A sage political axiom posits “elect a clown; expect a circus.” Nowhere was that wisdom on better display than at the State of the Union address last week. The most revelatory aspect of the evening was not the individual delivering the address. Sadly, we’ve become used to the firehose of lies, insults, grievances and deceptions that characterize every Trump appearance. As mind-numbingly wretched as Trump’s “performance Presidency” has become, the more profound tragedy rests in the individuals watching the SOTU from the first row: Trump’s cabinet, once a president’s vibrant braintrust, now the federal “idiocracy.” Promised that “only-the-best” could ever hope to join Trump’s inner circle, we are offered, instead, a group of slavish lapdogs of demonstrably struggling intellect, situational moral clarity and dubious personal restraint.

Left to himself, Trump’s addled cranial wiring is now incapable of escaping the oratorical death spiral of the stolen election, the billions of “foreign” dollars that are supposedly supercharging this “Golden Age” economy, and his bringing to peaceful resolution eight wars in locations he couldn’t point to on a world map! The most powerful nation on the face of the earth, led by the world’s oldest toddler, is adrift in a sea of alternative reality, intellectual distrust and the acrimonious exhaustion that has come to define our days. There is no “interceptor,” no cabinet member who is willing even to suggest minimum presidential guardrails to counter the utter nonsense emanating from the Oval Office. Into evidence, I enter Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose pre-Trump vitae involved overseeing the financial collapse of two veteran support groups, and sitting on a weekend couch for Fox News. Qualified? Of course! Not to be outdone, Attorney General Bondi brings vast legal talent to the table from her muddied Miami Beach Epstein prosecution and paid consigliere post to the nation of Qatar! Once at that table, as evidenced in her factless “seventh-grade-baaaaad-girl” ranting before the Senate, chaos and embarrassment ensue, presumably to the delight of her “audience of one.”

Kash Patel at the FBI? Negligible serious investigative experience, but a ton of pro-Trump posturing and tee-shirt sales almost tip the balance, right? Still, the sight of the FBI director pounding brews and raving in the USA Men’s Hockey team locker room just didn’t sit easy with me. Probably because you and I helped pay for this non-business lark, and the one he took to see his girlfriend perform the national anthem in State College, and likely other grift-soaked excursions we know not of yet.

Meanwhile, stateside, the crack team of investigators under his immediate supervision cannot begin to locate even a shred of evidence to find an infirm 86-year old woman abducted from her Arizona home!

RFK Jr.? There’s the gold standard of medical expertise! Not a doctor, and without the term “medical” appearing in his resume, Kennedy is a troll masquerading as a health expert, while freely admitting to “snorting cocaine off of toilet seats,” presumably in another life. Perfect experience for assuming the post of national health czar.

Forget Noem, Bessent and MacMahon. What really matters here is that the people Trump has rewarded with cabinet positions are as deeply flawed as the employer himself, rutted in the same amoral blindness that has led other regimists in other times to plead, “I was only following orders!” We careen from one Trump-instigated crisis to the next, sometimes daily.

Already wealthy beyond account, these cabinet sycophants insulate presidential decisions rather than inform them. What happens to you and me in this miasma remains, as always, irrelevant. When the rudderless ship of state flounders politically, they will be the first in the lifeboats, drifting safely away from the disaster of their own making, while average Americans cling to the flotsam and jetsam, praying for rescue.

STEPHEN HUDDY

Williamsport

Submitted by Virtual Newsroom