cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/28517588
FBI Director Kash Patel might be the most ludicrous, scandal-dogged Donald Trump henchman in this incompetent, embarrassing second administration. An Atlantic report on Patel in April chronicled a pattern of heavy drinking, odd behavior, and mysterious absences—it was headlined “The FBI Director Is MIA.” Representative Jamie Raskin is investigating his payments of more than $1 million in taxpayer dollars to favored FBI agents. He’s fired long-term, respected FBI agents for political reasons. Patel has also been in trouble for using public assets to ferry himself and his country music star girlfriend to entertainment venues. He’s regularly rumored to be close to being fired.
Patel was grilled on some of his decisions at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Tuesday. He opened by recounting a barrage of purported FBI accomplishments in reducing violent crime and thwarting terrorism, many of which were exaggerations or falsehoods, featuring activities largely the terrain of other agencies, not the FBI. But the most attention went to his hilarious answer on the serious question of why the FBI had lowered its standards to recruit new agents, and no longer bars applicants who’ve engaged in prostitution, trafficking, or bestiality. The FBI, by many reports, has lowered other standards, at least partly because so many have either been fired, or left the agency on their own under Patel’s leadership.
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin opened by saying flatly that Patel should be replaced. He was the first to express bewilderment at the agency’s new welcome mat to applicants who’d “engaged in bestiality.” It was left to GOP Senator John Kennedy to drill down on the strange new regulation. When pushed, Katel insisted that “the previous regulation automatically disqualified any individual who participated in either side of it,” to which Kennedy asked what the entire audience had to be wondering: “Either side of bestiality? So you disqualified the animal?”
Kennedy went on: “You’re not saying that if a human being had sex with an animal, they can be an FBI agent?”
Patel tried to explain. “Applicants who have engaged in bestaility means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so. At this FBI we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving.”
What do you mean YOU were talking about the USA? I was talking about the USA, goober, you replied to me, not the other way. Take a breath, and a walk, and a chill pill, and then count backwards from ten.
There's this tendency to infantalize other countries when compared to the imperial juggernaut that is the USA. I get it, on some level, but it strikes me as super performative when you just refuse to also acknowledge that the US didn't invent colonialism or slavery or that there are still places in the world girls can't go to school. War and geeed and genocide are a human problem that predates the US and, unfortunately, will probably continue after it's gone.
So, when it comes to history, take the good with the bad. But that doesn't change what I said about my country in the present, either.
"This strikes me as kind of whitewashing other countries. Like, we’ve never had a monarchy. Or conspired with Hitler. There’s not really a strong history of human sacrifice."
this is straight whataboutism and if you don't understand that, you're brains are leaking you dolt.
Ummm ackshukky that's like textbook whataboutism you dolt
Lol, spaz
Let’s not resort to slurs please, no matter how you feel about each other
I don't feel any particular way about him, but, what do you mean?