Cowgirl Kristi Rounds Up the "Dirt Bags"

 

Cosplay Kristi is at it again on Meet the Press pic.twitter.com/y8PcxHbk7y

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 2, 2025

This is just a little throwaway post on my part, but I've totally got why secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem has to cosplay being a border security worker when she's on tv--

Trump really only seems to know what's going on from tv. If he sees her in a uniform--she's working. It's a reality show mentality from someone who does not entirely exist in reality. She gets it. Give her her props because she figured it out. And even uses appropriately menacing language. "Dirtbag!"

Egads, I Hate JD Vance.

 

Of all the trifling twats that ever twatted triflingly, JD Vance feels like he might be both the most trifling and twattiest. The adoption of Trump's victimization fetish that the US has been "taken advantage of" is so uniquely lame and fucked up. Did Lady Liberty get railed by the big old Lumberjack? How sway? 

Trump himself conflated the Canadian trade deficit thing with our actual US debt, which this asshole put 8 trillion American dollars on. As a member of the party that DOES NOT swan about preaching "fiscal responsibility" while racking up losses by granting tax cuts to the rich at every opportunity, um. 

Fuck you. Fuck you from the soles of your shitty unspurred feet to the crown of your molting head. And what I say for Trump goes ditto (megadittoes. even!) for his mini-me. 

JD Vance tells stories. That is to say, more appropriately, he lies, and he knows and accepts that he lies. 

Let's know and accept that. too. And acknowledge how unacceptable that behavior is. 

A Serious Woman

 

Donald Trump tanked a bill to improve border security—just so he can win this election.

As I have shown throughout my career, I won’t back down from my plan to make our border more secure. pic.twitter.com/VemRMHqMLV

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 27, 2024

There are detractors to this ad. The younger folks did not have Schoolhouse Rock in their early life and it shows. An executive can propose, but it's up to Congress to dispose such acts. So unfortunately, despite what a White House official like the Vice-president might want, they don't get that without congress and the president also being on board. And Republicans--exist. And quite openly block border bills because it's kind of bad for Trump. They blocked a border bill for Trump because he doesn't have a whole hell of a lot else to run on besides his wall gimmick.

If you thought I was going to only say Trump was an unserious man because he is, well, no. The whole GOP is, now, because they are verified useless. 

Harris Fired Up Milwaukee

 

FULL SPEECH: Kamala Harris electrifies the crowd in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as she delivers her first official campaign speech for the presidency.

Worth watching in its entirety and sharing far and wide. pic.twitter.com/GMSXHSiqHS

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) July 23, 2024

In the first 24 hours after President Biden dropped after the race, the campaign for Vice-President Harris broke a fundraising record. It feels like enthusiasm is BACK in this race.

I can't help but notice that her GOP detractors have some criticisms, which are, as far as I can tell:

1) She was a popular and attractive single career woman with an active social life before marriage,

2) She laughs (I think they are jealous because she gets the jokes and does not need them explained?),

3) She was either a total "cop" or just let everyone go, I do not know what story they want and neither do they,

and--

4) Something about being a "DEI hire" which of course, stands for "Doing Everything Impressively" (touches earpiece) wait a minute, they mean something else....and had to be told to tone that racist shit down.

Also, being desperate scared freaks, Articles of Impeachment have already been announced because...yeah. Exactly.  It's always clown time in this circus.

Is this hope I'm feeling?

Razor Wire and the Supremacy Clause

 

The Supreme Court decided 5-4 that the federal government can remove the razor wire barrier erected by Gov. Abbott along the US border with Mexico. Note that I didn't say the "Texas border" because this is our border with another country. It should not be a states' rights issue. And yet four Justices, Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas and Kavanaugh (should I say, the usual suspects?) thought that it's just fine for a governor to put up a trap like something out of the Saw franchise between the US and Mexico. 

For human beings to be injured or killed by. A potential international incident in the making--it shouldn't be Abbott's call. It should be logical that the supremacy clause pertains here, but they seem to be starting from agreeing with the Republican governor against the Biden Administration with a rationale TBD. 

The reason this bothers me is that a standoff between the US government and the state government at the border feeds into the weird secessionist thing Texas has going, lately. Me being, well, me, I can't refrain from noticing that Texas secessionism has been encouraged by Russian propaganda. (They were behind a lot of support for "Calexit" as well.)

