Real-estate-mogul-turned-President-reelect Donald Trump is no stranger to picking up a fixer-upper and fixing it up, but nobody — and I mean nobody — has ever faced the renovation job Trump does when he returns to the White House.
Let's look at the worst three.
Since 2009 the Department Formerly Known as Justice has been infested with growing numbers of rats. Political consultant (and Trump 45 hand) Mark Paoletta warned on X today that "Career DOJ lawyers must be fully committed to implementing President Trump’s policies or they should leave or be fired."
"Why do I keep raising this?" he continued. "Because there are several examples (below) of career staff sabotaging cases they disagreed with in the first Trump Administration. This can’t happen again."
Worse, Obama and Biden weaponized the DOJ against ordinary Americans, with too many examples for me to regurgitate yet again in today's column. If trust is to be restored between conservative Americans and Washington, it must start with Justice.
While Trump has yet to name his attorney general to head up the department, rumored contenders include Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), former DNI John Ratcliffe, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, and Paoletta, himself. I lean a bit toward Lee, myself, but I'm not sure he has any interest in the job.
If you're an Obama or Biden DOJ lawyer, I hope your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date. Better yet, I hope you have alternate career plans because restoring trust means taking some of these partisan hacks to court and getting them disbarred — at the very least.
Then there's the intelligence community, which I'll define broadly enough today to include the FBI.
Here's the latest reason the CIA needs to be cleaned with a flamethrower: CIA official with top security clearance charged for leaking highly classified docs about Israel’s plans to strike Iran.
The CIA seems to have learned valuable lessons in authoritarianism from J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Cleaning the rats out of that nest risks retaliation like blackmail and smear-jobs. I'm not kidding when I say that assassination might be on the menu. Say a prayer for John Ratcliffe, Trump’s pick for CIA director — although he might prove a little too insidery to get the job done. If he hears "You're fired!" before 2026 rolls around, I won't be shocked.
There's not much to say about the FBI that you haven't already heard — at least not until Trump is sworn in, fires Director Christopher Wray, and names his replacement.
The Pentagon might — might — prove the least difficult of the big three, provided Trump can clear out the Obama- and Biden-era deadwood clogging the upper ranks. There are still plenty of patriots and warriors in the military, ready to take command and restore our military's long-honored meritocracy — and eliminate the wokeness. On the other hand, there's is so much waste and graft baked into Pentagon procurement — at a time when the Navy, Air Force, and our nuclear forces are in desperate need of expansion and modernization — that restoration is likely the work of more than a single term.
Trump's pick for Defense is Pete Hegseth, a financial analyst and Minnesota Army National Guard infantry combat veteran (he actually went!) who has long been involved in veterans' affairs. He also serves as a Fox News host. Today, all the major news outlets are screaming TRUMP APPOINTS ICKY FOX PERSONALITY TO DEFENSE, even though that's the very least of his accomplishments.
That Pentagon types are also defecating copper-zinc alloy thumb-activated affixment devices over his appointment tells me that Hegseth is the right man for the job.
That's a lot of fixing up for one president to do in his one remaining term — and I've only named three of the worst on a long list of dilapidated Washington properties. But Trump is putting together a solid team of craftsmen and exterminators to get the job done.
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