A hallmark of President Donald Trump’s second term, besides grinding democracy to a halt, is the sheer unbridled snottiness of it all. The administration is full of people who think they’re the smartest guys in the room—which is true only if you’re thinking of it in the Enron sense. They’re convinced they’re cute and clever, when really they’re just transparently juvenile and antagonistic.
Take, for example, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s recent move to rename Fort Moore. Yes, Hegseth took time out of his busy schedule of traveling overseas with professional right-wing troll Jack Posobiec and literally whitewashing the military to issue a cute little missive changing Fort Moore’s name back to Fort Benning.
For over 100 years, the giant military base in Georgia was named after Henry Lewis Benning, a Confederate general who really loved slavery. In 2023, the Biden administration renamed nine military bases originally named for Confederate leaders, including Fort Benning.
Stop and think about how weird it is that after crushing a treasonous foe whose raison d’etre was to preserve the enslavement of Black people, we named a bunch of military installations after these losers. It’s absurd it took as long as it did for these names to be changed.
So, for a brief moment, Fort Benning became Fort Moore, named after Lt. Gen Hal Moore. Moore had a lengthy, distinguished career, including a brutal stint commanding an air battalion in Vietnam. But it was inevitable that a Trump victory would mean reverting to the Confederate names, given that he made it a campaign promise.
However, when Hegseth announced Fort Moore would once again be Fort Benning, it would now be named after Cpl. Fred G. Benning, who received the Distinguished Service Cross for his service in World War I. You’re to be forgiven if you’ve never heard of Fred Benning, as there seems to be no official mention of him until the name change. Hegseth appears to have basically scoured a list of names until he found another Benning to name the base after.
This is equal parts smug and childish, which is pretty much Hegseth in a nutshell. Of course the name change is intended to honor the treasonous slavery enthusiast for whom the base was originally named. Hegseth made no secret of his disdain for the name changes. But by saying that no really, it’s now honoring an entirely different Benning, Hegseth thinks he’s pulled a fast one and insulated himself from criticism.
This is the same wink-and-a-nod type of behavior as the right’s adoption of the “OK” sign as an in-group signal. Used by Proud Boys, racist cops, and Roger Stoneamong others, it was absolutely intended as a white power symbol. But when called out on it, they would insist that it was liberals who were overreacting, finding racism in everything, and the hand gesture was benign.
Of course, Hegseth isn’t alone in this childish behavior. Trump is the king of it, a petty little man who thinks he’s being wildly witty by calling Canada the 51st state and referring to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau.” Or changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” just ‘cause and barring reporters from the White House who refuse to adopt it.
That just emboldens people like Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem another questionable Trump pick, who loves to rock a flak jacket in “dangerous” places like Arlington, Virginia.
On a trip to the Haskell Free Library, which straddles the border between the United States and Canada, Noem behaved like a five-year-old whose parents have indulged her antics for far too long. While standing on the American side of the electrical tape marking the border, Noem said, “USA No. 1.” Then, she stepped over to the Canadian side and called it the “51st state.” Not once, but three times.
Besides being designed to inflame tensions with a longtime ally, this sort of thing is just profoundly embarrassing and cringeworthy.
While Hegseth and Noem’s stunts seem mostly designed to trigger the libs, other actions by the administration are designed to convey an arrogant untouchability. Take the refusal to name the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, followed by the announcement that a random employee, Amy Gleason, is the acting administrator in charge.
It’s literally the exact same thing Elon Musk did at Twitter, naming Linda Yaccarino as the nominal CEO while continuing to run everything. We all know that Musk is running DOGE. Well, we actually know that Musk is running everything, but now everyone has to pretend that Gleason is behind the DOGE teardown of the administrative state.
Equally bad are the administration’s moves to defy court orders, the functional equivalent of sticking a tongue out to the judge. When the administration was ordered to unfreeze the National Institutes of Health funding, while pretending to comply, they barred the agency from posting anything to the Federal Register. (The Federal Register is the legal medium for recording and communicating the rules and regulations established by the executive branch of the federal government.) Since the law requires public notice in the Register for NIH grant review meetings, the publication ban kept the freeze in place.
Similarly, when a federal judge ordered that the blanket freeze on the U.S. Agency for International Development spending be ended, the administration pretended that hapless Secretary of State Marco Rubio somehow reviewed nearly 10,000 USAID programs in just a few days, axing over 90% of them.
Because they control all the levers of power right now, none of these people have to care whether anyone believes them or not. But these are not smart people, and they’re not fooling anyone.
Campaign Action