Not that I think Greg Abbott or the four Supreme Court justices are working for the Russians mind you. I only question what the whole entire fuck they think the US government is for and why they would want to undermine it for what looks to me like partisan dick-slappery.

Snuffing Liberty's Lamp on the Borders

 

Trump praises an anti-immigrant military-style operation from the 1950s called “Operation Wetback” as he calls for rounding up Latinos in mass detention camps pic.twitter.com/9FYrI9zYQz

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 14, 2024

Detention camps. Build the wall. Iron Dome.  Trump is full of unnecessary antihumanitarian gimmicks. I think I know pretty well what he thinks he means by detention camps--something akin to what his good buddy Sheriff Arpaio had. How in the fuck, into the 21st century, was this shit something we as a modern nation allowed? 

 They love the hate and the othering. Calling other people names is a good substitute, they reckon, for figuring out the real cause of inequality. The grotesque ease with which untermenchen always figure out how to keep punching down while never challenging the ubermen. 

You know who also loves this stuff--Chip Roy of Texas. He applauded and supports Ron DeSantis because he shipped people from Venezuela who got to Texas all the way to Martha's Vinyard, because that is proof of something, and I want to say it is xenophobia and also proof that liberal cities are better at figuring out how to care for people than bigots in MAGAland ever could. 

Which brings us to the tragedy at Eagle Pass, the woman and two children who died as Texas officials prevented federal officials from doing anything about them. This was according to design. This is what Governor Abbott expends his efforts with, instead of making life better for Texans.  Like fixing the energy grid and shoring up protections for Texas residents in shit weather. Like accepting money to feed hungry kids. 

Now, Greg Abbott is going to tell us that woman and those two children were already dead in the water. 

Sure, that's how he wants it. From the moment they left home and threw themselves at the demented Jigsaw trap this psychopath put between them and a life that was still grueling, but had to be better than whatever they left if you understand what they had to overcome to get so far in the first damn place. Of course, they were. By design.

TWGB: All Accessories

 

Speaker Mike Johnson says the House is working on releasing new Jan. 6 tapes and will blur out the faces of rioters:

“We don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ and to have other, you know, concerns and problems.” pic.twitter.com/dExchE0qbr

— The Recount (@therecount) December 5, 2023

Rep. Mike Johnson doesn't want people who participated in the riot/insurrection on 1/6 to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ. Not retaliated against, as in, their neighbors would raise a hand against them? Interesting and prudent. Not charged by the DOJ? Is that like obstructing justice? Because that very definitely sounds to me like obstructing justice. 

Does DOJ probably have all the tapes for the most part anyway? Likely. But why is Mike Johnson signifying he's trying to protect the January 6th people? He has to because he has to curry favor with the world's most undisciplined and ungovernable people? He basically is one? 

Sure. Stuff like that. MTG has given him the malocchio.  He's got pains in his liver already. The thing where he was against George Santos' expulsion but it happened anyway and the thing where he was against the ongoing shitshow of the Biden impeachment inquiry but then decided to be for it? This is what a man does when he's clinging to the side of a cliff by dry little crack-dwelling plants.

So Much for the Bentley Bomber

 

At the top of the above picture, just past the border checkpoint, you can see a car frozen in air after its driver had made some very poor speed-related decisions. This unfortunate launch of a generally land-based vehicle resulted in an explosion that Fox News, among others, wanted to term a terrorist attack. 

It wasn't, but a lot of right-wing fear-mongers jumped on the news:

Ted Cruz reposting noted journalist Benny Johnson to say his "worst fears" were confirmed is amusing to me in a way I don't think Sen. Cruz would understand. 

Sometimes I think to myself that conservative "news" outlets and the politicians they have a symbiotic relationship with are just cynical liars, but I also think they do believe their own bullshit. People who say things like "open borders" in all serious are like people who say "post-birth abortion"--what they fuck are they on about? It's delusional. They assumed that OF COURSE an explosion on a bridge was terrorism. Because OPEN BORDERS: is why! I think there's some people this morning who are mad their talking point got, um, exploded.

But man, I am still trying to wrap my head around who is doing terrorism in a Bentley. That is a distant Saudi prince with Jason Chaffetz's turkey in his lap kind of high-priced terrorism....

