Dejected by November’s crushing defeat, the left now believes it can magically bounce back by killing President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees.
Many of Mr. Trump’s picks are well outside the usual DC/New York political, media, and corporate nexus.
But that’s exactly the point – to feed a bloated, incompetent, weaponized government with reformers who aren’t part of it.
President Trump’s pick to head the FBI, Kash Patel, has already drawn harsh criticism.
His irate enemies cannot target his resume because he has spent a lifetime working in civilian, Congressional, and administrative roles in both investigative and intelligence work.
Rather, they argue that he is too vindictive and does not reflect the spirit of the FBI.
But what about Patel? do not have Would you do it as a new director?
He will not lie continuously under oath to federal agents, like interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who is currently criticizing Patel.
He has no intention of falsifying FBI court affidavits, as Kevin Clinesmith, a convicted felon and government attorney, did.
He is not going to claim amnesia 245 times, as former Secretary of State James Comey did, based on a congressional oath to avoid embarrassing confessions.
He has no intention of collaborating with foreigners to collect filth and sabotage presidential campaigns, as the FBI did with Christopher Steele in 2016.
He has no intention of using the FBI to draft social media to suppress news unfavorable to presidential candidates on the eve of an election.
He would not have hidden the FBI’s knowledge that Hunter Biden’s laptop was real to allow the lie that it was “Russian disinformation” to spread on the eve of the 2020 election.
He has raided former president’s homes with SWAT teams, surveilled Catholics, surveilled parents at school board meetings, and pursued peaceful pro-life protesters. I have no intention of doing so.
Pete Hegseth, a decorated military veteran, is also a controversial candidate for Secretary of Defense.
What would Hegseth not do?
Will he continue to leave the country without notifying the president if there is a serious medical procedure, like current Secretary of State Lloyd Austin?
Introduce racial and gender criteria for promotions and mandate diversity, equity, and inclusion training?
Falsely implying that a cabal of white supremacists has infiltrated the military, only to alienate that entire population and ensure that the Pentagon is short 40,000 new recruits?
Oversee the scramble from Kabul where $50 billion worth of US military equipment was abandoned by Taliban terrorists?
Did you just sit and watch Chinese spy balloons fly across the continental United States for a week?
Will we allow the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to promise Chinese Communists that he will first notify the People’s Liberation Army if he believes the President of the United States has given a dangerous order?
Rotate from a defense contractor board to the Department of Defense, then leave the office and come back to the Department to take advantage of procurement decisions?
Will he oversee the Pentagon’s repeated audit failures?
Health and Human Services candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is certainly a maverick. Given his past liberal credentials, he could get the most hits in the Democratic Party.
But what wouldn’t RFK also do as HHS Secretary?
His government, in the style of Dr. Fauci, is circumventing U.S. laws by sending money to communist China to help produce deadly gain-of-function viruses like COVID-19. Will it supervise the institution?
Organize scientists to go after and smear critics of mask mandates?
Will it give drug companies near-permanent immunity from legal risks for rushing production of previously unscrutinized and untested mRNA vaccines?
Quit office to monetize his HHS expertise and make millions from drug companies?
Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman and military veteran who was nominated by President Trump to be Director of National Intelligence, will soon face defamation in a Congressional hearing.
But what did Gabbard not do?
On the eve of the 2020 election, Hunter Biden joined “51 former intelligence agents” who lied about having “all the hallmarks” of a Russian intelligence/disinformation campaign — To gain an advantage over incumbent Joe Biden?
Did he lie under oath to Congress, like former Congressman James Clapper, who claimed to have given only the “least false answer” in his congressional testimony?
Encouraging the FBI to monitor the presidential election in an attempt to discredit it – like former CIA Director John Brennan, who lied not once but twice under oath?
Couldn’t they have foreseen the American meltdown in Kabul, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, or the Houthi occupation of the Red Sea?
We’re going to hear some crazy things in upcoming Congressional confirmation hearings.
But one thing we don’t hear about is the crimes, deceit, and utter incompetence of former and current government bigwigs.
The current crew, rather than their proposed replacement for Mr. Trump, now demands another from the exhausted American public.
Voters want fresh approaches to reforming a government they not only no longer trust, but now deeply fear.
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the author of Basic Books’ The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. You can get in touch by sending an email to authorvdh@gmail.com.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
