Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue

HALIFAX—And so, two months before the White House officially changes hands, the nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue begins. If anyone thought that Donald Trump’s iconoclastic and outrageous promises on the campaign trail were mere rhetoric to give woodies to his frothing base, his staffing appointments reveal the worst case. This is a man hell bent on bringing rapid, profound, and reckless change to the United States. And what his factory of yahoos will ultimately make of the world’s greatest democracy is the mother of all insomnia. For starters, America’s new secretary of defence is a former Fox News host, Pete Hegseth. That’s right: Fox News, Trump’s favourite echo chamber. From Fox News to the biggest administrative fox-hole in the U.S. government. Hegseth has zero knowledge of the huge department he will soon lead, and zero management experience in such a vast undertaking. The Pentagon is the largest bureaucracy in the U.S. government. And he also has zero respect for what is already the world’s most capable military. His mission is a solution in search of a problem. The one thing that he does have is an agenda that will shake America’s armed forces to their foundations—and will please his boss. Hegseth wants to rid the military of the woke-ness he says is a weakness. No women in combat roles. They make fighting harder. And no trans people, please. Here is what he said: “There aren’t enough lesbians in San Francisco to man the 82nd Airborne.” Hegseth also wants to fire the head of the joint chiefs of staff, and conduct a purge of all the generals who had a hand in bringing “diversity” to the U.S. military. Never mind that the military has its own rigorous system of promoting flag officers and generals based on experience and education. Hegseth is about to trade competence for conformity to Trump’s view that the military should be under his thumb, not the Constitution’s. The Armed Forces are about to become the harmed forces. All because Hegseth will do Trump’s bidding, no matter how sleazy, and it looks good on television. Two more shockers followed the appointment of a Fox News host as secretary of defence. Matt Gaetz is now the highest justice officer in the land as Trump’s choice for attorney general. The same Matt Gaetz who was investigated for two years by the DOJ, and then again by the Ethics Committee of the House of Representatives. His alleged crimes included sex trafficking, bribery, and drug abuse. The ethics report was about to come out when Gaetz resigned from Congress to take up his new position. It is unlikely that the report will ever see the light of day. The most investigated man in Congress will now be in charge of investigating the investigators on behalf of a vengeance-driven Trump. His utter lack of qualifications will make that job easier. Just as stunning was the appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as Trump’s director of national intelligence. She has zero experience in the intelligence world, shares the president-elect’s affinity for Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders, and is an all-in Trump sycophant. She is hopelessly unqualified for looking after America’s national security. Trump made hay during the campaign out of his promise to rid the United States of illegal and undocumented aliens. His own racism in making that pledge could not have been more obvious. Trump accused Mexicans, Venezuelans, Africans, and others of “invading” the U.S. In the case of the Mexicans, he went further, accusing them of being rapists, drug dealers and murderers who were “poisoning” the blood of America. He also accused foreign governments of emptying their prisons and insane asylums, and sending their inmates to the U.S.—without, of course, any evidence to back up that claim. But would he really follow through on a plan to round them up and deport potentially millions of people, some of whom have been living in the U.S. for years? The answer is yes. Trump has chosen fascist-in-training pants Stephen Miller as his deputy chief of staff for immigration policy. Miller vows that the business of rounding up and departing the riff-raff will begin on day one of the Trump administration. Just like the pardoning of all those Jan. 6 rioters. Where will he put these hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of undocumented migrants his brownshirts will round up? No one knows for sure, but the embryonic Trump administration has already asked private jail owners to double their capacity outside major cities. And it has also made clear that it intends to pursue a policy of “family” incarceration in the face of future illegal immigration. Kids in cages didn’t fly in the first Trump administration. Will keeping it all in the family be different? And then there is Trump’s choice for the new quasi-authentic Department of Government Efficiency, the ever greedy Elon Musk. Only Congress can create a new government department, but it is important that Musk’s new role is outside of government. Why? Because if his role is merely advisory rather than an official administration post, Musk will not have to divest of those business enterprises that will put him in a conflict of interest. That is perhaps the biggest joke on the American people. With a stated goal of cutting $2-trillion from the U.S. budget—which is just under $7-trillion—Musk now has the power to punish federal agencies that have given him trouble. Like the Federal Aviation Agency, and the Security and Exchange Commission. The SEC sued Musk after he sent out a controversial tweet taking Tesla private. The FAA fined Musk for $630,000 after Space X allegedly broke launch rules on two occasions. He is now in a position to impact their federal budgets. And what about the new president himself? Trump is vowing to bring in new, universal, and punishing tariffs against every country exporting goods into the U.S. The going rate for most countries is 10 per cent, but in the case of China the rate could reach beyond 60 per cent. It is worth noting that the last time Trump imposed tariffs during his first term as president it cost U.S. farmers $87-billion in lost wheat and soybean exports. My email box is filling up with people who wonder why I am so focused on American rather than Canadian politics. Here is the reason: the U.S.—whether led by good buys or bad guys—has enormous power to hurt countries who oppose its domestic realities. There is no such thing as mere domestic policy in Trump’s America. Every country, including ours, will be affected by the bizarre turn of events gripping the world’s greatest superpower. We may not like it. But as Hemingway said: you don’t have to like everything you come to understand. In Canada, with the 'America First' mania taking over south of the border, political backbone—whether Liberal or Conservative—has never been more important. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times

Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue

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