Donald Trump has never been accused of hiring the best people to work for his administration, or even minimally competent ones. A daughter and son-in-law with no relevant experience for senior roles in the White House? Sign ’em up! An education secretary who can’t answer basic questions about education? Total coup! An energy secretary who thought his job had to do with oil and gas? Better land that guy before somebody else does! The list goes on and on and now, incredibly, includes someone who couldn’t buy beer without a fake I.D. until recently, and may still be grabbing meals at the George Washington University cafeteria.

Politico reports that the White House has hired James Bacon, a 23-year-old college senior, as a top official in the all-powerful Presidential Personnel Office. There, Bacon will act as a right-hand man to freshly rehired PPO director John McEntee, who himself clocks in at an absolutely ancient, relatively speaking, 29 years of age. (McEntee was fired in 2018 over issues related to online gambling and “mishandling of his taxes.”) Coming from a brief stint at the Department of Transportation, Bacon will serve as the PPO’s director of operations. He will oversee paperwork and assist on vetting, replacing Katja Bullock, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush I and II administrations. While vetting people to work for the government has always been an important job, it’s taken on a larger and more sinister role as Trump has made it clear that anyone failing his loyalty test will be shown the door, to be replaced by a totally unqualified lackey.

Last week McEntee reportedly kicked off a meeting with cabinet liaisons by asking them to identify political appointees who might have expressed anti-Trump sentiments. He also told them that the PPO would be reviewing all appointees and re-vetting them to determine if they’d been disloyal in any way, shape, or form. Already, the administration has canned its acting national intelligence director, Joseph Maguire, after one of his staffers had the audacity to brief lawmakers on Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2020 election; reassigned Lt Col. Alexander Vindman following his cooperation with the House’s impeachment investigation; and withdrawn the nomination of U.S. attorney Jessie Liu, whose office oversaw the Andrew McCabe investigation, for a top Treasury role. Of course, this has set off a few alarms:

Despite having the trust of the president, McEntee’s lack of experience has raised concerns among some White House staff about his ability to run a critical White House office. One White House official pointed out that loyalty, in this case, trumped age and experience.... The PPO office has been the subject of complaints and finger-pointing by some in the administration over its “frat-house” reputation, but serves an important function for vetting and hiring appointees. With McEntee at the helm of the office, however, it’s expected the president will take a more direct role than he has before.

Last week Axios reported that Trump has an actual hit list of insufficiently loyal employees to eliminate, which definitely isn’t disturbing at all, or the sort of behavior you’d expect from a paranoid dictator in an authoritarian state.

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