It Is Time To Remember The Bad Names You Forgot

You did not, of course, forget all of them. On the supposed early list of potential Trump Secretary of State nominees, you will find Marco Rubio, who while perhaps diminished among the rabidly MAGA party in which he continues to strive, rat-like, for power and recognition, certainly hasn’t gone away entirely. Or there’s Elise Stefanik, a House member and extremely vocal Trump supporter throughout, vocal enough to persist in the reluctant mindspace of any casual observer of politics; she has already been offered, and accepted, the role of ambassador to the United Nations. Good for her.

But some of the names now percolating up out of the sludge-like conservative ecosystem as possible appointees to various critical government posts have, hopefully, dropped out of your own personal circulation in recent years. Your vacation, unfortunately, is over.

Tom Homan, the rabid and violence-hungry xenophobe who served as an acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump’s first term, has been named as a new “border czar.” Homan was among the architects of Trump’s family separation policy, and is apparently just champing at the bit to inflict more suffering upon millions of people. Speaking at the Republican National Convention a few months ago, Homan said undocumented immigrants “better start packing,” and on Monday he told Fox News that he may double the number of enforcement agents he sends to infamous border region of, uh, New York City. “If you’re not gonna help us,” he said of blue state governors who are pledging to protect people from deportation raids, “get the hell out of the way.” Charming fellow.

Or how about Richard Grenell, also supposedly in consideration for State along with Rubio. Grenell served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany, and was so loathed that some of his hosts apparently called him a “biased propaganda machine” and demanded he be removed. He then spent three months in a critical intelligence role, a tenure that I’ll just let CNN sum up here:

In his three months leading the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Grenell has overseen two controversial firings of top career officials, a re-structuring of several parts of ODNI, a deeply acrimonious relationship with overseers in Congress and the declassification of documents from the Obama administration that fueled the “Obamagate” conspiracy theory amplified by Trump and his allies.

His moves were considered so political in nature — rather than, you know, related to intelligence — that Democrats in Congress called them “without precedent.”

Then there’s Larry Kudlow, who served as Trump’s economic advisor, despite being, per one Washington Post op-ed, “more wrong about the economy than anyone alive.” And that was before his take on February 25, 2020: “We have contained this. I won’t say [it’s] airtight, but it’s pretty close to airtight.” You can guess what he was talking about; he said the thing that would eventually cost the U.S. $18 trillion would not be an “economic tragedy.” He may be tapped to be the next Treasury Secretary.

And of course, there is Stephen Miller. Miller will likely serve as Trump’s deputy chief of staff, a position from where he will once again be able to whisper the least sweet nothings imaginable into the president’s ear. You probably didn’t forget about him; you just wanted to, badly, like the desire to be rid of a persistent canker sore or leaking sewer pipe.

With him, with all of these names, they have been kept vaguely at bay at times, burst back into prominence, zit-like, at others; they are back now, with new ones certain to emerge to join, oozing forth into our brains from an apparently bottomless fen of noxiousness. Too many names.