Why Shock Jocks Shouldn't Work for the White House
Nothing but the best people, Chapter the Infinity.
I realize that, at this point, there’s a certain reluctance on the part of, well, normal experts to take a gig with Camp Runamuck. Hell, that state of affairs existed almost as soon as this administration* was birthed at the Royal Wedding of Stupid and Mean over a year ago. However, now that we’ve had a year to watch these birds in action, people are hiding under their beds when the phone rings and, if you’re an actual expert in anything, that seasonal job at Crate and Barrel is looking awfully good right now. So, as CNN explains, we end up with people like this guy at Homeland Security.
Frank Wuco has served as the White House adviser to DHS since January and now leads a team tasked with helping to enforce President Donald Trump's executive orders, including the administration's travel ban. Before that, he hosted a conservative talk radio show in Florida for several years and appeared as a guest on other talk radio shows. CNN's KFile reviewed more than 40 hours of audio of Wuco's show and his other appearances.
Pro tip: when you become president, do not hire local conservative talk-show hosts. If you do, you’re likely to find your DHS peddling auto glass and male-enhancement potions on the side. And, as you might expect from a guy whose qualifications included arguing down Bob On Car Phone, Wuco’s opinions occasionally swerve into the unconventional and hit it head on.
On the radio, Wuco said Obama knew nothing of the "black American experience," defended the initial speculation in the media that Muslim extremists were responsible for the mass killing in Norway, and said that gay people had hijacked the word "gay" from happy people... Wuco also used his platform as a radio host to promote the debunked conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the US. In August 2011, Wuco hosted Jerome Corsi, author of "Where's The Birth Certificate: The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President." On his website, Wuco promoted the discussion by calling Obama's then-recently released long-form birth certificate "a questionable document." Wuco said Corsi's book "laid it out in very significant detail, not just why it's important that (Obama) present better credentials on his status as a natural born citizen, but a lot of the things that surrounded it and where it is important as to the constitutionality of just being able to get your name on the ballot." Later, Wuco asked Corsi why people were disengaged with the birth certificate issue, saying Corsi made "a good case" for, and asked why Americans didn't seem to care about "the significance of this."
This man has access to the personal data of God knows how many of his far less insane fellow citizens. No, Mr. Senior Adviser, I don’t want to replace my windshield.
And then, as The Hill tells us, the president*’s choice to head the Food and Drug Administration is one of those crank zillionaires who finds a new idea and spends all of their time out in the yard playing with it.
Bloomberg News reported Wednesday that O'Neill, a libertarian and associate of billionaire Peter Thiel, who is close to the Trump team, is under consideration for the FDA position. The agency oversees the approval of new drugs and is responsible for ensuring their safety. O'Neill lacks a medical background, traditionally a prerequisite for the job, and has raised eyebrows with his past comments about overhauling the agency. The most attention has fallen on O'Neill's comments in a 2014 speech, where he called for changing the FDA's mission so that it no longer considers whether drugs are effective when deciding whether to approve them. Instead, O'Neill said the agency should only consider whether drugs are safe…
And, I suppose, that all drugs should be sold out of the back of a circus wagon with lovely ladies dancing the hootchie-coo and a half-blind fiddle player sitting on a keg of hard cider. He’ll probably get around to that because brother O’Neill has plans for the future.
He also has an interest in anti-aging products and has spoken of "immortality" as a possibility. "You can tell a lot about an era by listening to what people whine about," O'Neill said in the same 2014 speech. "If we invest wisely in life extension technologies, in 40 years, we'll all be able to annoy our friends with complaints like 'immortality almost never works.'"
Of course, when O’Neill wakes up in the year 3535, he will discover that he’s the only living soul left in the country because everyone else died of unregulated patent medicines centuries earlier.
Now, it does look like the Republicans in Congress are noticing that the clown car is full up, so maybe O’Neill doesn’t get this job, but who found him in the first place? This is a guy who thinks people should be allowed to sell their kidneys. Knowing this administration*, I wouldn’t count on getting paid for yours.
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