ASSHOLE OF THE MONTH: KASH PATEL
Every tin-pot authoritarian leader in history has maintained power with one essential asset: a ruthless, obedient henchman as chief of state security—the badass SOB who imprisons, tortures and kills all opposition to “Dear Leader.” Hitler had Heinrich Himmler, Stalin had Lavrentiy Beria, and Mao had Kang Sheng—the top cops doing the dirty work of suppressing the regime’s enemies. It’s no secret that Donald Trump has the instincts of a wannabe dictator, including the thirst for revenge against all who stood against him. He has staffed the whole federal government with suck-up loyalists regardless of experience or competence. Case in point: his nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel, a bootlicking Asshole salivating to become the Orangeman’s avenging angel.
Ever since the original director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned the FBI into a domestic spying and dirty tricks operation during his despotic 48-year reign, the Bureau has struggled to overcome that legacy. There have been countless scandals, from COINTELPRO and blackmailing Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s to the Ruby Ridge shooting in the ’90s; the kid gloves’ treatment of notorious mobster Whitey Bulger; the suspicious 2013 death of Boston Marathon bomber associate Ibragim Todashev while undergoing interrogation; encouragement and entrapment of “terrorist” suspects; the illegal spying on Occupy Wall Street and many left-wing movements; and on and on. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have accused the Bureau of either suppressing or rigging political scandals to benefit politicians in power. It appears certain at this point that, like the CIA, the FBI is never going to wash its hands completely clean and obey the limitations of its charter.
As this issue goes to press, Trump’s man, former federal prosecutor Kash Patel, is poised to rule over this den of corrupt power. Given Trump’s thinly veiled racism and embrace of white supremacy, it’s a bit surprising that he would pick a dark-skinned son of Indian Gujarati immigrant parents—full name Kashyap Pramod Vinod Patel—to be his hammer. But then again, nobody has smooched the Trump buttocks like Patel. He has dutifully appeared as a witness or groupie supporter at several of Trump’s criminal trials; founded the organization Fight With Kash that funds defamation suits against critics of Trump and himself; and peddled products endorsed by Trump to the MAGA faithful, like a dietary supplement promoted as a “detoxification system” for COVID vaccines. He’s even authored children’s books that glorify Trump, such as, believe it or not, The Plot Against the King, in which a villain resembling Hillary Clinton conspires against “King Donald,” only to be saved by Kash himself as a heroic wizard botching her evil plans! This is like something out of North Korea, where children’s books instill the worship of dictator Kim Jong Un as a superhuman God.
