The bad news on Donald Trump’s transition team is that Mike Rogers, one of the better informed and respected members of the Republican security establishment, has been booted off. The worse news is that, according to the Weekly Standard and a source who contacted the New York Times, Rogers was thrown off because of concerns about his handling of the Benghazi investigation. (Rogers found that, contrary to a popular right-wing conspiracy theory, the Obama administration did not order its security forces to “stand down.”) So Rogers’s willingness to follow evidence made him dangerous and unacceptable.
The even worse news is that the person who was fired for not being crazy was replaced by somebody who is famous for being crazy. Frank Gaffney has taken Rogers’s spot. Gaffney suffers from a variety of delusional beliefs concerning secret Islamic subversion of the government, a conspiracy that runs from such figures as Barack Obama (who Gaffney called “America’s first Muslims president”) to Chris Christie, who Gaffney has accused of “misprision of treason.” (Luckily Christie has also been sacked from the transition team, because otherwise it would have made for some awkward meetings.) Gaffney was banned from CPAC for being too crazy, which is like being thrown out of the Soprano family for lacking business ethics.
It might be okay, or possibly even good, if the political and economic wing of Trump’s administration melts down under its own incompetence. But the security jobs are necessary to protect lives, and the emerging cast in Trump’s administration creates an unnervingly high potential for absolute catastrophe.
