How to Qualify for Trump's Cabinet

Joe Conason on Dec 6, 2024

The trait most broadly shared by Donald Trump's nominees to top Cabinet posts is an utter lack of fitness for their prospective jobs. Most appear to be afflicted with negative attributes that would automatically disqualify them not only from these highly sensitive government positions but even from much less senior jobs in any normal administration. In that respect, they strongly resemble Trump himself.

Many of them share another outstanding characteristic with the president-elect. They are, like him, relentless grifters who keep monetizing their celebrity on the far right by ripping off the MAGA faithful with overpriced merchandise and other scams.

While right-wing scamming has a long history that can be traced back to the '50s Red Scare, Trump is the modern master of the craft. His persona as business genius always reeked of fakery, while his profiteering extended from the gross exploitation of his "charitable" foundation to multilevel marketing rip-offs and the "Trump University" real estate seminar swindle. More recently he deployed the "big lie" and false advertising to deceive his followers into sending hundreds of millions of dollars to his super PAC.

And during this year's presidential campaign, he roped credulous fans into buying hideous gold sneakers, tacky watches, autographed Bibles, junk digital images, souvenir coins and an array of similar junk. The man embraces avarice (and bad taste) with a zeal that any other head of state would consider shameful.

But such degraded behavior is now standard on the Republican right.

Lately the grifting career of Pete Hegseth, Trump's troubled choice for defense secretary, has come under scrutiny in The New Yorker and other outlets. As a "veteran's advocate" (who actually advocated severe cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs), Hegseth ran nonprofit organizations that evidently squandered millions of dollars to subsidize his drunken partying and philandering, without achieving any of their supposed objectives. He drove at least one of those outfits into near-bankruptcy before its sponsors finally ousted him.

Less notorious yet equally unedifying were the enterprises fronted by Tulsi Gabbard, who spent tens of thousands of dollars donated to her Defend Freedom political action committee on bulk purchases of her recent book "For Love of Country," boosting it onto The New York Times bestseller list. Mother Jones reports that Gabbard founded another outfit, a nonprofit called We Must Protect, which sucked in almost $128,000, ostensibly to aid victims of the Maui wildfires -- and spent scarcely a third of that amount on grants to the unfortunate Hawaiians. She also ran a couple of PACs that took in hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they devoted to candidates or causes, with their cash mostly going to Gabbard aides and consultants.

Then there's Kash Patel, the conspiracy theorist and former congressional aide named by Trump to run the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which he has vowed to use as an instrument of vengeance against Democratic officeholders and other Trump "enemies." Patel has closely mimicked the classic Trump hustles by developing his own MAGA fanbase, mainly by using his tax-exempt "Kash Foundation" to promote himself and his partisan crusades. The online publicity subsidized by the foundation has enabled him to market "America First" branded clothing, a line of K$H wines, and a nutritional supplement that promises to "detox" anyone who has been vaccinated against COVID-19. (Not surprisingly, as revealed by menswear writer Derek Guy, the ultra-patriotic T-shirts hawked by Patel are manufactured in Central America and Haiti.)

Back in the day, at least a few conservatives were repulsed by this kind of hucksterism, which they saw as demeaning to their party. During the 2016 presidential primaries, Marco Rubio mocked the fakery of "Trump University," highlighted its cheating of veterans and seniors, and denounced Trump himself, declaring that the GOP "cannot allow a con artist to become the Republican nominee for president of the United States."

Rubio's indignation expired long ago -- and since then, of course, he has transformed himself into a sycophant who will soon be confirmed as the con artist's secretary of state. Endorsing the con -- and, indeed, practicing the con -- is the most important credential to hold office as a Republican, and it will be for the next four years.

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