Kash Patel Is Acting Like a Wannabe Influencer, Not an FBI Director

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The critique writes itself.

Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, using a government plane to attend a hockey game overseas. Locker room beer chugging. The sitting president on speakerphone. Reports of a girlfriend traveling with a security footprint. Banners bearing President Donald Trump’s image hanging outside the Justice Department building. All while high-profile cases linger, victims seek justice, cartel violence escalates, and a wannabe assassin was killed by authorities at Mar-a-Lago.

Each episode, taken individually, comes with an explanation. Senior officials travel on government aircraft. Presidents congratulate championship teams. Security details are often broader than the public understands. Buildings reflect the priorities of the administration in power. None of this, standing alone, establishes misconduct.

But the issue isn’t just a few isolated moments; it’s the pattern. Leaders at this level are judged over time, and increasingly by the images they generate. When those images lean toward spectacle, self-serving obsequiousness, and fame, the burden falls on the institution to convince a skeptical public that nothing fundamental has changed.

Patel appears to be operating inside the same attention-driven culture that has reshaped much of American public life — where social media algorithms reward visibility as currency, proximity to power is the message, and presence substitutes for restraint. Every institution that has surrendered to that logic has paid for it in credibility. The bureau was built to resist it, and its authority depends on that resistance.

“Serious” in this context means understanding that the office carries symbolic weight and that perception shapes how power is received. The FBI director does not operate as a personality. And yet Patel seems more committed to acting like a wannabe Instagram influencer than the nation’s top cop.

The FBI’s credibility has been fragile for decades. Hoover’s excesses forced reforms meant to insulate investigative power from politics. Watergate reinforced the need for distance from the White House. The post-9/11 expansion of surveillance authority deepened both capability and suspicion. The Comey years and January 6 fractured public confidence across party lines. The bureau now functions in a climate where half the country is predisposed to question its motives.

That reality has both perceptual and operational consequences. When the FBI seeks cooperation from a reluctant witness in a politically sensitive probe, its reputation matters. When prosecutors present a case to a jury involving a powerful figure, perceived neutrality influences deliberations. When the bureau asks Congress to renew surveillance authorities, lawmakers weigh their trust in those exercising them.

A leadership style that resembles influencer-era visibility rather than institutional restraint undermines its standing. The authority of the office depends on maintaining distance from the political energy of the moment, not moving comfortably within it, seeking likes and clicks.

Social media-fueled images and videos feed directly into the erosion of that confidence. Visual signals of proximity to presidential power serve as reference points in arguments about independence. Public perception informs congressional oversight, courtroom strategy, and internal morale.

The more unsettling reading is that this performative clout-chasing is entirely by design.

For decades, FBI leadership treated visible independence from the White House as a strategic asset. Directors appointed by loyal presidents typically adopted distance once confirmed because courts, juries, and Congress respond to cues about impartiality. That posture preserved room to operate when investigations touched powerful interests. It was not aesthetic preference. It was institutional armor.

A director who relaxes that posture advances a different theory of legitimacy. He signals that overt proximity to executive power carries advantages in a polarized environment. He suggests that neutrality-as-performance offers a limited return when skepticism is already entrenched. The locker room, the banners, the visibility — on this reading, they are the product.

There is no constitutional provision or federal statute that requires aesthetic aloofness. What sustains the Bureau is public confidence that its massive investigative authority is exercised without personal or political entanglement.

The Milan footage and the imagery in Washington raise a basic question: what does Patel believe this office requires? If distance from the White House is no longer the goal, that isn’t a lapse in judgment. It’s a fundamentally different understanding of the job.

The bureau’s authority endures only so long as the public believes it stands apart from transient political energy. That boundary is being tested in full view.

It is visible.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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