Stupid AND Evil

 Krugman lays out how both the Signal Scandal and Musk's War on Social Security demonstrate how the Trump Administration is both stupid AND evil.

I would take it one step further. Stupid people with a will to power almost always ARE evil. It's not that they're both, it's that one is mutually dependent on the other. Yes, inviting a journalist into your secret war text group is unfathomably dumb. Yes, this was done to evade Federal law regarding government records, which they clearly do so often that no one questions it, even when discussing military planning. Yes, they were contemptuous of Europe, which is both stupid and evil.

Fascism and most forms of authoritarianism require idiocy. One marker for something that you know will be both stupid and evil is if some Republican starts talking about "common sense." What common sense means is that there is a complicated issue that they really don't understand, so they dumb it down for themselves and their constituents and then come up with a dumb "solution" that will likely make things worse. Take tariffs as just one example.

Hopefully in the long run, the stupid is more powerful than the evil.

UPDATE: So, the Evil Idiots decided on the "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes" crisis management strategy, basically going to Capitol Hill and to Faux News and lying their asses off about whether there was classified information in the Signal chat.

Goldberg, of course, had receipts. Coming back to the Stupid or Evil idea, they had to know that Goldberg had these screenshots. Or maybe they didn't think it through that far? Or maybe they know that this evil, corrupted regime will not hold any loyalists accountable.