The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Terry Bracy
On the early morning of Feb. 9, a team of Homeland Security and military officials at Fort Bliss decided to intercept an object flying towards the El Paso airspace, thought to be a cartel drone. The chosen weapon was a newly invented laser device whose use had been approved by Defense Secretary Hegseth but not officials of the Federal Aviation Administration in charge of air safety. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy responded with justified anger and stated that the use of this unapproved weapon could endanger the lives of hundreds of airline passengers and announced the closure of the El Paso airspace to commercial travel for ten days. When the threatening target turned out to be a party balloon, the order was rescinded, and the finger-pointing began.
This incident was far from the first blunder by the Trump Pentagon, endangering civilian lives.
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Almost exactly a year ago, sixty-four passengers and crew died when a military training helicopter crashed into an American Airlines flight preparing to land at Reagan Airport in the nation's capital. In spite of prior near misses, the trainings were allowed to continue at night in the airspace of one of America’s busiest airports.
Upon his election to a second term, Donald Trump decided to hire a government staff whose only discernible virtue is loyalty to him. He began by unleashing Elon Musk and his chainsaw on America’s outstanding Civil Service System and blindly fired tens of thousands of the experts who managed the fifteen cabinet departments of the Executive Branch. He then bullied weak Republican Senators into confirming some of the least qualified Cabinet candidates in two hundred years when the spoils system was abandoned. It was this kind of planned ignorance that put a numbskull like Pete Hegseth in charge of nuclear weapons, a toady like Pam Bondi to head the world’s best justice system, and the massively unqualified Robert Kennedy, Jr. in charge of public health, who finds it necessary to disprove claims he is a germophobe by admitting to sniffing cocaine off of a toilet seat. Secretary of everything else Marco Rubio, who was, in his Senate years, thought to be smart and informed on foreign policy, abruptly did a complete about-face and embraced Trump’s hostile attitude toward European partners in NATO who have helped keep the peace for a half-century. Rubio set a land-speed record from being a respected senator to a MAGA extremist in his quest for power.
The incompetence of the Trump government is made even more poisonous when added to the brew are cunning right-wing extremists occupying positions of immense power, including Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought. Miller leads the ICE legions in the cruelest roundup of the unwanted since President Andrew Jackson signed The Indian Removal Act in 1830 that set off a forty-year policy of deportation and ethnic cleansing of Southeastern Tribes. Vought, who more than anyone was the ghostwriter of Project 25, is the maestro directing the cacophony of government destruction. As a dedicated Christian Nationalist, Vought advocates the merger of government and his religion as America’s true mission.
At the center of it all is a President who hungers for constant attention. His spirit is like a battery that needs the daily charging of headlines. When the battery runs low, Trump is likely to say or do anything to bring the cameras back to him. His attempt to cover up his role in the Epstein catastrophe could lead in directions not even imagined as he scampers like a cat on a hot tin roof to find safety.
Facing almost certain defeat in Congressional midterms, he is promoting the so-called SAVE Act, requiring all voters to arrive at the polls with either a birth certificate or passport, betting that most of us can’t find them. If this ruse doesn’t work, then his so-called Justice Department will challenge all the results that don’t favor the MAGA candidate.
And if that doesn’t work, in the words of Isaac Asimov, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Beware!
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Terry Bracy has served as a political adviser, campaign manager, congressional aide, sub-Cabinet official, board member and as an adviser to presidents.