Marjorie Taylor Greene Has a Future at Fox News (UPDATED)

 

Listen to this mother, who lost two children to fentanyl poisoning, tell the truth about both of her son’s murders because of the Biden administrations refusal to secure our border and stop the Cartel’s from murdering Americans everyday by Chinese fentanyl. pic.twitter.com/HRD5SX0Td8

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) February 28, 2023

The Tweet has context added at the bottom, that the bereaved woman that MTG is exploiting lost her sons in 2020, before Joe Biden became president. So obviously, it must have been some other president's policies that were wholly inadequate. This would be obvious to you, discerning Reader of this blog--it isn't necessarily to Marge's target audience.

She even played my favorite game, so often seen on the RNC and GOP official Twitter accounts, of pretending that border patrol encounters with migrants and seizures of smuggled drugs somehow mean that the border is not being protected. How does that even work?

This is What They Do, Now.

 

Roughly the same time I was hitting "submit" on yesterday morning's blog post, Rep. Stefanik was hitting "submit" on the Tweet depicted above: "democrats desperately want wide open borders and mass amnesty for illegals allowing them to vote.  Like the vast majority of Americans, Republicans want to secure our border and protect election security."

Sure, that's just a re-statement of the great replacement theory, but she also wants you to also know who the real victim in all this is: Elise Stefanik, for being smeared by people calling her out for exactly what she's saying. I expected no less, because there is hardly less a person could expect. The Washington Post's Philip Bump has it right--no one will apologize. They won't even stop and consider what the fallout of their rhetoric will be. Not even after it has lead to mass shootings. 

So, maybe Rep. Matt Gaetz will try to say his promotion of GRT is "race neutral". Oh, ok. We'll just ignore which immigrants are singled out. Others can claim (various RW pundits) that if you blame Democrats instead of George Soros it isn't real great replacement theory (it's just sparkling xenophobia!). And they are out there conflating two separate ideas: that America is demographically "browning" in the sense of eventually becoming minority-majority (a neutral, observable trend) and the idea that the demographic change is deliberate (not so neutral, the boogey-man under the bed). 

I guess the dumbest thing is, just as I've pointed out that the border is, in fact, being protected by the Administration despite fear-mongering and hyperbole to the contrary, why is anyone on the right thinking that new citizens are necessarily going to be Democratic voters? I wouldn't count on it, myself. Voting patterns in naturalized US citizens usually lags that of native citizens (and turnout among them isn't so hot, either) and there's no reason, not one, to expect a group to vote for us in return for citizenship. People vote for candidates who promise to do a good job. This is because people are thinking individuals with agency. They might even vote Republican, Elise--we know! 

That fantasy would be so easy (if you don't like the voters you have, just import ones you will!) if it...had any chance of working. And in the meanwhile, would it make sense electorally to create any kind of "crisis at the border" when Republicans seem to use it so deftly (and fallaciously)  as a cudgel for Democratic administrations?

This is what Republicans do now, they are shameless. No one wants to "silence" them--only ask them to be a bit introspective about the damage they are doing. But all they can think to do is escalate. 

Abbott and Audacity

 

INBOX: ⁦@GovAbbott⁩ slams ⁦@JoeBiden⁩ ⁦@POTUS⁩ for providing baby formula to undocumented immigrants during a national shortage #txlege #tx2022 pic.twitter.com/OGhLYVl1Q5

— Evan Smith (@evanasmith) May 12, 2022

It seems to me that the complaint Gov. Abbott makes that the Biden Administration is feeding babies in immigrant detention is an obvious example of Adam Serwer's axiom: "The cruelty is the point."  There isn't an option here--you feed the kids or they die of starvation. Texas Governor Greg Abbott understands that, but he also understands that there are people who really don't care if that happens. And those are his people. He doesn't have a solution to the issue of fixing the food supply or actually taking care of these children.

What? Greg Abbott, concerned about the supply chain or child welfare? 

It really feels like he doesn't care if children are endangered so long as he is making a culture war point.  He comes up with complaints about things, not real solutions even while real people can be harmed. So of course he has something to say about even the babies of undocumented immigrants--he has made the border his business, and threatening babies I guess makes him look tough. 

Or it makes him look like a sick SOB. I know how I see it. 

My Eyes Don't Deceive Me

 

The opponents of critical race theory, not more than a handful of months ago, were telling us it was a damn shame that Dr. Seuss was being cancelled for racial caricatures in a handful of nearly-forgotten children's books (yes, I do believe the Venn Diagram there is exactly a circle) but I wonder what they would say about the banning of books by Black authors in a school district in Pennsylvania. To me, it looks an awful lot like my impression that the criticism of CRT is actually a way to demonize a very specific kind of Black history (the kind that comes from Black voices and is heard from even when it isn't February) is pretty much the mood being catered to. 

