Trump’s Proposed Cabinet Is the Stuff of Nightmares

Donald Trump is starting to plan his Cabinet for a potential second term, and the people on his shortlist are nothing less than nightmare fuel for democracy.

Trump is weighing different options based on two main factors: “pre-vetted loyalty to him and a commitment to stretch legal and governance boundaries,” Axios reported Thursday, citing anonymous sources close to the GOP presidential primary front-runner.

First and foremost, Trump needs a running mate. Former Vice President Mike Pence is out after he refused to overturn the 2020 election results and then ran a (lackluster and short-lived) presidential campaign against Trump.

Trump has apparently considered Senator J.D. Vance, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and failed Arizona gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake. He has also mentioned Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is definitely gunning for a spot on Trump’s ticket.

Melania Trump wants her husband to pick erstwhile Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Trump has previously said he was open to having Carlson as a running mate. During a November podcast interview, Trump said he thought Carlson has “great common sense.”

Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, two of the most reactionary and vile former members of the Trump White House, could make a comeback. Miller has been floated for attorney general, while Trump is considering Bannon, who currently hosts a podcast that regularly traffics in white nationalism, as chief of staff. Kash Patel, a former member of the Trump administration and a current Trump adviser, could return for a top national security position.

Trump’s former assistant attorney general could also return for a top Justice Department job. Clark pushed department officials to say they were investigating claims of election fraud after the 2020 election. In August, Clark was indicted in Georgia alongside Trump and 17 other co-defendants for allegedly trying to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

Trump’s inner circle is working hard to find ways to stack both the executive branch and his legal team with loyalists who will obey his every command. Trump has already said that if he is elected, he would be a “dictator” on the first day of his new term. If he succeeds at filling his Cabinet with allies, then it won’t just be day one.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley claimed that TikTok is making young Americans more antisemitic, during the primary debate Wednesday night, but she got her one crucial stat so very wrong.

“For every thirty minutes that someone watches Tik Tok every day, they become 17 percent more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas, based on doing that,” Haley said, pulling those shocking numbers seemingly out of nowhere. The reason this statistic is so shocking is that it is false.

The study Haley is referencing was conducted by Generation Lab. That study claimed that research “suggests TikTok is a meaningful driver of the current surge in antisemitism.” The problem is that it conflated antisemitism and what it calls “anti-Israel” sentiment.

The Generation Lab survey asked 1,323 Americans under the age of 30 questions like “How true or false are the following statements: The Holocaust did not take place or the death toll of Jews is exaggerated,” alongside ones like “Please indicate your agreement or disagreement with the following statements: Israel has a right to exist as a homeland to the Jewish people.” The result is a study that is biased and that erases any and all distinctions between pro-Palestinian sentiment, concern about Israel’s ruthless bombing campaign of Gaza, and hateful antisemitism and bigotry.

TikTok has denied allegations that it is promoting pro-Palestine content, saying that young people just tend to be more pro-Palestine, a fact that has been borne out in a number of more rigorous studies.

Haley has previously called for the U.S. government to ban TikTok after a letter penned by Osama bin Laden circulated on the app in November. Haley has made talking about TikTok a central part of her campaign and promised that social media reforms would be some of her first major moves if she gets to White House.

One can only imagine how fearful a world would be where watching six and a half hours of hospital TV show edits and P.R. unboxing videos on TikTok would make a user’s antisemitism double. Thankfully, we don’t live in that world because it would be logically and mathematically impossible.

A candidate for former Representative George Santos’s old seat was convicted on January 6 charges after mounting an astoundingly stupid defense, according to a Department of Justice release.

Former Queens Republican Party District Leader Philip Sean Grillo was found guilty on Tuesday of one felony for obstructing the certification of the presidential election and four misdemeanors related to rioting on Capitol grounds. He has yet to be sentenced, though obstructing an official proceeding has a possible maximum sentence of 20 years.

Despite filming himself throughout the insurrection entering and exiting the Capitol building several times while shouting things like, “We stormed the Capitol” and “We shut it down,” and despite his experience in politics, Grillo testified in court that he had “no idea” Congress met inside the Capitol building.

“I’m here to stop the steal. It’s our f— House,” Grillo said in one clip.

