Donald Trump with Jeff Sessions
| The Trump administration gives every indication of an impending disaster, only partly due to Trump’s own ignorance, ineptitude, corruption, and bigotry. Unlike any previous president-elect, Trump does not know roles, role qualifications, or people with requisite skills to fill vacant positions. To date, his selections are mediocre at best and, as with his selection of Steve Bannon as a senior advisor, a tragedy at worst. Consider General Mike Flynn (Ret.) named as Trump’s National Security Advisor. Some reports of why he was fired from his position as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency contend that he mismanaged the agency. The question is how could Flynn mismanage an existing agency? If he had merely come in late, took long lunches, and left early, the career officials at the agency would have carried him and his job as director would have been secure. Obviously, the reports that said he was fired because of Islamaphobic derangement syndrome are more credible. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, currently the junior Senator from Alabama, has been nominated for Attorney General. He has been, at best, a back bencher in Congress who has distinguished himself primarily by being against seriously addressing any immigration issue, including legal immigration. He has shown no ability to run anything and, as Attorney General, will probably be unable to run the Department of Justice. As a prosecuting attorney, he was not very good. In the 1980s Sessions prosecuted three voting rights advocates for voter fraud, but failed to win convictions. Besides being a racist, as evidenced by this phony prosecution, Sessions tenure in the Senate has typed him as a holdover from another era like the racist southern Senators who preceded him. Michael Pompeo, so far the strongest of Trump’s picks has proven himself to be so much an ideologue that we can surely expect him to cherry pick evidence to make intelligence estimates conform to his ideological biases like the assessment that the Iraq adventure would be a slam dunk. Pompeo, like Flynn, is anti-Muslim and more than willing to condemn all Islam because of the actions of a few. Even more disturbing, Pompeo has defended torture techniques such as waterboarding and rectal feeding. In light of the laws prohibiting torture and the opposition of some conservatives against it, like Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham, we can predict the use of stratagems to circumvent the law and opposition. This group of so-far all-white men are as ill-suited for governing as is Trump himself. Besides their ineptitude and bigotry they bring little to their new proposed positions other than a willingness to serve Trump. And, given Trump’s demonstrated corruption (see Trump University), we can be pretty sure, these selections will not attempt to curtail either his corruption or that of anyone else serving in the administration. |