Now, Trump is reportedly nominating retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata — a Fox News regular — as Rood’s successor. It’s impossible to imagine Mattis signing off on this choice for the Defense Department’s No. 3 job.

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Tata is a West Point graduate who had a distinguished Army career, but he retired under a cloud. According to the Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer, the Army’s inspector general concluded that, while still married to his first wife, Tata had affairs with three women — including a more junior officer — and that he had a son out of wedlock. Army leadership chose to let it go, even though adultery is technically a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, because Tata believed that his marriage was over. But the inspector general concluded that his “actions reflected poor judgment and a pattern of misconduct. Under the circumstances, his misconduct was prejudicial to good order and discipline.”

Army investigators also looked into complaints from Tata’s (by then) ex-wife that he had failed to pay court-ordered child support. They dismissed the accusation after Tata produced a court order that criticized his ex-wife for incurring unnecessary medical expenses. But the “court order” turned out to be a forgery. Tata denied concocting the court order, but decided to retire a few months later.

Since leaving the Army, Tata has authored Tom Clancy-style thrillers and served briefly — and not very successfully — as chief operating officer of D.C. Public Schools, superintendent of the Wake County, N.C., public school system, and secretary of transportation of North Carolina. (He was fired from the Wake County post after less than two years.)

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But that is not why he is being nominated for a top Pentagon job. It is because of his shameless boosterism for Trump on Fox News. (The other finalist for the post was also a Fox News commentator.)

A Dec. 29, 2018, article on Fox News’s website gives a taste of Tata’s abject sycophancy: “President Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments in his first two years are staggering in their success. . . . From muting the North Korean missile and nuclear threat, to mostly defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria, to countering Russia by insisting that NATO member nations . . . pay their fair share to defend themselves, President Trump is hitting on all international relations cylinders.”

There is seemingly nothing that Trump can do that Tata doesn’t approve of. Pardoning a disgraced Navy SEAL who was accused of war crimes and firing Navy Secretary Richard Spencer for objecting? Tata: “The president was right to intervene to prevent a biased, small-minded person like Spencer from spitefully tilting the weight of the bureaucracy on top of a single sailor.” Deploying troops to the border as a political stunt? Tata: “President Trump is a man of his word, he said he was going to be tough on the border and he is tough on the border.” Abandoning our Kurdish allies by ordering U.S. troops out of northwest Syria? Tata: “I think the president is making the exact right move in Syria.” Striking a dubious deal with the Taliban that calls for U.S. withdrawal but allows the insurgents to keep on fighting? Tata: “This is the president showing very strong leadership.”

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And when something goes wrong — such as North Korea’s failure to disarm — Tata is ready to blame Trump’s critics. He ascribed North Korea’s short-range missile tests in part to “this Russia narrative here at home” on the theory that criticism of the president encourages rogue regimes to act up.

On top of everything else, Tata endears himself to Trump with his attacks on “globalism,” immigration and Muslims. After a terrorist attack in Strasbourg, France, in 2018, he said on Fox: “There is intent to harm Western society by Islam, and we have to accept that.”

Tata is also militantly anti-China: He recently said on Fox News that China’s initial attempt to cover up the coronavirus was “tantamount to detonating a nuclear bomb accidentally and killing 150,000 people.”

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Tata’s appointment, if confirmed by the Senate, would further the Foxification of the government and the politicization of the armed services. The last person we need in such a critical position is a MAGA firebrand and Trump worshiper. But those are precisely the qualifications — the only qualifications — that Trump seeks in his appointees. The president is finally getting the kind of government he wants, and, as usual, someone else (in this case the whole country) will be left to pay the bill.