BUILT TO SPILL.

It's hard to rank the members of Trump's cabinet for awfulness. Rex Tillerson might seem just ineffectual, spalshing around in his whirpool bath of bullshit ("Rex Tillerson May Be Finally Settling in at the State Department," wrote The National Interest -- on February 26, 2018), but by surrendering the histroic purview of his office to the President, who is just ignorant, and proxies like John Bolton, who want war with North Korea, he may be doing the most damage. On the other hand, Ryan Zinke's active destruction of the environment is going to be pretty hard to undo.

But don't sleep on Ben Carson, who has done fuck-all as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development except cut his department's budget, but whose tenure I think also serves a more sininster purpose.

We only hear about Carson anymore when yet another story about his insane mismanagement of the department comes out. Recently the HUD inspector general began looking into allegations that Carson's son, who runs a private equity company, was leaning on people with business before the department -- something by which no one who will be suprised if they read Alec MacGillis' story on Carson in New York magazine last August ("I watched with some amazement as the younger Carson, clad in tinted aviator shades, circulated among those seeking his father’s attention..."). And we've all heard about his bitching that his furniture wasn't grand enough and firing an underling allegedly because she wouldn't help him spend more than he was allowed on it; this has led to a number of embarrassing stories like "See HUD's $31,000 mahogany dining set."

It has not been lost on me that the most prominent African-American members of Trump's presidential retinue have been individuals likely to bomb in their respective positions: Omarosa Manigault, a contestant on Trump's TV game show before becoming Public Liaison comms director, and Carson who, after distinguishing himself as a surgeon, was the most buffoonish of the 2016 Presidential contenders -- in fact during the campaign Trump made fun of the ridiculous autobiographical stories Carson told on the trail to cover his inability to grasp public policy on even the simplest level.

Manigault is out, and Carson may not be too far behind. And I wonder if maybe Trump wasn't planning on this all along. His former "Apprentice" had at least a journalism degree and Washington experience to recommend her -- but her better known showbiz celebrity left her vulnerable to the impression that her appointment was unserious. When she was fired, the reason Trump obviously leaked to the press was "improperly using the official White House car service." Come on. I used to be a dispatcher; misusing car vouchers is something for which messengers get fired, not executives -- let alone White House executives.

All Trump appointees are by definition shit, but being shit is only one of the qualifications. Admittedly it's important, because it cements their loyalty to this criminal administration; they all realize honorable people won't work with them, and so will do anything to keep this golden opportunity (though it seems Jeff Sessions, of all people, may be losing patience).

But they also have to have some other utility. Former HHS Secretary Tom Price, for example, was hired because he could be counted on to fuck over Obamacare and to step aside and gesture invitingly toward Medicare and Medicaid as Congress came to kill them; that he was also a greedy pig meant he could be counted on, but his greed got so obvious he was making it look bad and Trump replaced him with someone who, more like Tillerson, would wreck the country on behalf of a specific corporate sponsor rather than just for himself, and thus give an impression of responsibility to something, even if it wasn't the United States.

Now, I know they've fired or pushed to resign dozens of white people, but I doubt that when those worthies were shot out of the airlock, Trump's base thought, "reckon white people can't handle the big jobs." Carson and Manigault represent the Administration's half-assed attempt to confuse white people who don't see (or don't care about, or actually approve of) the President's obvious racism. When Carson goes, however, I think I know how they'll take it.