Frank Bruni
Trump’s Cabinet Will Be an Embarrassment of Wretches
By Frank Bruni
“Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.
Flash back to Donald Trump’s first campaign for president. It should have been doomed when he mocked John McCain’s years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Or when he fantasized about one of his supporters shooting Hillary Clinton. Or when, on that “Access Hollywood” tape, he was heard reveling in the genital prerogatives of fame.
But no. And that wasn’t just because there were so many Americans so dissatisfied with conventional politicians and politics that Trump’s provocations seemed a necessary solvent for the status quo. It was also because his offenses were so numerous, and came along with such frequency, that no single scandal could get lasting attention. Each faded into the crowd.
Trump desensitized his audience as his improprieties became their own unremarkable norm. And while he may not have plotted it that way, he definitely learned his lesson.
His selections for senior jobs in his new administration attest to that education.
It’s galling that he chose a son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner, who spent two years in prison for witness retaliation, tax evasion and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, to live in 60,000-square-foot splendor in Paris and swan around the Champs-Élysées as the next American ambassador to France.
But is that any worse than Kash Patel storming around America’s capital in the role of F.B.I. director? As Garrett M. Graff, a historian and journalist, explained in a recent guest essay for Times Opinion, Patel’s disposition is as dangerous as his résumé is irrelevant to the post. He was chosen on the basis of his flamboyant obsequiousness to Trump, in defiance of a long tradition of F.B.I. directors who were steadfastly independent from the presidents they served. And he has vowed repeatedly to seek vengeance against Trump’s opponents and critics.
But there’s little sign of serious resistance to Patel’s confirmation from Republicans in the Senate. They have slimier fish to fry — for example, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s designee for defense secretary.
Hegseth was a comely Fox News host. He has a great head of hair. But as head of two different advocacy organizations, Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America? He was apparently a disgrace. In an article in The New Yorker this week, Jane Mayer reported that Hegseth was forced out of both jobs “in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety and personal misconduct.” That allegedly included incidents of intoxication so severe that “at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team.”
Such charges might be less credible were Hegseth’s own mom not so censorious of his sloppy and sexist ways. Sharon LaFraniere and Julie Tate of The Times reported that in 2018, she sent him an email “on behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way,” in her words. She wrote: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man.”
On Wednesday, she attempted damage control in an interview on Fox News, saying that her son had changed. Her son, meanwhile, ricocheted around Capitol Hill trying to get skittish senators not to look at what he’s done but to look at how he looks. He also spoke at length with Megyn Kelly for her SiriusXM show. He told her that the accusations against him reflected “the art of the smear.”
But Trump himself was reportedly having second thoughts and toying with the idea of swapping out Hegseth and swapping in Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom Trump despised and disparaged until three seconds ago. Object of ridicule to object of affection: “Meatball Ron” would be traveling one of the most well-trod paths in TrumpLand.
But Hegseth’s troubles better the odds that the conspiracy theorist and carcass fetishist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. winds up the secretary of health and human services and that the al-Assad apologist and Putin fangirl Tulsi Gabbard gets to run national intelligence. There’s only so much resistance that Republican senators can muster. Only so many times that lap dogs this thoroughly muzzled can bark.
Trump’s picks for lofty posts speak to his veneration of scoundrels — to his belief that rules are for sissies and the strong take what they want however it must be taken. He embraces one binary above all others: If you’re not predator, you’re prey.
And government is for gloating. That’s what he’s doing with his planned nominees — showing what he can get away with, whom he can stick it to.
But his choices are also a tactic. As Peter Baker wrote in The Times on Monday, Trump “appears to be following a sort of swarm strategy, flooding the Senate with many contentious nominations that might not pass muster in normal circumstances and forcing the incoming Republican majority to choose which, if any, to block and which to let through.”
It’s overkill meant to overwhelm: a blitz approach. And with this surfeit of sordid cabinet prospects, Trump has created a yardstick that generously measures anyone without, say, a criminal conviction, a rape accusation or a fortune amassed by highly suspicious means.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. In a cabinet of such wretchedness, Kristi Noem is Snow White.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Washington Post, David Von Drehle’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of George F. Will’s columns for the newspaper included this description of one of Will’s journalistic idols, Murray Kempton: “He traversed New York by bicycle, hawk-nosed and regal with a faint Virginia drawl. Arriving at the courthouse or political protest or boxing gym, the scion of Episcopal bishops unclipped his trouser legs and readied another column as poet laureate of the city’s scoundrels, rogues and prizefighters. If you wanted a writer who might start a sentence with Suetonius or the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and end up 150 winding words later at the blood-soaked scene of a Mafia hit, Kempton was your man.” (Thanks to Deborah Cleaver of Portland, Ore., and Steven R. Strahler of Oak Park, Ill., among others, for nominating this.)
In The Atlantic, Spencer Kornhaber divined parallels between Jake Paul’s victory over Mike Tyson in the boxing ring and the MAGA movement’s Nov. 5 triumph: “Jake set out to prove he was something realer than a media whore, but he showed only that he had the clout to overhype a terribly unfair fight. Coming so soon after an election partly decided by highly online men who feel their status to be under threat, this outcome seems like an omen: Old systems may soon be torn down, with little to replace them but bluster spun as redemption.” (Simeon Stolzberg, Adams, Mass., and Gwen Toole, Pensacola, Fla.)
