Trumpiavellian-- the cabinet strategy is a master-class in manipulation...
We should not confuse controversial with worse than that. I am all in with those who are aghast at the cabinet picks proposed by Donald Trump in his second term but for a different reason. At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, the choices forwarded by this most unserious president-in-waiting are themselves unserious as they serve his purposes in more ways than one. Let me explain.
Let’s begin with the assumption that Donald Trump couldn’t care less about the competence of his selections and the kerfuffle they have caused. Privately he surely enjoys the response to them by the likes of MSNBC and the MSM. If they make it through the Senate confirmation process despite their lack of fitness, well, good for them! Trump believes that the loyalty boulevard that flows only one way in TrumpWorld gives him the option of curtailing their worst instincts if they are somehow confirmed. He will be credited for mitigating their ineptness, if he chooses to or, allowing them to do his dirty work, he will simply blame them for the consequences and give them the boot. It’s good to be the king!
Still with me?
In addition to serving his purpose of producing maximum angst during the transition period, the tactic keeps his name in headlines and on chyrons during the slow period before his inauguration. The holiday season is a convenient time to do evil, black Friday and Santa good cheer soften the message through distraction.
Good choices/Bad choices both serve another purpose for the pathologically evil con artist. Allowing the Senate to souse in his proposed cabinet-of-deplorables, he gets to threaten and annoy those Senators he must know will have difficulty confirming the band of ‘unqualifieds’ he has managed to scrape together. Imagine his enjoyment at watching the Susan Collinses, Lisa, Murkowskis, Mitch McConnells, and Chuckie Grassleys as they consider the consequences inside the MAGA bubble if they vote against the picks. This plays to Trump's most basic conceit, not only doesn't he care, but he most likely has an equally unqualified group of second choices. This will only extend their discomfort and serve his need for revenge for past disloyalties dare they oppose him.
Finally, if you are still with me, based on his unserious nature and penchant for chaos, it is not beneath Trump to be using his cabinet choices to offload a promise he never intended to keep. The worst of the bunch are loyalists who backed him in his worst times and supported his cause when his prospects were bleakest. Khash Patel, Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard are prime examples. He has offered them what amounts to an empty promise. He proposed for them a position that he knew would be tenuous at best. Their chances would be fatally flawed by their famously questionable reputations. None of them would have survived an FBI vetting if Trump had allowed one, a fact that again worked to his advantage. He kept a promise he knew could be quite worthless, and in keeping it, and if they happened to be confirmed, Trump’s purposes would still be doubly served. Check and mate!
The suggestion that Donald Trump is the reincarnation of Niccolo Machiavelli, renowned for his manipulativeness and lack of concern for morality, is, by now, a bit tedious. If both men were contemporaries it would be better to suggest that the Prince’s was Trump’s court jester— and a candidate for Secretary of State.