The reason certain people want CRT to be minimized, want to discredit the 1619 Project, want to talk about All Lives Matter instead of why Black lives need to be discussed, why Latino/a/ex lives need to be discussed, why Asian lives need to be discussed, all within their contexts, is because the context doesn't show white culture in a positive light. Because it shouldn't. 

In discussing policing in the US, it's hard to divorce law enforcement from the slave patrols charged with keeping the peace (for a very racially-biased version thereof) in our early history, and about as hard to separate our Border Patrol from the same. 

So when right wing people talk about caravans and the gathering of Haitian refugees (just like the "threat" of Syrian refugees) and think of course violence will turn them away because who even are they? I don't think my eyes deceive me. I see human beings who deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But I know those other folks don't and I see what they are, too. And it's not so much that I want to emulate our nation's founders--I think we could do better. 

We are not free if we don't believe in these principles for all. All. One runny pimple on Montana's ass just got upset at the notion of a mere 75 Afghan refugees resettling there, some very small quantity of a huddled mass of people yearning to breathe free.  Sure, 75 human beings, with hardly nothing to their names, women and children included, are going to overrun your whole dumb gun-toting red white and blue-blooded state.

I'm not a Christian, but I believe what you are willing to do for the people with the least is your whole job as a human, because you need to know that could be you, too.  Politics and weather and poverty and all the shit fate throws at you permitting. But there's a very good label for what my eyes see when I see CBP deploying whips (or whatever your sensibility prefers to call the lash or the strap) on Haitian asylum-seekers. 

And it's the very word the anti-CRT folks want to pretend very much the US isn't about anymore, but you know what? Maybe we still live with that history and need to recognize and confront it. And we shouldn't fear people fleeing from danger so much as to hate, revile, and punish them on top of their own tragedy. 

Something there is that does not love a wall

Y pooess asi, “Hanna” derribó parte del muro fronterizo que se construye entre Estados Unidos y México. Para la furia de la naturaleza, no existen fronteras. 🇲🇽🇺🇸... pic.twitter.com/N3BxTadRhh

— Yadith Valdez (@yadithvaldez) July 26, 2020

It's called Hurricane Hanna.

This is a reminder that physical structures fall by physical means--borders are not physical, but legal constructs and the wall is a poor answer to our immigration situation even in the symbolic sense.

But the barrier between the White House and reality still seems more solid all the time.

While we’ve been watching Portland, Trump has been building a bigger wall around the White House. This is what it looks like now.

📸: @RebeccaARainey pic.twitter.com/a9B4y7KRar

— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) July 26, 2020

No, They Are Not There to "Help"

The Portland moms were hit with CS gas overnight, as federal officials refuse to remove “heavy” force presence https://t.co/lyC0oj6Zlu

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 20, 2020

The federal not-that-secret-anymore-police in Portland are not wanted, aren't trained for riot control, are causing bodily harm to nonviolent protesters, and have tear-gassed non-violently protesting women, some of whom were visibly pregnant. Their presence makes the situation more fraught, not less and renews interest in the ongoing protest, not decreasing it.

If this were a test-case to see what a full roll-out of such "help" nationwide would be like, I'd suggest that it was a failure and the Trump Administration should bag it. But it isn't supposed to help. I don't know what Trump wants from visions of "American carnage" under his watch, but he seems set on having them. He's a disgrace and so is his little jumped-up non-confirmed security spiv, Chad. I don't know if this is a prelude for some kind of shenanigans in the street in November, or if Trump is once again just trying to be seen "doing something" so as not to appear hapless.

But I'm pretty well convinced that actual "help" was not the big idea around this decision.

It's Kind of a Wall, Right?

More fencing going up around the White House complex early this morning pic.twitter.com/VLBRnx1lgz

— Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) June 4, 2020

And it's in black! But just so you know, Trump isn't either a bunker boy, and he was only there for like a minute, and it was to inspect it, and you're the bunker boy!


UPDATE: Is he building himself more of a Green Zone or is it more like a self-detention camp one wonders entirely idly, and will he be on hand to enjoy the protest on Saturday? Or will it be inspection time again? It is understood border patrol and prison guards are among the multiple alphabet-soup agencies who have been called to the general area.

