Donald Trump is plunging the country, and the world, from one crisis to the next, and his cabinet, which was chosen for reasons unrelated to competence, is ill-equipped to handle any of them.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
In the movie Galaxy Quest, which was released in the late 1990s and quickly attained cult status, the cast of a Star Trek-like TV show is abducted by real aliens who believe that the actors are actually capable astronauts who can save their planet. As this motley crew faces one life-and-death situation after another, it becomes very clear that they are all in over their heads.
We had to think about the movie when watching Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth address the media on Sunday morning following Donald Trump’s decision to get the US involved in another Middle Eastern war.
At one point, we actually felt bad for Hegseth.
The poor guy only got the job because he has a square jaw, appeared on Fox News, and talks a big game about “warfighters.”
He isn’t qualified to deal with this situation… and it showed.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (@SecDef): "We devastated the Iran nuclear program…Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated." pic.twitter.com/39zW06zFtm
— CSPAN (@cspan) June 22, 2025
Throughout the press conference, Hegseth tried to mask his incompetence with verbosity, flattery of Trump, and the kind of over-the-top rhetoric you’d expect from a Hollywood movie.
“Thanks to President Trump’s bold and visionary leadership and his commitment to peace through strength, Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated,” he said at one point, echoing the president’s own assessment of the effectiveness of the strikes from Saturday night’s mission, which was given the very moviesque name “Midnight Hammer.”
Of course, the actual expert, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, offered a different take.
“I think BDA [battle damage assessment] is still pending, and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there,” Caine said, right after Hegseth made his bold (and incorrect) claim.
This is the perfect example of the difference between an actor and a leader.
Unfortunately, actual leaders, and not just those playing them on TV, are in short supply in the White House.
But first, back to Hegseth’s monologue.
“Many presidents have dreamed of delivering the final blow to Iran’s nuclear program and none could,” he said. “Until President Trump.”
Of course, there was an international deal in place that had curtailed Iran’s nuclear program… until Trump blew that up in his first term.
“The operation the president planned was bold and brilliant, showing the world that American deterrence is back,” Hegseth continued before transitioning to praising all troops involved as “warriors” who were flawless in their execution.
Hegseth did not say whether any of them were DEI hires, which brings us to why he was chosen to “run” the Pentagon.
His job was to eliminate the “wokeness” in the military, to hassle transgender troops, to talk about vaccines, and to purge references to the accomplishments of non-white soldiers in US military history. It was to rename military bases for soldiers whose names just happened to be the same as those of Confederate generals.
That’s why he was hired, and not to competently run a war.
Yet here we are with shots being fired.
Obviously, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be, but a large share of Trump’s cabinet consists of unqualified stooges who look like the real thing but are hopelessly unqualified.
And that would be fine… if there were no crises.
Trump’s cabinet could confidently cosplay government in the White House if everything was running smoothly, just like those Galaxy Quest actors were able to play the part of space heroes at comic book conventions.
However, Trump has created several crises, for example a simmering trade war that threatens the robust economy he inherited, or sending in the troops to deal with protests sparked by his Gestapo-like ICE raids.
And the people at the helm are ill-equipped to deal with any of them because they were chosen largely for their role as performers on Fox News, which is all they know how to do.
Their skill set is limited to praising Trump, escalating any situation, and never backing down (which is also pretty much the president’s skill set).
That isn’t very confidence-inspiring in a war that could escalate and put real American lives in danger.
By the way, we know how this might play out because Trump really botched the one crisis that he faced in his first term: COVID.
But at least then there were still some capable people around.
Imagine what would happen now with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge.
Go ahead, imagine it!
Of course, there is a chance that things will turn out well, just like in the movie, when the cast of the TV show stumbled from one adventure to the next and, eventually, found the courage and skill necessary to save the day.
But that’s Hollywood for you.
Sadly, this is real life, and if the current Middle East crisis doesn’t spiral out of control, then it will be in spite of Trump and his troupe of clowns, and not because of them.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
