Former Aberdeen mayor Levsen: Embarrassing Signal affair is an indicator of incompetence on Trump team
Well, that didn’t take long.
A February column on the South Dakota Standard criticized hiring practices of the President Trump administration.
Everyone knows the history of repeated Trump failures (Trump casinos, Trump University, Trump Airlines, Trump Mortgages, Trump Vodka, Trump Magazine, etc). The column suggested hiring and management practices which led to those repeated business failures would also breed failures in government.
We described Trump’s staffing choices as “affirmative action for ideologues,”sort of DEI — but backwards. This would inevitably lead to mistakes by people hired based only on their loyalty to Trump, not ability or experience.
Spectacularly clear confirmation was inevitable and came quickly.
Exhibit A: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (seen with Trump above in a public domain image posted on wikimedia commons).
Exhibit B: Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard.
The incredibly ugly Yemen attack plan fiasco exposed these two as being way over their heads. It was obvious when they were confirmed — rubber-stamped by a lapdog Senate led by John Thune. Other unqualified and peculiar Cabinet nominees also sailed through.
A cascade of errors has begun now that these Cabinet leaders have applied a MAGA loyalty test to their department hiring. Job requirement #1 is obsequiousness.
The Yemen affair could have been better handled with a sincere acknowledgment of error and a pledge to do better. They are not even capable of doing that. Mistake after mistake after mistake will follow from top to bottom throughout all levels in all departments. It is baked in. These people are not going to get smarter at their jobs.
Be prepared for what’s to come. This house of cards will crumble under the weight of incompetent leadership and inevitable subordinate blunders. IRS, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, and other departments are already crashing. Millions of individuals will be harmed.
Will enough citizens see this for what it is?
Mike Levsen is a former mayor of Aberdeen and a regular contributor to The South Dakota Standard.
