Kash Patel Is Trump’s Scariest Cabinet Appointment Yet

During Donald Trump’s first reign, students exhausted by the corruption of those in power and the decline of empires warned repeatedly that there was “no bottom”. Of course, they have been proven right, and we are about to experience an accelerating plunge into authoritarian chaos to the point where the whole concept of bottom seems strange. But with all these provisos clearly in mind, Kash Patel, who was hastily selected from the president-elect’s truth social account to be the next FBI director over Thanksgiving weekend, turned to deeper issues. It is no exaggeration to say that it is an important guidepost. Rip at the bottom. He is in many ways the MAGA equivalent of Renfield, the ambitious, dangerous, but infinitely boring helpmate of the Dark Lord Count Dracula.

Mr. Patel first came to widespread public attention during the frenzied run-up to the January 6 coup attempt, when top law enforcement officials bought into the grand myth of a stolen election. This was when Mr. Trump, dissatisfied with his failure to do so, began his final campaign. Raise the licking Franky to the central position. To install a proven MAGA, he hired Patel, a former staff attorney on the House Select Committee on Intelligence with little administrative experience and even no direct acquaintance with law enforcement, to become deputy director of the FBI or CIA. I tried to set it down. A pet dog in the upper reaches of the “deep state.” Attorney General Bill Barr, who was scheduled to soon resign from his post over the fantastical allegory leading up to January 6th, rejected the proposal with a curt response: “I don’t care about my corpse.” exercised the right. (President Trump’s CIA director, Gina Haspel, similarly threatened to resign rather than accept Patel as No. 2.) Barr later wrote in his memoir that Patel, who served as deputy chief of staff at the Pentagon, The proposed promotion is “a shocking departure from reality.”

But there’s no denying that with President Trump on the verge of a second term, a job qualification that has become alarmingly detached from reality, Patel is exaggerating it. Over the past four years, he has used his supporting role in the 2021 coup effort to create a shoddy marketing brand modeled after the Oval Office’s predatory patrons. He launched a line of right-wing merchandise under the brand name “K$H.” From a line of wine to T-shirts promoting the January 6th defendants to the “Fight with Kash Punisher Intarsia Reversible Scarf” unveiled on stage. at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

Patel has also officially written a book about his fight for control of the deep state. government gangsterThe article derided the agency he is currently tasked with managing as “one of the deep state’s most insidious and powerful weapons,” and that its rampant corruption poses “an existential threat to our republican form of government.” It becomes. he also sworeif given oversight of the agency’s operations, would close its Hooverville headquarters in Washington from day one and turn it into a “museum of the deep state.” (Meanwhile, readers with a penchant for bite-sized MAGA red meat are likely to encounter similarly unyielding power fables) patel children’s books, conspiracy against the kingIn it, a resourceful wizard named Kash rescues King Donald from “Hillary Queenton,” and the newly elected senator Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, is here known as “the witty knight.” , a clumsy appropriation by Patel of President Trump’s once derisive nickname. Enemy of impeachment. )

Of course, there are many valid reasons to attack the FBI’s overreach. The FBI has long empowered right-wing covert surveillance policies, but it has never had a non-Republican director in its history. But Patel is not engaged in a civil libertarian battle with government agencies. In fact, his complaint is that this city is full of self-protective, enraged liberals, another complaint entirely born out of Trump’s persecution fantasies. Mr. Patel’s own involvement with Mr. Patel is said to have come before the House Select Committee on Intelligence and authored the “Nunez memo” criticizing FBI officials for approving a baseless FISA surveillance order against former Trump campaign official Carter Page. It goes back to the beginning. This caught the attention of President Trump, who appointed Patel to the National Security Council after Republicans lost the House majority in the 2018 midterm elections, and later promoted her to senior director of the NSC Counterterrorism Directorate. Ta. As one of his former colleagues said atlantic oceanhe achieved rapid promotion amidst the rise of pure Renfieldism. He was hell-bent on reciting pitches to Trump that his colleagues had come to memorize. Mr. President, the deep state is trying to get you, and I’m going to get you out of it. ”

Patel quickly landed at the Pentagon, but jeopardized the safety of the SEAL team’s mission to rescue American hostages in Nigeria, prematurely and erroneously announcing that the operation had secured air rights for the rescue. , which quickly gained unpopularity for nearly jeopardizing its safety. No such authorization was given, and Mr. Patel’s boss, former Pentagon Secretary Mike Esper, wrote that Mr. Patel simply made up the allegations. (The mission was later cleared and successful, but under the authority of then-Secretary of State Joe Pompeo, who reported that he had never had any contact with Patel.) After asking a clever question, you wonder, “Who the hell was that?” “With the proviso, “I could have killed them,” Patel responded, “If no one got hurt, who the hell cares?”

Although Mr. Patel denies making up the statement or the clearance story or in any way straying from the chain of command, there is no simple, uncorruptible explanation for Mr. Patel’s antics. Defense officials said they were “disturbed” by the entire episode. atlantic ocean Author Elaina Plott Calabro: “If Patel did, in fact, fabricate this story, as the Esper team concluded, why? even at the risk of Was it because he was so anxious to trigger President Rump’s chances of eventual victory, or was it such a dark irony that his inexperience meant he never understood the consequences? mosquito?”

Patel’s subsequent career trajectory all suggests the answer to all of the above is yes. Mr. Patel’s firm identification of his personal ambitions with Trumpian delusions is clearly the driving force behind his wholly inexplicable rapid rise through the federal bureaucracy. And like Trump himself, the conspiratorial logic behind Patel’s rise is congealing into even more shocking and dangerous violations of reality. Patel, a Trump-aligned defender of the QAnon cult and conspiracy theory, said in a 2022 podcast appearance that the mythical figure at the center of Q “should be celebrated for everything he’s accomplished. ” announced. He also participates in the Q movement with Mike Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser. ReAwaken America Tour. In his role as an all-around MAGA hustler, Patel promoted a nutritional supplement that purportedly reverses the physical damage caused by the coronavirus vaccine, calling it a “home run kit to rid your body of vaccine harm.” I called it.

Patel’s conspiracy theorists are often used as an outlet for criticism of the media, but they are a particularly troubling trend for leaders of agencies like the FBI, which have staunchly blocked basic civil liberties. “We’re going to have patriots from all over America from top to bottom,” Patel announced. Coming in 2023 About Steve Bannon operation room Podcast. “We will seek out conspirators not only in government but also in the media. Yes, we will go after media members who lied about the American people and helped Joe Biden rig the presidential election. “We’re going to pursue you criminally and civilly. We’ll figure it out.” Mr. Bannon was clearly enraged by Mr. Patel’s McCarthyite rant. “What I want is morning joe The producers who are watching us, and all the producers who are watching us, this is not just rhetoric,” he responded. “We’re really serious.”

no doubt. It’s unlikely that Patel’s resume makes unsuccessful attorney general candidate Matt Gaetz seem like an enlightened figure. philosopher By comparison, he will be confirmed by the Senate. However, as an emergency appointment, Patel will be able to serve at the FBI for 200 days after FBI Director Christopher Wray, appointed by President Trump, resigns or is fired. It would be an extraordinarily erratic tour of the law enforcement bureaucracy, even by the FBI’s prodigal standards. But it will also be a blaze of glory that even Renfield could never have dreamed of.