This is an adapted excerpt from the May 29 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
For years, Donald Trump has bragged that he only hires the “best people.” But almost six months into his second term, many members of his administration are proving they just aren’t up for the job.
Take former WWE executive Linda McMahon, whom Trump inexplicably put in charge of the Department of Education. On Tuesday, during a Senate hearing, Republican senators did their level best to lob McMahon softball questions to make it look like she knows what she’s doing.
Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma tried to tee up an easy one, asking the secretary, “What was we ranked nationally in math and reading in 1979?” McMahon responded that the U.S. was “very, very low on the totem pole.” Mullin then had to inform her that we were actually ranked No. 1 in 1979.
Republican senators and Trump’s education secretary spectacularly failed a math and reading quiz of their own making.
In McMahon’s (limited) defense, Mullin’s question was garbled nonsense. I mean, setting aside the strange verb conjugation of “what was we ranked,” he asked how the U.S. ranked “nationally” when he apparently meant “globally.” So clearly neither of these people is getting an A in reading comprehension or grammar.
But what about math? After Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said the U.S. spends $1.5 billion a year on federal grants for disadvantaged students, the senator claimed that the numbers added up to be “over a trillion dollars” over 10 years.
After McMahon failed to correct the senator’s estimation, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island had to jump in to educate the pair, pointing out that $1.5 billion multiplied by 10 is not “over a trillion dollars” but actually $15 billion.
Republican senators and Trump’s education secretary failed spectacularly at a math and reading quiz of their own making, while they complained about America falling behind in math and reading.
Unfortunately, McMahon is not the only one of Trump’s “best people” making embarrassing mistakes. This week, David Richardson, the acting chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told staff he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, four sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.
The Trump administration has said those comments were meant as a joke, but that was definitely not clear to the people in the room. FEMA is now heading into a new hurricane season with a staff that’s been gutted by Trump’s cuts, and the agency’s staff is reportedly worried about Richardson’s lack of experience.
Maybe Richardson should have Googled his job first to see what it entails. After all, that’s what Trump’s equally unqualified Social Security commissioner reportedly did.
Honestly, a little Googling might serve some of them well. Take Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, last month, released his much-anticipated “The MAHA Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again.” We soon learned that the report was riddled with errors and cited at least seven studies that do not exist.
Kennedy then updated his report in an effort to fix those mistakes, but, as it turns out, they actually added more errors to that revised version. The secretary has now somehow managed to screw up the same report twice.
So things aren’t going great at FEMA, or Social Security, or HHS. But surely the Department of Homeland Security is running like a Swiss watch.
Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent out a press release that claimed Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested an “Illegal Alien who Threatened to Assassinate President Donald J. Trump.” It included an image of a threatening handwritten letter that Noem claimed had been sent by an undocumented immigrant in Milwaukee named Ramon Morales Reyes.
But it turns out local law enforcement officials do not think Morales Reyes sent that letter. In fact, they think that he was being set up. As The New York Times reports, “Not long after the announcement, the government’s story began to look shaky. … And as detectives in Wisconsin began looking deeper, they came to believe Reyes had been framed.”
Milwaukee County prosecutors have now filed identity theft and witness intimidation charges against another man, a lifelong Wisconsin resident. They said the man had written several threatening letters that included Reyes’ name in the return address. “Prosecutors said it was an attempt to catch the attention of the Trump administration and weaponize the threat of deportation against Mr. Reyes, who was scheduled to testify against the man at a robbery trial next month,” the Times reports.
So this guy, who is set to go on trial next month, allegedly tried to trick the Trump administration into going after the witness who would testify against him, and the Department of Homeland Security appears to have fallen for it.
Meanwhile, Trump’s intelligence chief appears to be struggling with her job as well. As director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard is responsible for making sure that Trump is up to date on the latest intelligence, which includes his presidential daily brief.
But apparently that is proving difficult. Since taking office, Trump has taken his daily intelligence briefing, on average, less than once a week, according to his public schedule, which is far less than previous presidents (including his own first term).
So Gabbard is now reportedly resorting to what I would call creative methods. According to NBC News, one idea that’s been discussed is possibly creating a video version of the PDB that looks and feels like a Fox News broadcast. NBC News reports, “A new PDB could include not only graphics and pictures but also maps with animated representations of exploding bombs, similar to a video game.”
In other words, because Gabbard is bad at her job and the president of the United States doesn’t like to read, career intelligence staffers may be forced to put on some kind of Fox News puppet show to get the president to pay attention.
That’s the real problem with all of this: We all know that when it comes to people, Trump is not sending his best. There is a whole system of dedicated federal workers who actually make the government function, and who in turn can make even the most incompetent bureaucrat look vaguely competent. But Trump is making it impossible for them to do their jobs.
We all know, when it comes to people, Trump is not sending his best.
The Washington Post recently dug into all the ways Trump’s efforts to increase government “efficiency” have, ironically, buried federal workers under red tape. The report cites interviews with more than three dozen federal workers across 19 agencies, as well as records obtained by the outlet. Among the findings were:
- At NASA, employees had to write several detailed paragraphs, across multiple rounds of emails, to win approval to buy fastening bolts.
- At the Food and Drug Administration, once-routine tests on food, including monitoring for accuracy in labeling, coloring and exposure to heavy metals, have been significantly delayed because the agency began requiring department-level approval for expenses at every step.
- At the Federal Aviation Administration, officials at air traffic control towers across two dozen West Coast airports are unable to easily pay to have the windows washed or shades cleaned.
- At the Social Security Administration, Trump officials and DOGE have pushed thousands of central office workers to take lower-level positions answering phones in field offices. They also threatened to fire whoever didn’t make the jump.
Government officials cannot purchase bolts for rockets, do food-safety testing or wash the windows at air traffic control towers without wading through layers and layers of new Trump-approved red tape.
All of the real people who make our government run are being squeezed, and all we’re left with is the bizarre and clueless leadership of Trump’s so-called very best people.