The Clown Car To Crazytown
Donald Trump’s cabinet contains ideological diversity, but it’s also host to dangerous extremism
Has the Trump transition been a clown show widely mocked by political onlookers everywhere?
Or has it been a low-key success, earning broad approval from an American public eager to tune out a decade of drama?
Both.
Nearly six in ten Americans approve of Trump’s presidential transition.
Back in the first Trump term, Matthew Yglesias wrote a foundational piece explaining why Democrats were learning the wrong lesson from Trump: he ran as a moderate, not an extremist.
Years later, Yglesias coined a term to describe Trump’s pairing of ideological flexibility with extreme behavior: “Republicans’ unhinged moderation.” The MAGA-fied GOP had:
… become much more unhinged. More conspiratorial, more unethical, more flagrantly dishonest … and more potentially damaging to the basic foundations of the Republic.
At the same time, if you compare the current situation to the winter after Bush’s reelection — or even the winter after the 2010 GOP midterm sweep or the winter after Trump’s surprising win in 2016 — Republicans have clearly moved to the center on concrete policy issues.
Now back for round two, Trump is apparently forming one of the most ideologically diverse cabinets in modern history. The nominees include a union-friendly moderate for Labor, a former Democratic House member for DNI, a gay George Soros advisor for Treasury, and a pro-choice friend of Oprah Winfrey for CMS.
Trump’s cabinet may be unhinged, but in a way that is orthogonal to the traditional left-right spectrum.
Trump’s nominee for HHS was considered by Obama to lead the EPA!
But while Trump’s clown car may be popular, it’s getting dangerously close to crazytown. The media reports that Joe Kent is currently in the running for a senior position in the Trump White House:
Former hard-right congressional candidate JOE KENT is the leading contender to be the next head of the National Counterterrorism Center, two people familiar with the transition told JOHN SAKELLARIADIS and DANIEL LIPPMAN.
Kent, an Army Special Forces veteran who briefly served at the CIA, has been working for the landing team in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Nat Sec Daily previously reported. After leaving government, he ran two unsuccessful bids for Congress in Washington state, despite receiving endorsements from MATT GAETZ, MICHAEL FLYNN and Trump.
Kent did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But one of the two people said he “understands the need for homeland protection and will be a supportive partner to Tulsi as she tries to reorient the intelligence enterprise to meet today’s current threats.”
Readers of this newsletter will know Kent well as the far-right election denier Joe Kent who has lost back-to-back elections with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Her take on the situation is concise: “Doesn’t seem wise.”
In 2022, Kent’s surprise upset over moderate Jaime Herrera Beutler helped put WA-03 into contention and cost Republicans what should have been an easy pick-up. Kent claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and has ties to white nationalist Nick Fuentes, Proud Boy member Graham Jorgenson, and Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson.
Kent has a laundry list of conspiracy theories, including most recently his assertion that officers in the Secret Service may have been “in on” the July assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Kent is known for his attacks on law enforcement and has threatened to defund the FBI, calling it, “a secret domestic intelligence agency” that will “continue to take us down this road towards total authoritarianism.”
The former Army Special Forces officer, 44, also gave an interview to a Nazi sympathizer who has praised Hitler and appeared on a white nationalist YouTube channel — where he said that he did not “think there’s anything wrong with there being a white-people special interest group,” among other comments his critics interpreted as dog whistles to the racist far right.
Meanwhile, Kent has espoused conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and other topics, suggesting Secret Service agents were “in on” the assassination attempt against Trump last summer. Kent, who has called to defund the FBI, has also faced accusations of parroting pro-Kremlin talking points — as he has voiced skepticism of aiding Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Republican Adam Kinzinger warns:
“This guy is, I’m not going to say neo-Nazi, but as close as you can get to that without being labeled that is about what he is,” Kinzinger said during a podcast interview with The Bulwark’s Tim Miller released on Wednesday. “Every conspiracy theory he buys into.”
And now, he may be a senior White House official. Joe Kent is unqualified, extreme and dangerous. The Trump team should listen to the voters of Washington who have rejected him twice: he’s not fit to serve. Ideological diversity is good, but extremism is bad. Democrats should learn from winners like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez on how to defeat extremism with commonsense moderation.