Trump Is Setting Himself Up for Failure by Hanging on to His Team of Freaks and Grifters

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Donald Trump: He said a lot of sh*t. The joke, as told by sometimes-Trumper Ben Shapiro, is that the epitaph on the president’s tombstone will one day remind us of as much.

Of all the grandiose boasts, uncomfortable truths, and outright lies that Trump has proffered over the years, though, there’s one that stands above the rest for its incongruence with the world as we know it.

On the campaign trail in 2016, candidate Trump often reassured voters that he intended to hire only “the best and most serious people” — “top-of-the-line professionals,” if you will. Even his most devoted supporters must look back on that particular vow with amusement. Trump’s first term saw him cycle through four full-time chiefs of staff (yes, you count, Mick Mulvaney), national security advisers, and press secretaries among numerous other major staff shakeups. Some of that turnover was doubtlessly a testament to their boss’s difficulty and often unreasonable demands. But much of it was attributable to his failure to make good on his promise; the best people, most of his hires were not.

To date, the second Trump administration has been devoid of the kind of attrition the first fell victim to. But it’s been defined by just as much incompetence.

The screw-ups are too many to enumerate in full — Mike Waltz’s Signal chat, Elon Musk’s DOGE disaster, Pam Bondi’s year-long fanning of the Epstein flame, and Susie Wiles’s Vanity Fair tell-all stand out — but recent events in Minnesota have taken Trump’s presidency to the brink.

He has Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino to thank.

The situation in Minneapolis, where the administration decided to deploy a surplus of immigration enforcement resources in the wake of the Somali fraud scandal rocking the state government, has deteriorated rapidly. The last few weeks have seen two American citizens shot and killed by authorities in broad daylight.

On January 7, Renee Good died after accelerating her car toward an ICE agent, who proceeded to open fire on her.

On January 24, Alex Pretti died after ending up in an altercation with Border Patrol agents who opened fire on him shortly after disarming him of a gun that he appeared to be carrying near his waist.

The blame for both tragedies belongs to numerous actors. Democrats have helped create a tinderbox by villainizing the very concept of immigration enforcement and those tasked with carrying it out. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) referred to ICE as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo” last May and recently earned a rebuke from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for making a tasteless comparison to Anne Frank. Such rhetoric has created a permission structure for violent attacks on authorities that are conveniently ignored by the press, but have put on-the-ground agents on edge.

Good didn’t deserve to die, but she put herself in a dangerous position by blocking the street with her car, failing to comply with orders, and accelerating her SUV toward the agent who shot her.

Still, much opprobrium also belongs to the administration, which has contributed to the cascading series of disasters and generalized disorder with its imprudence. Conservative commentator Erick Erickson painted a picture of how things had gone off the rails on Sunday.

“A lot of what is happening now is Kristi Noem marginalized Tom Homan and the head of Border Patrol because those two prioritized deportations of criminals and gang members. Noem and Corey Lewandowski wanted broad, public round-ups without prioritizing the illegal aliens,” he explained. “They have bypassed Homan and the head of Border Patrol and elevated Greg Bovino because they want the public confrontations and displays.”

“It is not just Tim Walz and Jacob Frey driving tensions,” concluded Erickson, a rock-ribbed right-winger. “It is a policy choice made by the Secretary of Homeland Security and those around her because they thought it would make for great coverage.”

It’s a safe assumption that Miller, the administration’s most ruthless immigration hawk, also favored the less discriminating, more confrontational approach.

On Monday, one day after Erickson’s reporting and two after Pretti’s death, Trump announced that he was dispatching Homan to the Gopher State to take over up the administration’s operations there. The damage had already been done, though; the freaks and grifters had already compounded their error.

In the hours following Pretti’s death, Miller characterized the deceased — a nurse with no criminal record — as an “assassin.” Vice President JD Vance was his echo. Noem accused Pretti of arriving “at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement.”

Then Bovino joined CNN’s Dana Bash for a car crash interview in which he described the agents involved in the Pretti shooting as the “victims” whom Pretti had assaulted.

Noem and Miller also recycled the “domestic terrorist” smear that they had first applied to Good.

One problem: nobody can point to single shred of evidence to back up their allegations. Indeed, all of the available footage of the incident contradicts their rather hysterical version of events, in which a terrorist-assassin arrived on scene and began assaulting officers with deadly intent.

To the contrary, the physical altercation began only after Pretti helped another protester who had been shoved to the ground stand back up. Perhaps additional facts will exonerate the Border Patrol agents of wrongdoing, but the existing video is not kind to them.

TheTrump team has put on a masterclass in how to turn a strength into a nail in a political coffin. The president sailed into office with a mandate to secure the border and deport criminal illegal aliens. He completed the former task with gusto, and was well on his way to earning plaudits for achieving the latter. But he committed a catastrophic error by allowing Noem, an empty pantsuit who would be more at home at a cosplay conference than the halls of power, Miller, a lifelong obsessive with not just a mean streak, but a cruel soul, and Bovino, mendacious meathead extraordinaire, to run rampant.

Now immigration, once the last issue set in which the president could take refuge, is hostile territory, too.

Character is destiny, it is said. So too are the characters you surround yourself with.

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

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