President-elect Donald Trump’s latest nomination announcement is a shocker.

Trump says he intends to appoint MAGA henchman Kash Patel as FBI Director. The news is frightening. Hopefully, Patel will fail to achieve Senate confirmation.

Trump and the Republican Senate have indicated they may skip the traditional FBI background check process for cabinet nominees. It might be argued that they don’t need background checks. The proclivities of the Trump loyalists whose names he has put forward are well known. And the results are astounding.

Accused sex offenders? No problem. People with no relevant experience? No problem. People advocating the dismemberment of the agencies they might head? No problem at all. A pro-Putin security risk to be director of National Intelligence? Petty criticism. A health minister who is anti-vax and anti-science? Bring it on. A budget director who would destroy the government by firing 50,000 civil servants? Just what we wanted.

Fealty to Trump is the common thread — the only indispensable qualification for these picks.

It has been the modern practice of American government that the law enforcement and defense establishments not be politicized. Although the Constitution puts the president in administrative charge of the executive departments, cabinet members have — at least since Watergate — been expected to execute their offices in observance of the Constitution, without regard to partisan politics.

The Kremlin........

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