The Gang Running This Town
WASHINGTON -- I often amuse myself by asking which member of the Trump administration is most insane and dangerous.
Dear reader, share your thoughts.
The White House is turning the lights out on democracy. Take deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, seen as a sinister Svengali for his ruthless immigration policy. Masked federal agents are seizing people off Democratic city streets and sending them to detention centers.
The scale of his scheme ensnares people with no criminal records, people with children born here, legal residents and citizens.
Kristi Noem, Trump's homeland security secretary, is an accomplice in these chilling, cruel and un-American scenes. She enforces the method of tackling nonviolent people to the ground -- even Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) when he questioned her at a news conference. These sudden episodes spread fear in ethnic enclaves, as intended.
So, angry young Miller, 40, is a frontrunner in this super-close contest. Cabinet zealots Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth are also top contenders. Trump truly thinks they are his best lookers, or "stars."
The health and human services secretary, Kennedy launched a crusade against vaccine science and federally funded researchers. The National Institutes of Health, under his thumb, ain't what it used to be, with an exodus of experts. Same goes for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which exploded in a staff walkout and resignations in protest for the first time. Advancing on frontiers of fighting cancer and future pandemics is already under threat. Kennedy took a match to the medical establishment and burned it down -- neither a doctor nor scientist he.
Breaking his word to the Senate, Kennedy clings to the falsehood that vaccines may cause autism. The other day, his handpicked panel refused to recommend the standard hepatitis B vaccine for newborns. His ignorance is exceeded only by his arrogance.
The same is true of swaggering Hegseth, the defense secretary champing at the chance to go to war, even if it's strikes against nameless Venezuelan fishermen. At the Pentagon, Hegseth acted shockingly brash since the Senate confirmed him, 51-50. The former Fox News host shuns strong allies in NATO, with the White House citing the absurd term "civilizational erasure" for Europe.
Hegseth kicked the press out of the building and compromised a battle plan by putting it on a Signal chat. He summoned stone-faced senior commanders around the world to listen to him rant about ending "diversity, equity, inclusion" that the military had put into place. He fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a woman admiral.
Like Kennedy, Hegseth is flying blind and crashing into our most important institutions -- our modern moats and lifesaving cures. His resurrection of Confederate statues and fort names drills deeper into the administration's moral abyss.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio's true self is showing up now, and he's not so innocent. His Cuban family emigre complex may be the reason for menacing Venezuela's socialist leader, Nicolas Maduro, with U.S. warships.
Attorney General Pam Bondi treated senators with contempt at a hearing and refused to answer questions about the Epstein files. Will she comply with Congress demanding their release? Meanwhile, she decimated the ranks of career attorneys in the Justice Department.
FBI Director Kash Patel is even more toxic, diverting highly skilled counterterrorism investigators into policing streets -- not what they're trained to do. Bureau morale is hurting from his high-flying to his Las Vegas home and his girlfriend's place in Nashville.
The Environmental Protest Agency chief, Lee Zeldin, favors fossil fuels, arctic drilling and "forever" pesticides. Like President Donald Trump, he's all in on blocking solar and wind clean energy -- claiming climate change isn't real.
Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director, masterminded the "2025" project to bleed government agencies. Then Elon Musk, utterly alien to the American common good, did the dirty work. Musk turned thousands of lives here upside down: bright people who believe in public service and foreign aid -- even justice for the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters.
Public opinion, a ballast for a healthy democracy, doesn't arrest this gang. Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell all. Its leader is the most insanely dangerous man in the White House: Trump himself.
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The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.
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