Musk and Trump get all the attention but in the Trump regime, incompetence is a job requirement.

A cabinet of dunces

David R. Lurie With rare exceptions, you must be a rich white male, totally loyal to Trump and cruel. Being corrupt, stupid or incompetent is not a problem. Credit: Mark Schiefelbein

As the second Trump administration passed its 100 day mark, pundits expressed awe at the “astonishing” amount the president had purportedly accomplished.

Trump and his cronies have certainly engaged in more flagrantly illegal and wantonly destructive activities than any modern presidential administration, and in a strikingly brief time. But as we head toward the sixth month of Trump 2.0, it is becoming increasingly clear how little there is to it apart from self-enrichment and nihilism.

In his second term in office, Trump is, truly, being Trump. He’s rigorously demanding that the government be “operated” the way he conducted business for decades — that is, solely and exclusively for short-term gain and self-aggrandizement. The result, it is becoming clear, is a regime that leaves chaos in its wake instead of creating anything approaching the foundation for a legacy.

Thus, far from setting out to institutionalize a sustainable right-wing revolution — like Ronald Reagan did, with some pernicious success — Trumpers are engaged in a project directed at sabotaging as much of the nation’s government and destroying as much of its economic and political power, as possible.

While the consequences of this nihilistic assault are likely to be catastrophic, the hopeful possibility is they could also be remarkably short-lived.

The incompetence is the point

Noem, earning her nickname "ICE Barbie."
Best known for bragging about shooting her puppy

To meet his nihilistic standards, Trump has systematically stocked the government with cronies that he demands perform incompetently.

For instance, during Senate testimony this week, Trump Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared that the habeas corpus clause, a bedrock constitutional guarantee against illegal detention, protects the “constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country." (Watch below.)

In this and other contexts, Noem — who purportedly manages the agency responsible for carrying out Trump’s lynchpin immigration policies — has established that she’s not simply a bad faith actor, but also a genuinely and willfully stupid person.

She’s not alone. Profound inability and/or unwillingness to perform competently are job requirements for service as a senior member of the Trump regime.

Democratic senators who voted to confirm the few Trump cabinet nominees who had minimal qualifications for their jobs — such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — have appeared shocked to see these Trump officials strenuously endeavoring to be just as incompetent, and morally obtuse, as Noem. But they should not have been surprised.

In an administration in which the sole consistent goals are valorizing Trump and making him as rich as possible, any official who demonstrates an ability to effectively administer and carry out the business of the US government is viewed with profound suspicion. On the other hand, those who are willing to learn incompetence and moral obtuseness are promoted.

Trump is now, absurdly, speaking of Rubio as his potential successor to the presidency. This comes after the longtime Russia hawk and promoter of American international leadership has become the willing instrument of Trump’s campaign to undermine it and turn our nation’s longstanding allies into enemies, aligning the United States with pariah nations like Russia and undemocratic ones like El Salvador. 

Rubio is also serving as the figurehead of Trump’s shambolic gutting of American soft power infrastructure that has left vast numbers of children around the world at risk of starving as food rots in warehouses, and HIV sufferers to die in desperation for lack of lifesaving medication.

Trump has similarly rewarded Bessent — who business leaders claimed was well positioned to serve as a steward of the American economy because of his experience working for George Soros — for choosing to become a pathetic stooge whose primary function is to make nonsensical claims in support of his boss’s full bore assaults on the US economy.

Most recently, Bessent was heard parroting Dear Leader by contending that the panic in the bond markets induced by Trump’s irrational and constantly shifting tariffs — and the resulting increases in interest rates — should be of no concern to consumers because oil prices are falling. Left out of that “analysis” is the reality that oil prices have declined rapidly in anticipation of a potential recession.

Nobody, including the credit rating agency Moody’s — which just downgraded the US government’s longstanding AAA credit rating — takes anything Bessent says seriously anymore. But his deep and abiding commitment to being willfully stupid on Trump’s behalf has resulted in the president affording him increasing “responsibility” for what passes as MAGA economic “policy.”

