re: #119 b_sharp

Almost every appointment made by Trump has been someone who could dismantle their assigned portfolio. Knowledge of the portfolio has never been a criterion. Dislike of it has.

David Cay Johnston put out a book about it in 2018:

“…The Trump administration deposited political termites throughout the structure of our government. Their task, in the words of Trump’s first White House strategic adviser, Steve Bannon, is the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” By that, Bannon has explained, he means to undo the tax, trade, regulatory, and other means by which the federal government carries out its duties. The endgame is not just a smaller government, which Republicans always say they want, but a weak government, a government that looks first after the best-off in the land, not those most in need of a helping hand in the form of a sound education, clean water, and the other basics of a healthy society in the twenty-first century. These termites operate out of sight, in some cases in extraordinary secrecy, to bully or scare scientists into leaving, remove from public access important public records, and for all anyone knows destroy many of them. Such records are often necessary to enforce environmental, worker safety, and other laws.”

It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America
amazon.com