From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.advocacy

Proctitis wrote:

osted

President Trump only picks incompetent white
people for the job.


Trump’s ‘best people’ keep proving they’re just
not up to the job

All of the real people who make our government run
are being squeezed out, leaving us with the
bizarre leadership of clueless appointees.
MSNBC Anchors and Correspondents - Season 2023
Jun. 4, 2025, 3:32 PM EDT
By
Jen Psaki
and
Allison Detzel

This is an adapted excerpt from the May 29 episode
of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”

For years, Donald Trump has bragged that he only
hires the “best people.” But almost six months
into his second term, many members of his
administration are proving they just aren’t up for
the job.

Take former WWE executive Linda McMahon, whom
Trump inexplicably put in charge of the Department
of Education. On Tuesday, during a Senate hearing,
Republican senators did their level best to lob
McMahon softball questions to make it look like
she knows what she’s doing.

Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma tried
to tee up an easy one, asking the secretary, “What
was we ranked nationally in math and reading in
1979?” McMahon responded that the U.S. was “very,
very low on the totem pole.” Mullin then had to
inform her that we were actually ranked No. 1 in
1979.

Republican senators and Trump’s education
secretary spectacularly failed a math and reading
quiz of their own making.

In McMahon’s (limited) defense, Mullin’s question
was garbled nonsense. I mean, setting aside the
strange verb conjugation of “what was we ranked,”
he asked how the U.S. ranked “nationally” when he
apparently meant “globally.” So clearly neither of
these people is getting an A in reading
comprehension or grammar.

But what about math? After Republican Sen. John
Kennedy of Louisiana said the U.S. spends $1.5
billion a year on federal grants for disadvantaged
students, the senator claimed that the numbers
added up to be “over a trillion dollars” over 10
years.

After McMahon failed to correct the senator’s
estimation, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode
Island had to jump in to educate the pair,
pointing out that $1.5 billion multiplied by 10 is
not “over a trillion dollars” but actually $15
billion.

Republican senators and Trump’s education
secretary failed spectacularly at a math and
reading quiz of their own making, while they
complained about America falling behind in math
and reading.

Unfortunately, McMahon is not the only one of
Trump’s “best people” making embarrassing
mistakes. This week, David Richardson, the acting
chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
told staff he had not been aware the country has a
hurricane season, four sources familiar with the
situation told Reuters.

The Trump administration has said those comments
were meant as a joke, but that was definitely not
clear to the people in the room. FEMA is now
heading into a new hurricane season with a staff
that’s been gutted by Trump’s cuts, and the
agency’s staff is reportedly worried about
Richardson’s lack of experience.

Maybe Richardson should have Googled his job first
to see what it entails. After all, that’s what
Trump’s equally unqualified Social Security
commissioner reportedly did.

Honestly, a little Googling might serve some of
them well. Take Health and Human Services
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, last month,
released his much-anticipated “The MAHA Report:
Make Our Children Healthy Again.” We soon learned
that the report was riddled with errors and cited
at least seven studies that do not exist.

Kennedy then updated his report in an effort to
fix those mistakes, but, as it turns out, they
actually added more errors to that revised
version. The secretary has now somehow managed to
screw up the same report twice.

So things aren’t going great at FEMA, or Social
Security, or HHS. But surely the Department of
Homeland Security is running like a Swiss watch.
White House ‘Make America Healthy Again’ report
cited fake studies: NYT, NOTUS
May 30, 2025 / 08:43

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
sent out a press release that claimed Immigration
and Customs Enforcement had arrested an “Illegal
Alien who Threatened to Assassinate President
Donald J. Trump.” It included an image of a
threatening handwritten letter that Noem claimed
had been sent by an undocumented immigrant in
Milwaukee named Ramon Morales Reyes.


But it turns out local law enforcement officials
do not think Morales Reyes sent that letter. In
fact, they think that he was being set up. As The
New York Times reports, “Not long after the
announcement, the government’s story began to look
shaky. … And as detectives in Wisconsin began
looking deeper, they came to believe Reyes had
been framed.”

Milwaukee County prosecutors have now filed
identity theft and witness intimidation charges
against another man, a lifelong Wisconsin
resident. They said the man had written several
threatening letters that included Reyes’ name in
the return address. “Prosecutors said it was an
attempt to catch the attention of the Trump
administration and weaponize the threat of
deportation against Mr. Reyes, who was scheduled
to testify against the man at a robbery trial next
month,” the Times reports.

So this guy, who is set to go on trial next month,
allegedly tried to trick the Trump administration
into going after the witness who would testify
against him, and the Department of Homeland
Security appears to have fallen for it.

Meanwhile, Trump’s intelligence chief appears to
be struggling with her job as well. As director of
national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard is
responsible for making sure that Trump is up to
date on the latest intelligence, which includes
his presidential daily brief.

But apparently that is proving difficult. Since
taking office, Trump has taken his daily
intelligence briefing, on average, less than once
a week, according to his public schedule, which is
far less than previous presidents (including his
own first term).

So Gabbard is now reportedly resorting to what I
would call creative methods. According to NBC
News, one idea that’s been discussed is possibly
creating a video version of the PDB that looks and
feels like a Fox News broadcast. NBC News reports,
“A new PDB could include not only graphics and
pictures but also maps with animated
representations of exploding bombs, similar to a
video game.”

In other words, because Gabbard is bad at her job
and the president of the United States doesn’t
like to read, career intelligence staffers may be
forced to put on some kind of Fox News puppet show
to get the president to pay attention.

That’s the real problem with all of this: We all
know that when it comes to people, Trump is not
sending his best. There is a whole system of
dedicated federal workers who actually make the
government function, and who in turn can make even
the most incompetent bureaucrat look vaguely
competent. But Trump is making it impossible for
them to do their jobs.

We all know, when it comes to people, Trump is
not sending his best.

The Washington Post recently dug into all the ways
Trump’s efforts to increase government
“efficiency” have, ironically, buried federal
workers under red tape. The report cites
interviews with more than three dozen federal
workers across 19 agencies, as well as records
obtained by the outlet. Among the findings were:

At NASA, employees had to write several
detailed paragraphs, across multiple rounds of
emails, to win approval to buy fastening bolts.
At the Food and Drug Administration, once-
routine tests on food, including monitoring for
accuracy in labeling, coloring and exposure to
heavy metals, have been significantly delayed
because the agency began requiring department-
level approval for expenses at every step.
At the Federal Aviation Administration,
officials at air traffic control towers across two
dozen West Coast airports are unable to easily pay
to have the windows washed or shades cleaned.
At the Social Security Administration, Trump
officials and DOGE have pushed thousands of
central office workers to take lower-level
positions answering phones in field offices. They
also threatened to fire whoever didn’t make the
jump.

Government officials cannot purchase bolts for
rockets, do food-safety testing or wash the
windows at air traffic control towers without
wading through layers and layers of new Trump-
approved red tape.

All of the real people who make our government run
are being squeezed, and all we’re left with is the
bizarre and clueless leadership of Trump’s so-
called very best people.
MSNBC Anchors and Correspondents - Season 2023

Jen Psaki

Jen Psaki is the host of "The Briefing with Jen
Psaki" airing Tuesdays through Fridays at 9 p.m.
EST. She is the former White House press secretary
for President Joe Biden.



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