Nihilism as a job requirement

Most of the cronies Trump has placed “in charge” of other critical agencies of the US government did not have to learn to be stupid like Rubio and Bessent. Instead, they were chosen precisely because had established track records of being lazy, ignorant, incurious, and morally obtuse, thus giving Trump confidence they would not bat an eye as the institutions they are charged with administering are destroyed. The examples are becoming chillingly familiar.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was selected to “head” the Department of Health and Human Services — a sprawling agency responsible for everything from Medicare and Medicaid to pharmaceutical regulation and food assistance — precisely because he’s a conspiratorial wacko who’s perfectly willing to preside over the dismantlement of much of the federal healthcare infrastructure so long as he’s given free rein to pursue his paranoid assaults on vaccinations, fluoride, and lifesaving medical treatments.

This week, Kennedy angrily declared to a Senate subcommittee that he denied daycare funding to the children of working parents (even as he and Trump threaten to deny Medicaid to people who don’t work) because Sen. Patty Murray is somehow responsible for Americans suffering from an “epidemic of chronic disease,” a contention so bizarre and defamatory that it led the presiding Republican senator to intervene and bring an end to Kennedy’s rant. 

Pam Bondi was selected be the nation’s attorney general because she’s happy to devote her term to serving as a near daily guest on Fox News, where she proudly describes the efforts of Trump cronies to break nearly every core function of the Department of Justice, including its policing of financial crimes, government corruption, flouting of environmental laws, and violations of civil and voting rights.

Meanwhile, Linda McMahon, a pro wrestling mogul who has no apparent knowledge or interest in the activities of the Department of Education she was chosen to “administer,” is content to serve as figurehead of the illegal Trump scheme to dismantle that department without congressional approval. 

In the process, she’s happily presiding over a rapidly growing cascade of chaos as uncertainty grows over the administration of the federal government’s massive student loan program. Often entirely unexplained delays and cancellations of grants to educational institutions are already contributing to the collapse of colleges and universities, and causing hardships in many already underfunded local school districts.

For her part, Noem — whose mélange of utter laziness and amorality makes her the ideal type of a Trump crony — is doing her best to exacerbate actual disasters. Apparently anticipating that it would please Trump, she declared that she will — once again, entirely illegally — dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is primarily responsible for coordinating and assisting in relief efforts by other federal agencies, without establishing any replacement for it.

As Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who led Florida’s Director of Emergency Management in the wake of a major hurricane, has warned, Noem’s actions have already set the stage for the potential disappearance of some rural communities, which are unlikely to have the resources required to recover from future hurricanes.

Once again, this is not simply bad governance — it is systematic stupidity. And Trump, who has praised Noem’s gutting of FEMA, loves it.

Governance by arson and sabotage

Trump is unique among the nation’s presidents in having no interest in presiding over a functioning government, let alone building institutions that will survive his term in office.

That is why the analogies pundits have attempted to draw between the early periods of other presidencies, including those of FDR and Ronald Reagan, fall entirely flat. Unlike all of his predecessors, Trump is not even attempting to build a legacy that will survive beyond the last days of his regime.

What is shaping up to be Trump’s single substantial legislative “achievement” is a “big beautiful” bill that is largely comprised of the continuation and expansion of hugely regressive tax cuts (which were unpopular the first time the GOP passed them in 2017, setting the stage for the loss of the Republican House majority the next year) and an even less popular assault on Medicaid.

Hence, while the party-line passage of this legislation will kill and otherwise harm many children and other vulnerable Americans while transferring even more wealth to the rich, it is highly likely to be rejected by voters, and to be substantially undone when Trump leaves the scene.

The Trump administration’s illegal sabotage of the nation’s government, while hugely destructive, could also prove largely transitory.

When Trump exits the White House (or is forced to exit) office in a few years, he and his cronies will leave a huge swath of damage in their wake, likely including a record of avoidable epidemics, natural disasters followed by recovery debacles, and a US economy that is facing unprecedented challenges to its international preeminence. Furthermore, entire government departments will have been rendered empty shells, with many still reeling from damage inflicted upon them by Trump and his cronies.

But unlike either FDR or Reagan, Trump the governmental arsonist is highly unlikely to leave behind any substantial institutional or ideological legacy that his successor will have to grapple with. Rather, the next president will be tasked with a massive rebuilding project, much as nations — including this one — have had to reconstruct themselves, sometimes for the better, in the wake of major wars.

The possibility that Trump’s assault will be so cataclysmic as to leave the United States without the democratic institutions required to move beyond the disaster that comprises his regime can not be discounted. But if we succeed in keeping our nation from imploding between now and 2029, putting Trumpism behind us may prove easier than some imagine.