
Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo
President Donald Trump departs after speaking about the economy during an event at the Circa Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, January 25, 2025.
I keep thinking of a 1972 Randy Newman song called “Political Science.” It opens:
No one likes us, I don’t know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
And all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens
–
We give them money but are they grateful?
No, they’re spiteful and they’re hateful
They don’t respect us, so let’s surprise them
We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them
President Trump has shown by his actions that he is certifiably bonkers, driven by retribution, cruelly heedless to the consequences of his actions, and crazily impulsive. A man who is capable of briefly weighing which of the January 6th insurrectionists to pardon, then losing patience and saying, “Fuck it, let’s pardon them all,” is capable of anything.
In the hierarchy of things to worry about, Trump impulsively setting off a nuclear war and blowing us all to bits has to be the top worry. The second worry is Trump killing us softly by doing things like shutting down agencies that deal with pandemics and suspending biomedical research. A third worry is that Trump does such lasting damage to democracy that even the normal revival of the opposition party in the first midterm election after the presidency changes hands is short-circuited, and the damage to government is irreversible.
Trump’s reckless destruction, just in his first week, went far beyond what was proposed in the Project 2025 blueprint. That road map, from the Heritage Foundation, was a carefully thought through strategy for wrecking the regulatory state and privatizing most of its functions. But Trump’s actions paralyze institutions that even most conservatives and corporations recognize as vital or useful, such as supporting the public health.
Presumably, some of this lunacy worries some Republicans, too. Yet as the confirmation of Pete Hegseth shows, with only three dissenting Republican votes, maybe it doesn’t. This is the man, as secretary of defense, who would be one possible firebreak against an impulsive Trump decision to Drop the Big One. He’s completely unfit for that responsibility, or for any other at the Pentagon.
Paradoxically, the Democrats’ obsessive focus on Hegseth’s falling-down-drunkenness and sexual predation proved to be a distraction from the fact that he is totally unqualified for the job. New York Times columnist David Brooks writes about one good piece a year. His column on Hegseth and the Democrats was this year’s gem.
Brooks described how Democrats, incensed at his personal behavior, failed utterly to engage Hegseth on substantive questions about defense policy. “Hegseth is in no danger of rising to the level of mediocrity, but next to some of his Democratic questioners, he looked like Carl von Clausewitz.”
ON FRIDAY, TRUMP FLATLY BROKE THE LAW by issuing an order firing inspectors general of 18 government agencies. In reaction to Trump’s IG firings during his first term, Congress passed a 2022 law requiring the White House to provide a substantive rationale for terminating any inspector general for cause, with 30 days’ notice to Congress.
The firings have prompted bipartisan concern. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a longtime supporter of independent IGs, said, “I’d like further explanation from President Trump. Regardless, the 30-day detailed notice of removal that the law demands was not provided to Congress.”
Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, called it a “coup to overthrow legally protected independent inspectors general.”
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer termed the firings “a chilling purge.”
Mark Lee Greenblatt, who was fired from his position as the Interior Department’s inspector general, said in an interview with NBC News that “the biggest concern I have just going forward is the politicization of inspector general positions.” He added, “We’re so-called watchdogs inside the federal agency. So does he appoint true watchdogs, or does he appoint lapdogs?”
Each of Trump’s accumulating excesses provides an opportunity to rouse Democrats from their collective coma of stunned passivity, and Republicans from their pathetic role of rubber stamp.