“We f— did it! We got to the Capitol building. We f—did it! We f— did it, baby! We f— did it, you understand? We stormed the Capitol. We shut it down! We did it! We shut the mother—,” he said in another.

The court also saw videos of the local Republican official smoking weed and high-fiving rioters as he opened doors to help them flood inside the building, yelling at one point, “Our House.”

The New Yorker’s attorneys argued that Grillo “believed he was authorized to engage in the conduct set forth in the indictment,” according to legal documents.

The court didn’t buy it.

Grillo was arrested on February 23, 2021, by the FBI. He filed in May 2023 to run against Santos, whose own shady dealings have earned him a 23-count federal indictment, a scathing ethics report, and an expulsion from Congress. It is currently unclear if Grillo’s arrest will prevent him from participating in the February 13 special election to replace the disgraced lawmaker.

Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy went on a conspiracy theory–laden rant during the latest primary debate that needs to be seen to be believed.

Ramaswamy took aim at his fellow contenders Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, and Nikki Haley during Wednesday night’s debate. The biotech millionaire accused the other candidates of trying to toady up to front-runner Donald Trump and of failing to see who the “real enemy” is.

“Here’s my issue with all three of my other colleagues on this debate stage: It’s all three of them have been licking Donald Trump’s boots for years,” Ramaswamy said, which is a spicy opener from a man who appears to have based his entire campaign, public persona, and even approach to lawsuits on Trump.

“I think the real enemy is not Donald Trump. It’s not even Joe Biden,” Ramaswamy said. “It is the deep state.”

Ramaswamy then proceeded to spout multiple dangerous right-wing conspiracy theories, including that the January 6 insurrection was an inside job and that Saudi Arabia was involved in 9/11. He also claimed that both the 2020 and the 2016 elections had been rigged against Trump.

Ramaswamy insisted the great replacement theory is a “basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.” This theory is a far-right, white nationalist conspiracy that white people are being replaced by nonwhite immigrants.

Ramaswamy has been struggling to gain support among voters. Some experts have pointed out that Ramaswamy has failed to differentiate himself from the former president. If people want someone who acts like Trump, they could just vote for Trump.

So instead, Ramaswamy seems ready to say the wildest things possible in order to keep getting attention.

Former New York Republican George Santos seems to be turning a new leaf, exiting a life of (alleged) crime and deception in favor of an honest day’s work on Cameo, the platform offering personalized messages by mid-tier celebrities.

The disgraced politician, who was expelled from Congress’s lower chamber last Friday, is already making more than six figures off the platform, according to Semafor. That puts him on pace to make more than his old congressional salary of $174,000, through Cameo alone.

In just 48 hours after creating his profile, the fabulist former congressman has reached a popularity rivaling some of the platform’s biggest stars, raking in thousands of requests for $200 to $300 videos averaging a minute or less.

Cameo’s founder and CEO, Steven Galanis, told the outlet that he expects Santos to be “an absolute whale.”

“Sarah Jessica Parker, Bon Jovi—he’s putting numbers up like that,” Galanis said.

The moment is so irresistible that even other politicians have hopped on the Santos-Cameo bandwagon. Hours after Santos announced his new venture, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman tapped the “seasoned expert” to tell indicted New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez to “stay strong” amid foreign bribery allegations.

The upshot of all this is Santos—who lied about having a high-paying job working for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup and ultimately used stolen campaign money to bolster his Botox and designer goods binges—won’t be strapped for cash in his criminal trial, which is set to begin in September 2024. Santos faces 23 charges related to wire fraud, identity theft, and credit card fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to the first 13 charges announced in May and has since denied another 10 charges announced in a superseding indictment in October.

Still, that’s only half the battle, according to Santos. More important is his F-U legacy.

“Obviously there’s a monetary benefit,” Santos told Semafor. “I’m not here doing it for charity—but the other aspect is to remind these assholes who think they’re holier-than-thou that they will be forgotten in history and I will live forever, period.”

Santos’s transition to social media fame is one of the more unusual career pivots post-Congress, and interrupts what many believed would be the lawmaker’s quick jump to reality TV. For those still holding out for the drama king’s soul-fated appearance on Celebrity Big Brother, Santos has a reminder: “I am the most conservative member of the New York delegation.”