Trump Interviews The Worst People

Donald Trump is interviewing people for cabinet positions, and it mostly appears that he is doing it as a joke, or is literally asking, who are the very worst people we can find for these jobs?

It almost made sense to offer Ben Carson the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services, since he is a doctor, but then Carson's spokesman said, "Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency." Okay, he thinks he's qualified to be President but not to run an agency. And now Trump is considering him for Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary, and he's thinking of accepting that. So now he is qualified to run an agency. I think the logic is, the agency has the word "urban" in it, and Carson is black. I don't think either one of them knows that HUD actually does.

Trump has actually found the very worst person in the world to interview for Education Secretary. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, which is described as a "legal pyramid scheme."

The New York Times summarizes her qualifications succinctly:

For nearly 30 years, as a philanthropist, activist and Republican fund-raiser, she has pushed to give families taxpayer money in the form of vouchers to attend private and parochial schools, pressed to expand publicly funded but privately run charter schools, and tried to strip teacher unions of their influence. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education Pick, Has Steered Money From Public Schools

She didn't go to public school and she didn't send her kids to public school, which, by the way, she would prefer you called "government school."

The NYT:

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Ms. DeVos “the most ideological, anti-public education nominee” since the secretary of education was elevated to the cabinet level four decades ago.

The voucher idea goes back to 1953, when Georgia governor Herman Talmadge, fearing that schools would be forced to integrate by court order, proposed an amendment to the state constitution that would let the General Assembly privatize the schools. Then if public schools were required to desegregate, school buildings would be closed and students would receive grants to attend private, segregated schools. The issue has moved forward through the years, contributing to the alliance between Dominionist Christians and free-market conservatives, with the Heritage Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, and even the Family Research Council jumping into it. Vouchers for private schools advance a number of rightwing goals -- remember the role that lack of education played in last month's election. Dumb is good for the Republican party.

This is the worst person you could imagine for Education Secretary.

The world is watching in horror as Trump parades the basket of deplorables through Trump Towers for interviews. In the campaign he laughably said, "I'll get the best people" but he is talking to the worst people, he is declining the daily security briefings, he failed to impress the New York Times in a meeting, he is not even trying to hide the nepotism and corruption that is making the federal government a branch of Trump Industries.

In the meantime, a few electors are vowing to switch their votes in the electoral college, and Jill Stein has raised millions of dollars to recount ballots in states where computer experts say the results of electronic voting look suspicious. Nobody really expects these things to work out, but at least there is a shred of hope.