What Trump requires in a nominee is some combination of stupidity, weakness, low character, personal corruption, and, most importantly, lack of essential qualifications for the post in question. And so his administration is running aground under the combined incompetence of Pete Hegseth, who is not stupid but is a weak man of low character and entirely unqualified to serve as secretary of defense; Hegseth’s fellow Fox News figure and résumé-inflator Janette Nesheiwat; conspiracy kook Kash Patel and his conspiracy kook deputy, the aforementioned Dan Bongino; conspiracy kook Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; conspiracy kook Tulsi Gabbard; weirdo mall ninja Kristi Noem; addled crackpot Peter Navarro; television quack Mehmet Oz; Kelly Loeffler, who is married to the CEO of the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange and has the world’s luckiest timing; Florida goofus Pam Bondi, who might as well get an honorary degree from Trump University; madcap billionaire dope Howard Lutnick, whose family is apparently cashing in on the Trump-inflated crypto craze; Trump’s fellow pro-wrestling figure Linda McMahon; Real World veteran Sean Duffy (“Rachel and Sean are America’s first and longest-married reality TV couple,” the White House literature boasts); feckless Putin enthusiast Steve Witkoff, etc.

What is important to understand is that Trump does not elevate these people in spite of the fact that they are out of their depth, stupid, corrupt, and unqualified, but because they are out of their depth, stupid, corrupt, and unqualified.

Here’s Trump in his own words:

You’ll find that when you become very successful, the people that you will like best are the people that are less successful than you, because when you go to a table you can tell them all of these wonderful stories, and they’ll sit back and listen. Does that make sense to you? OK? Always be around unsuccessful people because everybody will respect you. Do you understand that?

… Republicans—from leaders in Congress to the rank and file—are so in thrall to naïve monarchism, so convinced that all they need to do is to trust the leader, that they ensure that their tsar is, in fact, surrounded with just the kind of boobs and criminals and n’er-do-wells you can count on to fail the tsar, to keep things from him, to freelance their own crimes and imbecilities and acts of incompetence.

Kevin D. Williamson