Who Wants To Be Part Of The Next Kakistocracy? Plenty Of People

Ramaswampy Is Likely Going To Be Part Of The Regime

Yesterday, far right Iowa Congressman Randy Feenstra hosted a GOP forum with Republican presidential candidates and their family members at an evangelical make-believe university, where they brainwash students that the Bible is the word of God, Dordt, in Sioux Center. Ron DeSantis and Mafia princess Casey, some guy named Ryan Binkley and his wife Ellie, Vivek Ramaswamy and his son, Karthik, and Nikki Haley and her daughter, Rena Haley Jackson took part. Señor Trumpanzee was nowhere in sight; nor was Chris Christie, who seems to have given up on Iowa. 

The candidates seem to be running for 2028 because if they were running for 2024, they would be pounding on Trump— and they aren’t. Haley might have thought she was being daring by saying that chaos follows Trump, but she even tried spreading out to Trump and Biden.“This country is in chaos,” she lied. “But what I know is you don’t defeat Democrat chaos with Republican chaos. And that’s what Donald Trump gives us... chaos follows him. And we can’t have a country in disarray in a world on fire and survive this chaos. We have to have a new generational conservative leader.” Not exactly a condemnation.

Last week, The Atlantic published an essay by McKay Coppins about how there would be no adults in the room if Trump gets back into the White House, Loyalists, Lapdogs And Cronies, which would certainly have been a way to describe DeSantis, Haley and Christie until relatively recently. Ramaswamy is another story: someone who has been assigned the task of representing Trump’s interests in the campaign in return for a future position in the regime. Yesterday, not surprisingly, Trump asserted Ramaswamy won the last debate:

Coppins pointed out that when Trump slithered into the White House in 2017, “he put a premium on what he called “central casting” hires—people with impressive résumés who matched his image of an ideal administration official. Yes, he brought along his share of Steve Bannon’s and Michael Flynns. But there was also James Mattis, the decorated four-star general who took over the Defense Department, and Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs chief operating officer who was appointed head of the National Economic Council, and Rex Tillerson, who left one of the world’s most profitable international conglomerates to become secretary of state. Trump seemed positively giddy that all of these important people were suddenly willing to work for him. And although his populist supporters lamented the presence of so many swamp creatures in his administration, establishment Washington expressed pleasant surprise at the picks. A consensus had formed that what the incoming administration needed most was ‘adults in the room.’ To save the country from ruin, the thinking went, reasonable Republicans had a patriotic duty to work for Trump if asked. Many of them did.”

Don’t expect it to happen again. The available supply of serious, qualified people willing to serve in a Trump administration has dwindled since 2017. After all, the so-called adults didn’t fare so well in their respective rooms. Some quit in frustration or disgrace; others were publicly fired by the president. Several have spent their post–White House lives fielding congressional subpoenas and getting indicted. And after seeing one Trump term up close, vanishingly few of them are interested in a sequel: This past summer, NBC News reported that just four of Trump’s 44 Cabinet secretaries had endorsed his current bid.

Even if mainstream Republicans did want to work for him again, Trump is unlikely to want them. He’s made little secret of the fact that he felt burned by many in his first Cabinet. This time around, according to people in Trump’s orbit, he would prioritize obedience over credentials. “I think there’s going to be a very concerted, calculated effort to ensure that the people he puts in his next administration— they don’t have to share his worldview exactly, but they have to implement it,” Hogan Gidley, a former Trump White House spokesperson, told me.

That’s going to mean walking garbage... like Stephen Miller, Richard Grenell, Vivek Ramaswamy, and for Attorney General someone like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Josh Hawley, Pam Bondi or Jeffrey Clark (although he might be in prison). If he manages to be declared president, Trump is going to surround himself with the worst of the worst of the worst; count on in. Kushner is running around telling everyone he's going to be Secretary of State and his father has already paid Trump to close the deal. Remember the key word here: kakistocracy.