I can think of no better opener for this Cabinet nominee-filled TOTI than Nancy Pelosi:
This week, President-elect Trump has been rolling out his Cabinet nominees and plans for new at least one new department altogether.
After the normal enough (“normal enough” is going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting these next four years) announcements of Susie Wiles as Chief of Staff and Marco Rubio nominated for Secretary of State, he slowly started to turn up the temperature heating the bubbling pot of water we all live in now.
On Tuesday, he nominated Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth to run the Department of Defense.
And U.S. Representative from Florida Mike Waltz to NSA, who does not exactly align with Trump’s isolationist approach:
But the real news on Tuesday was the apparent announcement of a new governmental department (which cannot happen without Congress’ approval) – the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE, quite obviously named after Elon’s meme cryptocurrency of choice.
Of the many things to respond to here, and I’ll try to get to all of them, the irony of efficiency co-chairs wasn’t lost on folks:
Not the first and not the last 30 Rock reference in this TOTI:
Given Elon’s ownership of Twitter, DOGE, if it ever becomes a real department (I’m dubious) will be the first terminally online (derogatory) federal agency.
Elon, for obvious reasons, is the focus here, but let’s not overlook his partner in crime here.
On the scale from “bad in a stupid way” to “bad in a destroys democracy” way I think this one is mostly on the side of the former.
But, also, the potential for corruption and risk to our national security here is pretty extreme.
I take cold comfort in the fact that there is the potential for this to all end in the same abject humiliation for Elon that so many of his predecessors have endured.
But the hits keep coming.
Continued in Part 2.
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