Thom's blog
Trump's Cabinet of Deplorables
After he met with President Obama the day after the election and actually behaved himself for more than an hour, some people out there -- people who apparently have not been paying attention for the past year-and-a-half -- began to talk about how Trump might not be that dangerous after all. The racism and bigotry he displayed on the campaign trail - these people said - was just a cynical ploy to dupe voters into electing someone who was really just a moderate Republican.
Boy, were they wrong.
The Trump administration is now shaping up to be a real basket of "deplorables" in every sense of the word.
First, Trump picked Steve Bannon, the former head of white nationalist website Breitbart News to be his chief strategist.
That alone should have raised alarm bells across Washington because Breitbart regularly runs stories about evil Muslims coming to take your town, feminism making women ugly, and the greatness of the Confederate flag.
But the Bannon pick was just the beginning.
Now Trump has added three more "deplorable" figures to his administration: Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo, and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.
Flynn, who'll serve as Donald Trump's national security advisor. is a raging Islamophobe who's said on Twitter that fear of "Muslims is rational."
His views on Islam are so extreme that President Obama actually had to fire him from the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Mike Pompeo, who Trump wants to be his CIA Director, is another far-right hawk.
He's an original member of the Tea Party, and thinks Edward Snowden should be executed.
And then there's Jeff Sessions, Trump's pick for Attorney General.
Jeff Sessions, whose full name is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III - is one of the Senate's leading voices against immigration of all types, and has a history of making bigoted statements like "I thought the KKK were OK until I learned they smoked marijuana."
I'm not kidding, he's seriously supposed to have said that. It's one of the reasons the Senate decided in 1986 that he was too racist to be a federal judge.
Not too racist, however, for President-Elect Donald Trump.
Which raises the question, just what does it say about our country that an Islamophobe, someone who thinks dissidents should be executed, and a KKK apologist are about to be in charge of the national security and law enforcement agencies of our government?
Is this what Making America Great Again was really all about? Putting the bigots back in power?
It sure seems like it.
-Thom
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