There was no shortage of reactions to Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as his attorney general on Wednesday, but one reaction that caught my attention came from Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton, who didn’t mince words one bit.
“Gaetz must be the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American history,” Bolton said in a post on X. “This is something that falls well outside the proper scope of deference to a President nominating members of his senior team.”
Bolton added, “Gaetz is not only totally incompetent for this job, he doesn't have character or the civic virtue the Founding Fathers wanted. The Republican party should oppose this nomination.”
I’m going to be honest here. I’m not a fan of Matt Gaetz, but calling him the worst cabinet nominee in American history doesn’t add up. Even if we look at recent nominations under the Biden administration, several of them couldn’t possibly be better than Gaetz.
Let’s take Pete Buttigieg, who, as secretary of transportation, has been a near-constant source of controversy. His department has been woefully slow in addressing major transportation crises, from airline meltdowns to the ongoing supply chain debacle. Buttigieg’s lack of relevant experience for the role has been evident, and his absence during crises like the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, only proved he was never qualified for the position. He was a diversity hire, and let’s not pretend he wasn’t.
Attorney General Merrick Garland also stands out as a disastrous cabinet choice. Perhaps it was a consolation prize for Sen. Mitch McConnell blocking him from serving on the Supreme Court in 2016 — I have no idea — but Garland proved to be the partisan we all suspected he was when Obama and the media proclaimed him to be a moderate.
After four years of the Trump administration depoliticizing the Department of Justice, Garland weaponized the DOJ in ways that would make Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder blush. There are many examples of DOJ scandals during Garland’s tenure, but the most significant of these efforts, of course, was the blatant attempt to imprison Trump to stop him from returning to the White House.
His handling of cases involving parents concerned about school curricula and his approach to issues such as election integrity were the epitome of partisan bias. Garland’s focus on targeting political dissent while neglecting violent crime issues shows troubling prioritization that reflects poorly on American justice.
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Another scandal-plagued cabinet official is Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Biden was quick to market him as the first African American defense secretary, and Austin promptly proved to be a disastrous diversity hire. The administration ought to have fired him after the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, but he stayed on and let woke policies destroy our military’s reputation, causing recruitment to plunge.
Austin escaped accountability again earlier this year when word got out that he had been hospitalized for several days without the White House even knowing about it.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, the threats Iran and China pose, and the wars in Ukraine and Israel are also nothing to brag about, as America’s standing in the world took a major hit with Blinken as Biden’s top diplomat.
Think I’m done here? Hardly.
Let’s look at Janet Yellen, the current secretary of the treasury, whose handling of inflation and economic policy was such a disaster that it practically handed Trump the 2024 election on a silver platter. She assured us that inflation would only be transitory, proving she was in over her head.
Finally, we have Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security. Mayorkas’ handling of the border crisis has been a debacle, with record numbers of illegal crossings and a surge in human and child sex trafficking, which resulted in his impeachment. His lax enforcement policies have done little to curb the crisis, putting American communities at risk. His approach has shown a flagrant disregard for the rule of law, undermining public safety. He was tougher on border agents who were falsely accused of whipping migrants than he has been on the border.
Technically, Kamala Harris is part of the cabinet as well. I’m not sure if there’s anything more that we could possibly say about her.
Again, I’m no fan of Gaetz, but Bolton’s dramatic statement about Gaetz just doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Joe Biden blatantly prioritized diversity over qualifications for key cabinet positions, and America paid a heavy price for it. I may not like Gaetz, but he couldn't possibly be worse than the jokers Biden picked for his administration.