What Mike Pence Saw And Didn't See

Regarding his visit of the Donna and McAllen detention centers, Mike Pence said he wasn't surprised at what he saw, that he thought CBP was doing a great job, that the conditions were excellent except for what could be blamed on Democrats and that the crisis was Democrats' fault--in other words, Pence and his group saw what they were prepared to see, and did not see what they were not going to see. 

Pence's responses to the trip have cause some to call him a "fake Christian" and I'm not really interested in questioning Pence's religion based on what he's said anymore than I'm sure Pence is thinking about it right now. I've long been of the opinion that people who go out of their way to remind you about their spirituality do so because their behavior would never remind you of it otherwise. 

He took to Twitter (!) to call CNN liars about their coverage--but does the footage lie? Or is it just different than what he wanted to focus on? And while Pence may have been told that treatment was good when he visited, that accounts for one facility, when, sadly, this can not be said for all facilities. 

Not all of the problems have to do with funding, and funding without ensuring actual better conditions seems inadequate, but it's interesting that he focuses on that. There are also questions about who is detained in these facilities, and for how long, and the fallout from harmful policies that still resonate.  There are also questions about how agencies are run, staffed and lead,  and how stressful conditions create extremely poor morale that shows itself in different ways. Those are questions that Pence might want to take up with his president if he were truly concerned about what he saw.

Not that he would see any progress by doing so. But it would be as useful as his photo-op was. See?

Something's Happening Here

Domestic terrorism in the US has been on the rise. There has been a rise in hate crimes in the US, as well.  The current head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, warns that white supremacist extremism is "a persistent, pervasive threat." 

But how does the Department of Homeland Security respond to this "persistent, pervasive threat" to the security of the US? Why, naturally, they virtually disband the unit of intelligence analysts looking into domestic terrorism. 

Wait? They stop looking into the actual terrorism that is happening right here in the Homeland? Doesn't that sort of sound like exactly the sort of thing Homeland Security should be doing? 

They are too busy not uniting little children with their families when they have been separated at our border, and too busy finding inadequate facilities to hold these people, and too busy tracking the menstrual cycles of teen girls. These things shouldn't seem as important and meaningful to DHS as addressing actual violence and terror head on, and, well, violence and terror are still very near to hand. 

(And I hear you, people who buy Trump's line about MS-13 and tattoos and "not the best people". Did you know gangs in Central America recruit at knife-tip and gunpoint? That even people who are affiliated with crime might have reasons to try and change their life? That some people want "not a life of crime" to be an actual valid choice for themselves?)

A White Power symbol was found near the burned-out Highlander Center.  Three black churches burn in Louisiana. And political figures receive serious threats--former Senator Jeff Flake describes multiple threats to himself and his family. Congressman Eric Swalwell shared a phone message of a death threat.  A man was arrested for threatening to assassinate Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. 

We are seeing a remarkably hate-charged atmosphere, but there is a theme, and it's one I have been seeing for some time--the rhetoric of Trump, and his racist, anti-journalist, anti-democracy views, that have made his red hat a symbol for far-right extremists. Even if not intended as a symbol for terror or hate, it has become a marker for disruption.  There is a reason why Trump superfans at Fox News demonize a congresswoman in a hijab, or regularly spew the exact line of hate regarding "replacement" that the Christchurch shooter used to justify his massacre, that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter used, that the Charlottesville tiki-torch folks chanted. 

Maybe there is a reason, also, that the NRA supports far-right groups regarding how to manage their message after a massacre. I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that they, too, have become pro-terrorism. 

There is a sickness here born of dehumanization and othering. But it is supported by people who have become perhaps so cynical and nihilistic that they dismiss these terrible signs as just another form of negative political rhetoric, and can't see it for what it is--fascism, here and now.  The people who support this crap are, naturally, as Hannah Arendt would say, banal--grifters, attention-seekers, losers. But their dedicated and destructive mediocrity, inadequately challenged, is simply appallingly dangerous to any kind of democratic and free way of life. 

I am deeply distrustful of what is happening here. 

But if you were to ask certain DHS folks who the real villains were, perhaps they would say Antifa. And they might very well be patted on the head for their service to the state. 

