Better Cabinets at IKEA

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

The incoming President of the United States (All Hail Caesar Corruptus!) has now finished naming the cabinet for his upcoming administration.  Interestingly, none are holdovers from his first term in office, a possible indication that he considers his first cabinet to have been a cabal of disloyal fools, or that this time he intends to operate at a far shadier level than he dared in his first administration.

So far only one of the President-Elect's cabinet choices has crashed and burned, and that was the selection of Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida to be the US Attorney General.  Gaetz  has been investigated by both the federal government and the House of Representatives regarding allegations of illegal drug use and the sex-trafficking of a minor.  The congressman along with the incoming US Vice President walked the halls of the US Senate last week trying to confirm that he would have the majority of Senate votes necessary to secure the job - and he came up short by at least one vote.  That humiliation was quickly followed by another when the President-Elect reportedly called Gaetz and told him it was time to withdraw.

Aside from the fact that the Gaetz fiasco put the looming incompetence of the next presidential administration on full display, the only other net positive to come out of that poopshow was the fact that Gaetz resigned from Congress on the day the announcement of his nomination was made, and now he says he will not accept an appointment back to that seat, nor will he serve the upcoming term to which he was elected earlier this month.  To return to Congress would have served to possibly reopen the House Ethics Committee's investigation into his reported drug use and affinity for youthful escorts.

Within hours of Gaetz's withdrawal, the President-Elect selected former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to be the next US Attorney General, and while Ms. Bondi is considered by many to be almost as repugnant as Mr. Gaetz, she at least has never been publicly accused of dating adolescents.

Another cabinet nominee from Florida is US Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, whom the President-Elect has selected to be the next Secretary of State.  The fact that Rubio, a strong partisan backer of the incoming President, is seen as a shoo-in for the job as Secretary of State, with even some likely Democratic support, speaks to the fact of just how rancorous many of the other cabinet nominees are.

Pete Hegseth, a television personality on the Fox network and a former platoon leader with the US Army in Iraq, is being nominated to head the massive US Department of Defense.  US Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois and a former military pilot who lost both legs in a combat mission, has been highly critical of Hegseth's nomination, calling him "unqualified" for the job of Defense Secretary, and she has said that Hegseth's nomination is an "insult" to the Defense Department.  Senator Duckworth is particularly incensed over Hegseth's reported view that women should not serve in combat.  Hegseth has also been  dealing with allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman in a motel room seven years ago, and while no charges were filed, he did admit making a payment to the woman for her silence.   At this point Pete's Hegseth's confirmation is not a done deal.

Tulsi Gabbard's nomination to run the National Security Agency is also not a done deal.   Ms. Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who is now an outspoken supporter of the US President-Elect, has been publicly labeled by some in politics as a "puppet" of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and once, while still serving as a member of Congress, she had a private and highly controversial meeting with Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria.  Assad has been credibly accused of torture and using chemical weapons to annihilate his own people.

One of the problems with the nomination of Linda McMahon to be the US Secretary of Education, in addition to her pronounced lack of experience for the job, are reports that while she was a "professional" wrestling promoter, she and her estranged husband, Vince, knowingly allowed a situation to develop in which one of their employees sexually abused young boys over an extended period of time.

Scott Bessent, a former right-hand man and two-time employee to billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, now runs his own capital management group, a perch from which he has become a cheerleader for the economic policies of the President-Elect and from which he has built formidable ties with Wall Street.  Bessent, who along with his husband renovates colonial mansions in South Carolina, will be the first openly gay man to serves as Secretary of the Treasury.  (It remains unclear at this point whether Marge Greene and Nancy Mace will stoop to using currency that bears the signature of a gay person.)

Another surprising cabinet choice for the new administration is that of Lori Chavez-DeRemer as the new Secretary of Labor.   Chavez De-Remer, a Republican who just lost her congressional seat in Oregon, is a-typical for a Republican in that she has a history of supporting unions, and the Teamsters, as a matter of fact, had endorsed her to be Secretary of Labor.   Republicans are generally seen as being pro-business owners and anti-union, so her nomination is already proving to be unsettling in Congress and the business community.  The President-Elect, however, received a bigger share of the union vote in the recent election than was expected, and his selection of Lori Chavez-DeRemer is seen as an effort to try to cultivate and grow that union support.

There are some more cabinet selections worthy of mention such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, for Secretary of Health and Human Services.  Kennedy, a vaccine mandate opponent who also has opposed fluoridation of the public water supply.   Kennedy has expressed beliefs tying childhood vaccinations to autism and connecting the use of fluoride to children being transgendered or gay.  The future cabinet secretary has a reported history of eating roadkill, and has said that doctors discovered a portion of a worm in his brain that had eaten part of his brain and then died.

And then there is the strange duo of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head the imaginary Department of Government Efficiency.    The world's richest human will certainly have plenty of thoughts on ways us mere mortals can tighten our belts and Make America Great Again - at least for him and Vivek.

More surprises may spring up because so far no  official FBI background checks have been completed on any of the potential nominees because the President-Elect has not signed the necessary paperwork.  One US senator is suggesting that the public doesn't care who does the checks, and there is also a suggestion floating around that the incoming President may pressure Congress into taking ten days off so that he can use recess appointments to install the entire batch without Senate approval.  

Is the President-elect concerned about what the background checks will dig up on his nominees, or is he just trying to show his barnyard dominance.  Time will surely tell.

And there are more Cabinet nominees worthy of mention, but I have grown tired of typing.

The incoming cabinet has a couple of potential bright spots, but overall it just appears to be a strange (perhaps even absurd) collection of "yes" men and women, con artists, and social misfits.   One wag on the internet (and I don't remember his name) put it this way in a tweet:

"You can find better cabinets at IKEA."

Amen, brother, amen.