Opinion | The Incompetence of Trump 2.0

It’s easy to feel like the Trump administration has been executing some perfect master plan of authoritarianism. But too often it’s hard to tell what is malfeasance versus just plain carelessness. Let’s take a brief tour of the Trump 2.0 administration. Recklessness is everywhere. Take what happened in El Paso. The F.A.A. announced it was going to shut down the airspace over a major American city for 10 days, and then canceled the closure after just eight hours. The administration claimed there was a drug cartel drone that they neutralized with high-tech lasers, but insiders say it was likely just a party balloon. It turns out the real threat was that agencies simply refused to talk to each other before firing. “That failure to communicate is unacceptable.” Meanwhile, internal ICE records released this week suggest that the agency has cut several classes from its officer training program, including one called “Use of Force Simulation Training.” And then there’s the Justice Department. Tasked with releasing the Epstein files to expose the perpetrators, they instead uploaded unredacted photos of the victims to the internet. And let’s not forget the labor secretary’s husband, who was just banned from her office building after he reportedly assaulted two of his wife’s co-workers. Over and over, our federal officials have failed to deliver on the actual responsibilities of government. In this administration, though, incompetence isn’t usually a fireable offense. It’s just part of the job.