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Report: Trump Casting Cabinet Members Based On Looks

Report: Trump Casting Cabinet Members Based On Looks

Donald Trump has just proven why it took the intervention of both Vladimir Putin and the FBI into this year’s election to distract voters from the Republican nominee’s vainglorious narcissism. Now, President-elect Trump is busy casting people for his cabinet positions based on looks, which transition team sources just disclosed to the Washington Post:

Trump’s closest aides have come to accept that he is likely to rule out candidates if they are not attractive or not do not match his image of the type of person who should hold a certain job.

“That’s the language he speaks. He’s very aesthetic,” said one person familiar with the transition team’s internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You can come with somebody who is very much qualified for the job, but if they don’t look the part, they’re not going anywhere.”

It is this twisted, quintessentially Republican logic that permits Donald Trump to cast a man like former Texas Governor Rick Perry as Energy Secretary-designate, who literally couldn’t remember the name of the Department of Energy in an infamous “oops” moment that should’ve doomed his national political aspirations forever. But in Trumpworld, Perry has the essential qualifications for the job, looking dapper in his suit, and he aced the headshot photograph test, because that The Donald thinks Rick wears those new new glasses to make him look smart.

It worked. Perry will be nominated for a post in charge of the security of every American nuclear weapon. In another instance it led Trump to raise the profile of a Bush-era neo-con sure to stir up trouble regardless of where Trump “casts” him in his regime if he’s offered a job. Surely, Trump will decide that there’s a role for a jerk with a mustache:

Several of Trump’s associates said they thought that John R. Bolton’s brush-like mustache was one of the factors that handicapped the bombastic former United Nations ambassador in the sweepstakes for secretary of state. “Donald was not going to like that mustache,” said one associate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly. “I can’t think of anyone that’s really close to Donald that has a beard that he likes.”

So in this one instance, Trumplandia’s magical reality TV thinking averted an improbable neo-con disaster at Secretary of State, but plainly both the Trump Transition team, and VP-elect Mike Pence are determined to cast neo-con leader Dick Darth Cheney in a prime role to influence thinking in our next White House. The influence of Trump’s ‘central casting agent’ Steve Bannon – the man who build an alt-right platform for white-supremacists at Beritbart News – is also apparent in the irresponsible decision to bring Cheney back into the fold of government yet again, after he misled America into invading Iraq with false intelligence, lies and an insatiable thirst to omit war crimes.

Now we know that Donald Trump’s disgusting racism is more a symptom of his inability to literally understand any person or situation on a level deeper than looks alone. Each passing day, the terrifying result of the President-elect’s shallow inability to distinguish looks from actual job qualifications threatens to upend the safety and peace of our nation.

Grant Stern
is the Executive Editor of Occupy Democrats and published author. His new Meet the Candidates 2020 book series is distributed by Simon and Schuster. He's also mortgage broker, community activist and radio personality in Miami, Florida., as well as the producer of the Dworkin Report podcast. Grant is also an occasional contributor to Raw Story, Alternet, and the DC Report, and an unpaid senior advisor to the Democratic Coalition and a Director of Sunshine Agenda Inc. a government transparency nonprofit organization. Get all of his stories sent directly to your inbox here:

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