Faking Normal

stop playing along with this nonsense

Donald Trump’s appointments are controversial. They’re not normal! He’s appointing people who lack experience:

His appointments are very unorthodox, see, because political appointments are usually so deeply serious, and cabinet-level officials are usually chosen for their wisdom and for their extensive real-world experience. As that opinion piece in The Hill argues, “the Kennedy, Gaetz, Gabbard and Hegseth nominations are stunning in the enormous gap between the experience these nominees bring and the task to which they have been assigned.”

None of this merits a serious response. It’s nonsense. Trump’s appointees are failing against a fake standard that was invented for 2024.

Watch Deb Haaland, the current Secretary of the Interior, respond to questions while testifying before a congressional committee. Seriously, if you’ve never watched this person answer questions, just spend even a single minute seeing this with your own eyes:

It’s not hard to find footage like this. She’s an idiot. She never does well in answering questions or explaining policy. She doesn’t know anything about anything, anywhere, in any way, ever. Joe Biden’s Secretary of the Interior is objectively dumber than any shift supervisor at the Taco Bell nearest your home, and go say you have questions about the Chalupa Supreme if you doubt it. Thoughtfully compare your chalupa discourse to Deb Haaland answering questions. (Do not eat the chalupa, which isn’t really food.)

The Department of the Interior manages 500 million acres of public land with an $18 billion budget and 70,000 employees. Let’s review some highlights from Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s bio:

Through high school and most of her 20’s, Secretary Haaland worked at a bakery in Albuquerque. However, at 28, she decided to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in English at the University of New Mexico. In 1994, just four days after graduating, she gave birth to her child, Somáh.

Haaland struggled as a single mother but made the best of her circumstances. She lived paycheck-to-paycheck, relied on food stamps, and at times, stayed with friends for housing. She also worked to heal from alcohol addiction and started her own salsa company, Pueblo Salsa, which she eventually sold so she could attend the University of New Mexico Law School.

My goodness, does Lt. Col. Tulsi Gabbard really have the deep experience to serve as a cabinet-level official? Has she ever even worked in a bakery? If she is to be a senior government leader, what then is the name of her salsa?

Pick somebody. Look at Joe Biden’s cabinet, and dig around. The Department of Transportation has a $110 billion budget and a little less than 60,000 employees. The current Secretary of Transportation is the former two-term mayor of South Bend, Indiana, population 103,000. He also spent a little less than seven years in the Navy Reserve, where he soared to the rank of…lieutenant. Imagine possessing credentials with this kind of depth.

Here’s Jared Bernstein, President Biden’s chief economic advisor, explaining the government’s relationship to the money supply:

“I don’t get it.” Jared Bernstein, the Chairman of the United States Council of Economic Advisers, has a PhD in social work. It would take him a few minutes to figure out how to eat a donut.

I am open to arguments against any nominee, who are all fair game, if there are real arguments to be made. But when media and political figures pull a serious face and intone that Tulsi Gabbard or Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. don’t rise to the level of experience and seriousness that we expect of senior government appointees, point at them and laugh. It’s stupid. Stop playing along. That goes quadruple for Senator Lisa “Failed the Bar Exam Four Times” Murkowski, or any of the worthless Republican-lite senators who are now gravely intoning their concerns about Trump’s appointees. To borrow a response from high-level academic political theory: You suck. Shut up.

The time for patience in the face of this absolute nonsense is long gone.