Hegseth or DeSantis? Trump is going to run out of 'worst people ever' for Cabinet. | Opinion

Watching President-elect Donald Trump take a mixed-nuts approach to his Cabinet appointments – Fox News host Pete Hegseth? Recently incarcerated Peter Navarro? – I routinely mutter: “Wow, he really is putting all the worst people in power.”

But as we’re seeing now with secretary of Defense nominee Hegseth – accused of sexual assault, being drunk on the job and mismanaging funds – when one loon-pick falls, another is waiting in the wings.

The Wall Street Journal and CBS News have reported that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is being considered as a replacement pick to run the Pentagon if Hegseth’s past and utter lack of qualifications doom his confirmation.

You remember Awkward Ron, right?

The one Trump loathed, called “highly overrated” and nicknamed DeSanctimonious.

The one Trump’s Republican primary campaign alleged eats pudding with his fingers.

The one Trump leveled “grooming” allegations against via social media.

From Hegseth to DeSantis, Trump's picks are from the Island of Misfit Boys

A pivot to the lickspittle Florida governor is basically the Trump team saying, “Everybody hates Hegseth, so let’s replace him with DeSantis, who everyone hates just slightly less.”

But what’s troubling about all this is not the fact that our country is going to be run by incompetent weirdos – that was baked in once Trump won reelection. No, the concern is that Trump’s appointments are going to swiftly drain America’s strategic reserve of “worst people ever.”

Going through an average day, you might think there’s a limitless supply of dreadful people in this country, but there’s not. It’s a finite number, and we count on them to provide us with gossip fodder and things to feel angry about.

Regular Americans rely on terrible people for gossip and anger

Consider “guy who always asks a bunch of questions to impress the boss during a meeting, thus making the meeting run way too long.” If he is suddenly swept up by the Trump administration and put in charge of … let’s say the U.S. Space Force … we lose one of our go-to people to gripe about with co-workers. What are we supposed to do, not complain about meetings? That’s nightmare fuel.

What about the guy in the friend circle who’s really into crypto and never shuts up about it? If Trump’s Homeland Security pick, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, shoots another dog or two and doesn’t get confirmed, the president-elect could cycle through a dozen or so other dreadful candidates and wind up snapping up crypto guy.

And what if there are no people-who-think-they’re-smart-but-actually-aren’t left to fill the void?

Trump has already taken an astonishing number of worst people from us.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been recruited to destroy the government, and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene will apparently be the third prong on that trident of awfulness.

RFK Jr., Dr. Oz and Linda McMahon? Will there be any awful people left?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – what you’d get if you bred the word “actually” with every conspiracy theory ever created – has been tasked with overseeing our health. Hot-off-time-in-the-slammer Navarro is set to be a top trade adviser and Dr. Mehmet Oz is going to bungle up Medicare and Medicaid.

Former professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon is tapped to head up the Education Department, right-wing nutter and revenge-enthusiast Kash Patel was picked to lead the FBI and Matt Gaetz was briefly nominated to be U.S. attorney general before being returned to us for being – and this is hard to believe – too awful.

Trump’s determination to only appoint residents of the Island of Misfit Boys (a couple girls live there, too, but not many) might serve his purposes of grifting, rewarding loyalists and swiftly dismantling the U.S. government via snarling ineptitude.

But his need to return to the well of irritants over and over as pick after repellant pick gets rejected seems bound to rob us regular folks of the vexatious souls we rely on for grumbling purposes.

We simply cannot let the Trump transition team vacuum up all the worst people.

We’re going to need at least a few around to give us perspective.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hegseth? DeSantis? Trump Cabinet is Island of Misfit Boys | Opinion