President Donald Trump’s cabinet selections and his empowering of unofficial advisers like Elon Musk have made more Americans aware of the term kakistocracy, which means government by the worst people.
When Trump announced that MAGA insider Kash Patel is his choice to lead the FBI, The Nation called Patel the scariest nomination yet. The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus called Patel a “dangerous and unqualified choice” and wrote that his nomination is a “hair on fire moment”—both for Patel’s personal devotion to Trump and his deep hostility toward the agency he is being tasked to lead. Trump and Patel both seem eager to turn the FBI into a weapon against Trump’s personal and political enemies.
Patel evidently shares Trump’s hatred for the “deep state” and the mainstream media. He published a book called “Government Gangsters,” which includes a long list of people he would like to see punished, including Republicans who refused to go along with Trump’s scheme to stay in power after the 2020 election. He has called on the Republican majority in Congress to arrest Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Former Trump aide Steve Bannon helped Patel turn his book into a movie in which Patel says, “You cannot destroy the Deep State simply by clipping one or two of the snakes off of Medusa’s head. You have to cut the entire head off the body.”
“Patel, in short, is the kind of man who could become Trump’s Hoover: a man willing to push federal law enforcement into dangerously anti-democratic territory in pursuit of alleged domestic enemies,” Zack Beauchamp wrote for Vox after listening to hours of Patel’s appearances on Bannon’s podcast.
Patel represents a clear threat to freedom of the press. He has called “government gangsters” and the media “pure evil.” He has pledged to “come after” the mainstream media, which he called in his 2024 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference “the most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen.”
Patel is a true Trump loyalist. He told the CPAC crowd earlier this year, “We are blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice.”
After serving in a few different roles in the first Trump administration, he has stayed within Trump’s inner circle, reportedly earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from Trump’s media company and PAC. He actively recruited QAnon conspiracy theorists to build Trump’s social media platform. He has spread lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election—even in a series of children’s books that portray himself a devoted defender of the unjustly treated “King Donald.” He signed some of those books with a QAnon slogan.
In 2023, a Colorado judge found that Patel was not a credible witness and wrote that Patel’s testimony about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021 were “not only illogical” but “completely devoid of any evidence in the record.”
People For the American Way is urging senators to oppose Patel’s nomination. You can add your name to the petition here.
