This week, I’m watching the news and wondering where all those people my friend was talking about last week are ... you know, the ones that are supposed to stop the idiot we just elected from doing bad things if he goes too far. And yet, our future president has suggested we put a climate denier in charge of the EPA, a Russian asset as head of national intelligence, a pedophile as the Attorney General, a person who believes in neither vaccination nor pasteurization to run the CDC and the FDA, and a Fox “News” host who thinks that women shouldn’t serve in combat to head up the Department of Defense. Theoretically, all those people have to be approved by the Senate, but he’s already asked the new Sentate majority leader to keep the Senate in “recess” until he appoints whoever he wants to wherever he wants, and it’s not clear whether that request will be rejected or not. And, even if it is, it’s not clear whether the new Republican-led Senate will just do whatever he wants anyway. And that’s not even considering that he wants to put a guy with billions in government contracts in charge of the budget by inventing a new government department (which, technically, the president can’t do, but, again: if Congress is just going to give him whatever he wants, that’s not much of an obstacle).
I continue to hope I’m wrong. I mean, the guy’s not even president yet, so all of this dreck may not come to pass. And, as I mentioned last week, I’m far more interested in you being able to tell me “I told you so” than the other way around. But, the fact that the guy’s not even president yet and is still able to cause this much chaos does not bode well for our chances, I fear.