TGIF: Department of Eat My Shorts

Welcome to the first week of the end of our lives. America has gone from a democracy to an authoritarian regime, and you sheeple didn’t even notice. Here’s what happened in Week 0:  

→ Trump’s aloha admin takes shape: At first, things seemed normal. Republican, but normal. He brought on Marco Rubio as secretary of state. Okay, well. He’s a senator. Susie Wiles has been around Republican White Houses since the Reagan era, so that makes sense. Stephen Miller, okay, we know him. But then: Pete Hegseth. As the secretary of defense? Interesting. A veteran and Fox News personality who once threw an ax on TV, missed the target entirely, and almost killed a West Point drummer (there is, of course, a TMZ clip of it). Pete is a handsome bro with a tattoo sleeve and a few ex-wives, and he once proudly said that he “hasn’t washed his hands in ten years.” But okay. He’s a man in a suit, so I guess this is all tracking. But then: Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat who represented Hawaii, is to be the director of national intelligence? Here’s what Tulsi Gabbard once said about the war in Ukraine: 

Dear Presidents Putin, Zelensky, and Biden. It’s time to put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love, for the Ukrainian people by coming to an agreement that Ukraine will be a neutral country—i.e., no military alliance with NATO or Russia—thus alleviate the legitimate security concerns of both U.S./NATO countries and Russia, because there would be no Russian or NATO troops on each other’s borders (non-Baltic). This would allow the Ukrainian people to live in peace. Aloha.

Every day, if you want to avoid the watchful eye of the national intelligence community, I need you to ask yourself: Are you aloha today? Was that email sent with the proper aloha? Are you tracking that terrorist with an aloha mindset? Otherwise it’s Abu Ghraib but you’re hogtied with leis and you hear pahu drums all night. 

Later in the week, Trump gave the base some real red meat: Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Yes, Gaetz as the nation’s top cop. His potential future employees were just recently investigating him for allegedly paying underage escorts, so if you’re one of those guys, I recommend scrubbing your computer and getting your family into hiding. Gaetz also apparently was just a gross colleague. Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin has said this about Matt Gaetz: “We had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor. . . of the girls that he had slept with. He’d brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.” Now Senator Mullin is getting in line with: “I completely trust President Trump’s decision-making on this one.” If you heard Gaetz talking about his sexual rituals before a roll call, no you didn’t.

Here’s a nice primer on Gaetz’s various scandals, but I guess my favorite is when Gaetz brought Chuck Johnson—a real internet freak, a guy who said the Holocaust gas chambers were fake, that sort—to the 2018 State of the Union. 

But we need to remember that our institutions can never be criticized—if you do, you’re attacking democracy itself. As the great and righteous Merrick Garland put it: “Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department. . . This constitutes an attack on an institution that is essential to American democracy and essential to the safety of the American people.” And so I expect similar restraint and honor be given to our potential new attorney general, Matthew Gaetz.