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While he may not have quite the walking-car-crash charisma of the woman he’s set to replace, in many ways Markwayne Mullin is a perfectly emblematic pick to run a huge and consequential cabinet department in the second Trump presidency.
Comically unqualified, intensely partisan, and unflaggingly devoted to whatever ridiculous thing bubbled out of Donald Trump’s mouth five minutes ago, as the next Secretary of Homeland Security, Mullin will fit right in with what will undoubtedly be regarded as the worst presidential cabinet in history.
Peruse the headlines on a given day and you’ll see them in action, proudly bringing catastrophe wherever they go.
There’s Pete Hegseth, bursting with excitement at a war already turning bad after just days. There’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., working out shirtless in jeans in a sauna with Kid Rock, while the country suffers through its worst measles outbreak in decades. There’s Pam Bondi, outraged that members of Congress aren’t asking her about stock market gains rather than Jeffrey Epstein and her multiple failed prosecutions of the president’s political opponents.
Before we consider the Trump cabinet in its entirety, let’s pour one out for Kristi Noem, a unique figure in almost every way. From her grotesque physical transformation (she is the prototypical case study in “Mar-a-Lago Face”), to the sketchy no-bid contracts, to the alleged mile-high affair with Corey Lewandowski, to the self-aggrandizing cosplay TV ads, to her slander of murdered protesters in Minneapolis, Noem was more content creator than administrator.
But now she’s out, and her replacement will have to find new ways to screw up. There’s little doubt he’s up to the task.
The worst ever? No doubt.
There have been corrupt and incompetent cabinet secretaries before, and even a couple whose actions in office landed them in prison. If we wanted to find the worst pre-Trump cabinet, it might be that of Warren J. Harding, which was consumed by the Teapot Dome scandal. Among those implicated was Attorney General Harry Daugherty and Interior Secretary Albert Fall, who went to prison for accepting bribes.
Even when no one winds up behind bars, every cabinet has a dud or two — the politician repaid for years of mediocre service with a post atop a department the president doesn’t care much about, or the party functionary who turns out to be terrible at the job of administering a large agency. When the better-known figures of the initial cabinet decide to leave after a year or two, they’re often replaced with lower profile but more experienced bureaucrats who can run things more competently. That happened even in Trump’s first term.
And seen from today’s vantage point, Trump’s first cabinet seems like a model of wisdom and competence. That was a reflection of how unprepared he was for the job; arriving without a cadre of loyalists, he wound up appointing a number of secretaries who might have been found in almost any Republican administration, including James Mattis at Defense, Elaine Chao at Transportation, and John Kelly at Homeland Security.
In his second term, however, Trump knew exactly what he wanted and who could give it to him. In many cases, that meant not just a weak choice but literally the worst possible choice, the person guaranteed to do maximal harm to the interests of the country and the purposes for which their department exists. In short, we have never seen quite the collection of clowns, cranks, and crooks that Trump has assembled.
The United States federal government is by almost any measure the most complex and influential organization on Earth, spending trillions of dollars every year while it creates and implements policies that affect the lives not only of the 342 million people who live within our borders but the citizens of every country in the world. At its center are 15 departments led by a Senate-confirmed secretary, each with a vast budget and a huge workforce. Effectively leading such an entity would at a minimum require considerable administrative experience and deep knowledge of the issues the department confronts.