In The Times, Tressie McMillan Cottom rebelled against the evangelists of a certain kind of wellness: “If I do any more mindful, radical self-care, I am going to exfoliate myself into not existing.” (Matt Cass, Denver, and Sylvie Ryckebusch, Geneva, among others)
Also in The Times, John McWhorter disputed certain ancestral claims: “Black America tracing itself to Egypt makes as much historical sense as would Czechs deciding to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, seek out first editions of James Joyce and favor tartans as an expression of being European.” (Marjorie Ivey, St. Louis)
And Melissa Clark was let down by the chef Thomas Keller’s restaurant Per Se: “Instead of Mr. Keller’s brilliant butter-poached lobster, we got two wee langoustines topped with a damp crust of grated brussels sprouts that promptly, with flawless comic timing, slid off like loose toupees.” (Susan Caruso, Glen Head, N.Y., and Anne Childs, West Bath, Maine)
In The Free Press, Nellie Bowles observed that Trump World had already broken Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who let himself be seen ingesting McDonald’s and Coke on Trump’s plane: “Making R.F.K. take a photo eating junk food is like putting a deer’s head on the wall of a vegan’s dining room.” (Terry Savage, Chicago)
In The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik identified the fundamental flaw in a mob’s rationale: “When you are ‘taking democracy into your own hands,’ what you have in your hands is not democracy, because democracy begins with the recognition that other people have hands, too.” (Martin Ainsley, Fredericton, New Brunswick)
Also in The New Yorker, John Cassidy puzzled over Trump’s logic: “The president-elect is promising to help out the working class by cutting taxes on major corporations and his fellow billionaires. He’ll fix the deficit by slashing government revenues. He’ll bring down prices by introducing tariffs that raise them.” (Roy B. Cohn, New Canaan, Conn.)
In The Washington Post, Ty Burr reviewed “Wicked.” “Millions will flock to this movie to cheer for a woman of color (albeit green) in her rebellion against a populist charlatan who has whipped up the excitable citizens of Munchkinland into a frenzy of hatred,” he wrote. “I guess some things only happen over the rainbow.” (Rich Moche, Brookline, Mass., and Shelley Klein, Bethesda, Md.)
I was as fond of Burr’s take on “Gladiator II,” which apparently lacks historical accuracy: “When one character sits down at a sidewalk cafe to read the nonexistent Daily Papyrus over his morning coffee — a beverage that won’t arrive in Europe for another 1,500 years — the only response is an indulgent horselaugh and disappointment that they didn’t just go ahead and give him an iPad.”
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
I’ve been slowly catching up on prestige movies that were released toward the end of the year with the holiday-season box office, award nominations or both in their sights, and I keep experiencing a mix of exhilaration and irritation. That’s because I keep encountering excellent performances in movies that don’t do justice to them.
“Conclave,” for example, has a structure as conventional as its conclusion is ludicrous. It’s a cheap (but often fun) trick in liturgical threads. And the characters are underwritten, including the main one, a Roman Catholic cardinal played by Ralph Fiennes. But from Fiennes’s first scene to his last, the play of emotions on his face is mesmerizing. I’d spend two hours watching Fiennes load the dishwasher or organize his sock drawer.
“Conclave” is a masterpiece beside “The Substance,” whose indictment of our culture’s tyrannical beauty standards and obsession with youth isn’t so much explored as spelled out in big block letters smeared with body-horror gore. But in the middle of this bloody and strangely boring mess are a few deeply moving scenes, thanks to the vulnerability and rage that the movie’s star, Demi Moore, expertly conveys. She’s a knockout.
So, in “Emilia Pérez,” is Zoe Saldaña, who gets the kind of big, emotional scenes that she was denied in the “Avatar” movies and her other sci-fi and action extravaganzas. No wonder she’s a front-runner for the best supporting actress Oscar. But “Emilia Pérez” itself — a kinda-sorta musical about a transgender Mexican drug kingpin — is enamored of its own eccentricity, and it’s a tonal mishmash that pushes you away as often as it draws you in.
“A Different Man,” about a disfigured actor whose life doesn’t change as expected after a medical miracle of sorts, starts strong and ends tritely. Still, I was happy to keep tabs on its star, Sebastian Stan, a current It Boy (he plays Trump in “The Apprentice”) who keeps lengthening his stride.
On a Personal (By Which I Mean Regan) Note
I’ve been cheating on Regan.
The other day I found myself in the forest, beside the neighborhood creek, which she loves to splash in, but she wasn’t there. I’d left her at home. As I’d walked down the driveway, I could see her in the glass front door, her eyes tracking my retreat. I swear she was glaring at me.
On a previous morning, I joined my neighbor Mary and her dog, Indie, who is Regan’s best buddy, on their long walk. I was Regan-less then, too. And I knew that when I returned home, she’d smell Indie on me. She’d register the betrayal. Maybe she’d wonder what she’d done wrong, how I could be so cruel, whether God had abandoned her. OK, I’m being melodramatic, and I’m anthropomorphizing like nobody’s business, but that just reflects the magnitude of my guilt. I’m denying Regan, again and again and again. And there’s no way to make her understand why.
She’s recovering from a serious injury. That means limited movement. It means enforced rest. Our usual three- and four- and five-mile walks? Maybe by late February. A game of fetch in the yard? At least as far-off. For now she’s not supposed to exercise for more than 10 minutes at a time, and she’s prohibited from moving quickly, pivoting abruptly, jumping high.
But she wants to. She tries to. I stop her and admonish her and force myself to believe that the expression on her face isn’t one of outrage. Of contempt. I tell her that what I’m doing is for the best. I tell her that it’s only for now. But the words, I know, are an aural muddle to her. They’re no greater consolation to me.
With pets as with people (and I’m not equating the two), it’s so easy to demonstrate love through indulgence. Through permission. Through giving. But sometimes real love, or at least responsible love, is about taking away.
And that’s much, much harder to do.“
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