not up to that responsibility.
In the meantime, Jane Mayer of the New Yorker uncovered even more damning facts about Trump’s Defense Secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, already under a dark cloud: he was “forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.” One report found that Hegseth was “repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events.” The report also detailed a highly toxic work environment of sexual assault and harassment under his leadership.
Word broke late last night that Trump was considering Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as a potential replacement. In recent years, Trump has repeatedly excoriated Governor DeSantis, among other things calling him “Rondesanctimonious,” saying that he needed “a personality transplant,” and calling a foreign trip DeSantis took “a total bomb.” The New York Times once summarized: “In a series of sexually charged attacks, Mr. Trump suggested — without a shred of proof — that Mr. DeSantis wore high heels, that he might be gay and that perhaps he was a pedophile.”
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