Meet Frank Gaffney, who is by multiple reports a national security adviser to Donald Trump’s transition team. Gaffney was:

… a Pentagon official during the Reagan administration and a founder of the Center for Security Policy. Mr. Gaffney has long advanced baseless conspiracy theories, including that President Obama might be a closet Muslim. The Southern Poverty Law Center described him as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes.”

So what kind of policies might Gaffney be pushing with the Trump people?

Purging the military and intelligence community to be sure they’re 100 percent loyal to you personally is one of the steps on the road to dictatorship, no?

A Trump spokesperson issued a "flat denial" that Gaffney was involved in the transition in any capacity, but between the Trump transition team’s raging incompetence and constant personnel upheaval and the habitual dishonesty of all of Trumpworld, a flat denial from them is not wholly convincing. And in this case, what Gaffney is saying is not all that far from what Trump himself has said—he suggested in one of the debates that purging the upper ranks of the military and putting his own people in place would be a priority. It would be great if Gaffney is not involved in setting up the next presidential administration, but unfortunately, his absence wouldn’t ensure the absence of ideas like this.