The Trump Administration Is Using This Handy-Dandy Loyalty Test for Law-Enforcement Candidates

Want a job with the FBI? Want to carry a gun and a badge, wear low-cost suits and shiny cop shoes? Want to chase spies and mobsters and dangerous librarians who display children’s books about gay penguins? Answer the following questions:

Was the 2020 presidential election stolen?

Who were the real patriots in Washington on January 6, 2021?

And, finally, conclusively,

Who’s your real boss?

According to The Washington Post, this is actually occurring within the current administration. Were these childish inquiries written in crayon? What’s the next step? Matchbooks? “If you can draw Kash Patel’s face, you can be a Fed”? It would be laughable if it weren’t so terrifying.

One former official familiar with the questions posed to one of the candidates said: “He was not willing to compromise his integrity by saying things he knew weren’t true. He’s not losing any sleep over his decision.”

Political fealty has been a prerequisite for positions at all levels of the new administration, including for current civil servants seeking new assignments. But former national security and other officials said it is especially important for the nation’s security that intelligence professionals be able to give the president accurate information, even if it does not align with his policy or political preferences.

This obvious attempt to turn the intelligence community into a private police force for the purpose of presidential vengeance, and operating with all the independence of a team of sled dogs, was an indication that the final assault on representative government is under way. At the same time that the Post was revealing this comic-opera villainy, officials up to and including the vice president of the United States were softening up the ground in preparation for the day when the president tells the judiciary to pound sand. That will occasion not so much a constitutional crisis as constitutional Armageddon.

President Musk has weighed in on the subject, as has Stephen Miller, who between them racked up as many electoral votes in 2024 as Thurlow Weed and Elihu Root combined. They both chimed in on the subject of “unelected bureaucrats” opposing the president. (Musk also demanded that a judge blocking a presidential decree be impeached. Porcelain Boy is such a tough guy.) Then, JD Vance put the poisoned cherry atop this rancid sundae, Xweeting:

If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.

Does this empty suit know how anything works? More often than not, judges pass judgment on actions after those actions have occurred. And in other cases, if the attorney-general were to announce that the FBI was embarked on a program to incarcerate all Democrats without trial, a judge would have a positive duty to stand in the way. Vance must have been dipping sheep the day in high school when they taught about the day the Supreme Court ordered President Nixon to cough up the Watergate tapes. I have no doubt that Vance could ace that FBI entrance exam.

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