any of his predecessors this century, but for Trump that was a record high. The honeymoon didn’ t last, however, and reality came crashing down on both Trump and the American electorate like a ton of bricks.
It began with his cabinet picks. We have a former reality TV show contestant as our Secretary of Transportation( after Republicans cried for years saying that Pete Buttigieg wasn’ t qualified for that same position.) We have a crackpot conspiracy theorist that doesn’ t understand basic science running the Department of Health and Human Services. We have a D-list former Fox News host running the Department of Defense. A man best known for writing books for children about how awesome Trump is running the FBI. The list goes on and on, but the American public wasn’ t thrilled with these picks, and all of these people are now suffering from grotesquely underwater approval ratings( with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. having the lowest approval rating of any cabinet member, as of November 2025.)
People could forgive unqualified cabinet members if they just stay quiet and do their jobs without any interruptions to their daily lives, but so far this has been one of the most visible and annoying cabinets we’ ve ever seen. Air travel this year has been an unmitigated disaster, with plane crashes soaring( no pun intended) to levels not seen in decades. The matter has been complicated by the air traffic controller shortage that was brought on by Elon Musk’ s drive to fire competent government workers just for the fun of it.
Then there are the political prosecutions that Trump’ s
Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, has been engaged in. The majority of the public, according to polling data, is firmly against the retaliation agenda of the DOJ. We also have the infamous Make America Healthy Again report from Kennedy’ s office that was revealed to have been written by artificial intelligence and cited sources that don’ t even exist. But that was nothing compared to the absolutely insane Tylenol press conference that Kennedy and Trump hosted where they falsely tried to link Tylenol usage during presidency to increased rates of autism— a claim that Kennedy himself admitted was not supported by the evidence just a month later, though that admission didn’ t get a fraction of the publicity that his reckless claim received.
But no department has been as embarrassing for this administration as the Department of Defense, which they have now rebranded as the“ Department of War.” The humiliation began earlier this year when Pete Hegseth was involved in a massive scandal involving talks of military strikes on an unsecured messaging app— which they had inadvertently added a reporter onto. Then there was a second Signal leak scandal. And another. And then the attacks on our own troops, whom Hegseth labeled as“ fat” and“ lazy.”
Volumes will be written about the gross incompetence of this cabinet, but there is one bright spot in all of this: The incompetence of these idiots will be the only thing that saves this country. If Trump had picked even semi-qualified people for these positions, he wouldn’ t be losing court battle after court battle. He would be more free to exercise his darkest thoughts and desires, but so far the courts have kept him in check because the DOJ can’ t find any competent lawyers willing or able to defend these actions in court.
The problems emanating out of his cabinet only represent a small fraction of the problems that we have seen from Trump’ s administration. The real problems are coming from the man himself.
We have lived through a year where the President of the United States has repeatedly threatened to annex the country of Canada and the territory of Greenland. He’ s also threatened to launch an invasion of Mexico under the guise of taking out the drug cartels. In November, it was reported that the Department of Defense was ramping up operations for a possible invasion of Venezuela. And the extrajudicial killings of alleged drug smugglers in the open ocean has been a clear violation of both US and international laws.
While Americans have managed to show an unusual amount of patience for foreign military operations, they still have absolutely no stomach from domestic invasions, and that has proven to be one of the major turning points of this administration. When Trump announced that he was deploying National Guard troops to Washington, D. C. this past summer, his polling numbers took a massive nosedive from which they never rebounded. Subsequent deployments in Los Angeles, Portland,
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