In the heat of the 2024 presidential election season, Donald Trump sat for one of his many tongue bathing “interviews” with Sean Hannity on Fox News. On one particular occasion, Hannity sought to handhold Trump through a controversy wherein he had been accused of aspiring to be a dictator. But true to form, Trump was oblivious to the answers that Hannity tried to pass to him in his questions.

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Despite Hannity’s repeated attempts, Trump insisted on expressing his abhorrent authoritarian aspirations. He stubbornly affirmed his deep desire to be a “dictator on day one.” And the limitation of his tyrannical reign to a single day provides little comfort to those who know that dictators never relinquish power voluntarily once they assume it.

SEE THIS: Trump Cloddishly Dodges Hannity’s Softball Questions About Whether He Would Be a Dictator

Validating Trump’s totalitarian tendencies, it is now being reported that he intends to bypass the routine FBI background checks that are conducted on prospective presidential Cabinet candidates. According to CNN…

“President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is?bypassing traditional FBI background checks for at least some of his Cabinet picks while using private companies to conduct vetting of potential candidates for administration jobs, people close to the transition planning say.

“Trump and his allies believe the FBI system is slow and plagued with issues that could stymie the president-elect’s plan to quickly begin the work of implementing his agenda, people briefed on the plans said. Critics say the intrusive background checks sometimes turn up embarrassing information used to inflict political damage.

“The discussions come as Trump has floated several controversial choices for high-level positions in the US government – including Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence.”

There are reasons that the FBI has been tasked with these background checks for decades. The positions that Cabinet heads hold grant them access to sensitive national security information. If they are compromised in any way it could make them vessels for foreign agents to acquire classified data, or even make them vulnerable to blackmail attempts. And that’s presuming that they aren’t purposefully acting on behalf of enemy regimes.

So why would Trump want to forego background checks on his nominees? Does he know something about them that we don’t? Are his own motives suspect? Even if they are not themselves foreign assets, do they have connections that would be concerning? Could they be unwitting dupes?

These are all questions that take on extraordinary significance when Trump himself has been so chummy with foreign despots like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Viktor Orbán, and Kim Jong Un. Will those questions be asked? Will Trump be able to delay the process until he is able to install his own nominee for FBI director (possibly Trump flunky, Kash Patel)?

Many of Trump’s nominees to date have glaring issues that would raise red flags in any probe for security clearances. His attorney general nominee, Matt Gaetz, has been credibly accused of sex trafficking of a minor and illicit drug use. His Health and Human Services nominee, Robert Kennedy Jr, is a serial adulterer with a dead worm in his brain who holds crackpot conspiracy theories regarding medicine and vaccines. His nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has advocated bombing Iran and North Korea and argued in support of war criminals. His nominee for director of national security, Tulsi Gabbard, has ties with Putin and Russia.

What they all have in common is a worshipful cult attachment, and unwavering loyalty, to Trump, and no experience whatsoever in the jobs that he is proposing they fill. If it were Trump’s mission to undermine the stability of the United States, he couldn’t have picked a better team. So naturally, he wouldn’t want any of his co-conspirators to be subject to scrutiny.

Trump has been angling to give his nominees “recess appointments” so that they can bypass the Senate hearings as well. Hopefully Republicans in the Senate will grow a spine and insist that these nominees be required to submit to both background checks and Senate hearings. But resting our hopes on the strength of GOP spines is not exactly reassuring.

This leaves any hopes of preserving our democracy to Democrats, who are in the minority in both houses of Congress, and the media, who have been grossly deficient in their duty to inform. Which means that the only remaining path to salvation rests with the people. Are we up to it? We better be!

RELATED STORIES:

• Trump is Stacking His Cabinet with Fox News Trump-Fluffers
• Trump’s Refusal to Sign the Required Ethics Agreement is His Virtual Promise to Violate It
• The Media Still Doesn’t Get the Danger that We – and They – Are In, But the Daily Show Does

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