Image is Everything

Trump taking his weekend relaxation at Mar-A-Lago completely easy is apparently impossible with the entirety of the week's ghosts still flitting their digital apparitions before his very eyes on the television and the intertubes: to wit, he used Twitter to imply that both Saturday Night Live (a comedy program that has been lampooning political figures for about forty years) and the Department of Justice (an actual agency of the government concerned with supporting the Constitution, a document to which certain officials, like Trump, even make oaths to protect, owing to the essential truth that the country fortunately made by immigrants, the descendants of enslaved persons, and the persons of the indigenous nations of North America, which expanded from 13 mostly British colonies to a sea to shining sea multiethnic polyglot pan-religious congeries is a creedal nation and a notional nation held together more by the words of our founders than lines on any map) have offended him so greatly that all this unseemly Trump-unflattering fuckery needs to get prosecuted.

Or not. There isn't, likely, any path for Trump to actually screw with the First Amendment freedoms that let SNL employ a talented actor like Alec Baldwin to  unflatteringly ape Trump's worst tics and excesses. There may be brakes on Trump's ability to halt the Mueller investigation as well. But the idea that Trump needs to preserve his image is a peculiar vulnerability he seems to have. Take his hair, please! Take his claims that his orange tan comes from his "great genes" when it comes from using bronzer trying to cover his pale skin and active rosacea. And also take his weirdly specific and probably not true physical statistics stemming from his improbable health exam.

So, Uh, Did He Need to Do This?

"I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster," President Trump tells @PeterAlexander of national emergency declaration to secure funding for border wall. https://t.co/6ncbtP4QCx pic.twitter.com/yptbKdN5hp

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 15, 2019

There is an argument that he did not need to do this; I just didn't think he would say it, himself.

Should This Stand?

This is going to be a pretty short post because it's already the wee hours and I am certain there will be great shades of fuckery to confront on the morrow, but there is something especially weird about the tendency that President Trump has to undermine the various intelligence agencies who actually do the work of gathering information and analyzing it to provide context that should inform Trump's decision-making process. This relationship should not be either adversarial, nor should it be a top-down thing where Trump dictates what "reality" is.

The IC has provided credible information that ISIS is still active, that North Korea has not stepped down its nuclear program, that Iran is still largely abiding by its nuclear agreement, and that while border security is important, the overland threat is sort of not that big a priority. And Trump rubbishes it all, and then posts the above Tweet that tells us not to believe our eyes and ears about what IC professionals who have sworn an oath to protect and defend this country are saying, believe Trump! Trump might trash treaties and hate NATO and not even understand what defending allies is about, and for that matter, believes climate change is a hoax even though the Pentagon takes it seriously now, and has been doing so for years.

Any person with an open and rational mind, being confronted with information from people who have made it their lives' work to provide high-quality information in the service of their country, would try to incorporate at least some of it into their own frame of reference to try and do their own job better.

Not Donald Trump. He seems to find expertise suspect and is intensely uncomfortable with the very idea that he might not be the smartest person in the room. And it seems like he prefers to take his cues from actually stupid people, like the cast (I cannot call them "journalists") of his favorite shows on the Fox News channel.  Could anyone think for an instant that Lou Dobbs knows more than the FBI about law enforcement or counter-terrorism? (Dobbs has the distinction of being an original "birther" and having been dropped by CNN for his especially anti-immigrant views. His only distinguishing quality seems to be his bigotry.) Let alone weighing in on the rare genius of other Fox personalities like Tucker Carlson and Jesse Watters, who do not understand that the sun and wind still can generate electricity even when it is very cold, because they are functionally science illiterate, and who promote racist propaganda because they are...

Well, by any stretch, not persons who should be trusted over the actual people doing national security work, anyhow, regardless of whatever low esteem they should actually be held in. But it nonetheless remains that Trump, despite having qualified professionals that could provide him with good information, prefers his entertainment to inform his world.  Quite possibly because he lacks the attention span for anything other than "the shows".

But there are fewer professionals available to try and amend Trump's odd mental topiary,  owing in part to the thanklessness of the job and Trump's own limited arsedness to replace the brain-drain in his administration with good quality people, if he could even get them. In fact, his recent shut down was explained somewhat anonymously as an opportunity to purge careerists--quite baldly admitting that expertise wasn't really the Trump Administration's thing.  

Long story short, Trump harps on the Deep State because competent people see through his bullshit, and this gives him a lot of discomfort. So how long will anyone want to stay on when words will be put in their mouths, and their genuine assessments will be supplanted with Trump's casual falsehoods? Especially when he prefers, when his lie is called out, to continue not listening.