The Trump administration is chock-full of incompetent and unqualified people, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and FBI Director Kash Patel are uniquely terrible at their jobs.
Besides being incompetent and unqualified, they’re both unhinged weirdos who refuse to back down. And since President Donald Trump is also an unhinged weirdo who refuses to back down, they probably have an incredible amount of job security—even as they destroy their respective agencies.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
So, where would you rather work? On one hand there’s Hegseth, the rage-fueled fitness fanatic who’s busy firing everyone he believes is against him. And on the other hand there’s Patel, the rage-fueled conspiracy theorist who’s busy firing everyone he believes is against him.
Hegseth’s behavior has been so consistently bad that it roused the Pentagon inspector general from slumber. Despite Hegseth publicly insisting that Signalgate was no big deal, behind the scenes, he seems to have been running scared. Now the inspector general is looking into whether he pressured his aides to delete the Signal messages.
When Hegseth isn’t threatening staffers with polygraph tests, he’s ousting his own senior aides as he engages in a sprawling search to find who’s been leaking sensitive information. Buddy, you shared war plans with your wife in the group chat. Come on, look in the mirror.
Since Hegseth has literally zero self-awareness, he’s tearing the Pentagon apart to find the real criminals, when it’s his own incredibly casual approach to security that’s the problem.
Like Hegseth, Patel has also threatened staff with polygraphs that are used to hunt down leakers and as loyalty tests.
Michael Feinberg, a top FBI official, left of his own volition after Patel threatened him with a polygraph test because of his friendship with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, a longtime fixation of Trump’s. Trump destroyed Strzok’s career over private text messages saying that electing Trump would be bad for the country. Feinberg left after he was told that he wouldn’t be considered for any promotions.
FBI Director Kash Patel
Patel also fired two senior agents because their past investigations irked conservatives. Stanley Meador made the mistake of looking into whether tradcath nationalists pose any threats. The FBI eventually withdrew Meador’s memo, but guess what? Catholic nationalists actually are a threat. Spencer Evans’ sin was not indulging enough scam religious exemption requests from FBI employees who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
A lot of senior staff got the ax as Patel and his equally unqualified deputy, Dan Bongino, shifted the focus of the FBI to supporting Trump’s cavalcade of attacks on immigrants and ignoring domestic terrorism and violent extremism.
If you work for Patel, you might be tasked with the most ridiculous investigations, like the leak of the Dobbs opinion and the Jan. 6 pipe bombs.
But the worst possible thing that could happen if Patel were your boss is that you might have to read his Trump fan fiction. Now that’s truly a horrifying proposition.
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