Sameness is the Weakness

Inside Trump's Hires and Their Power to Rot

Quick note: The predictable, manufactured violence from the Trump Administration is unfolding in Portland and Chicago. The aim is to distract from the federal shutdown, bad economic news, and, of course, Epstein.

B Positive is designed to focus on longer-term issues, the best I can, and provide insights into how and why our current situation looks like it does. I’ll address more urgent events in the Substack notes.

Today, I want to look at the people behind the chaos—the ones who make the mess possible.

Throughout my career, I’ve hired and fired a lot of people.

I’ve always tried to find the most qualified and best fit for the position.

Oftentimes, that meant hiring someone with different experiences and perspectives.

And, always, always, always, I wanted the person I hired to be better at their job than I could be.

This was especially true when I was running a business and in leadership in an organization.

So, I’m really struggling with what we’re seeing from the person in charge of our country. The person who only hires “the best people.”

Early Career Lessons

On my first promotion in my first nonpolitical gig, my boss pulled me aside and said what they worried about the most was, at my young age, if I’d be able to make the “tough decisions that needed to be made.”

I quickly discovered that this meant letting a few people go and reorganizing a few teams within the organization.

It wasn’t easy. And I messed up.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t make a tough decision. The boss wasn’t wrong. Changes needed to happen and happen fast.

The challenge was that I was too immature to make the right decision.

I prioritized people who saw the world in the way I did. People who agreed with me. People who looked like me.

And the changes didn’t yield production until I fixed those mistakes.

It would be nice to tell you that was the only time I had a blind spot. I’d be lying.

DEI = Anything Other than White Men

When I was running my firm, I received an invitation to serve on a panel in front of potential customers and colleagues.

The offer was extended to me because I held the title of CEO. I didn’t look at who else would be on the panel.

When I arrived at the panel, I noticed it was all men. We had some racial diversity, but it was still all dudes.

As the questions started, I realized that I wasn’t the best person to answer. In fact, it was one of our senior leaders. She should have been on the panel.

Afterward, the conference organizer received an earful from women leaders in the field, who would have been in a better position to provide insights than I was, and perhaps the other panelists as well.

I did actually learn a lesson after that humbling performance.

It was the worst panel I’ve ever sat on, and the last one where I didn’t have a clear view of what value I could add, or who else could bring different perspectives and opinions.

It reminded me of something this administration hasn’t learned: sameness isn’t strength.

I think about that often as I see complaint after complaint about DEI hires, appointments, or panelists, or whatever.

When asked to define DEI, the slanderers struggle. They substitute it for favoritism or being unqualified.

Oddly, the only people who typically fit into this “unqualified” category are Black, Brown, and/or female.

I’m guessing there’s some reason? Rhymes with racism and misogyny.

Ideas and perspectives need to come from different places for us to move forward. White men have one experience; it matters, but it’s still one view.

And, guess what, more people in the US and the world happen not to be white guys.

Foolishness

I can’t even deal with people who demonize “DEI Hires” but defend the actions of our current Secretary of Defense (still appropriate until Congress changes it) and Secretary of Health and Human Services.

I was initially planning to delve into the incompetence of those two, but that would require a whole book, not a post.

After thinking deeply about the Trump administration’s hires, I’ve realized the philosophy behind them isn’t random at all.

It’s a system built on three pillars of decay: 1) Utterly Incompetent, 2) Crony Climbers, and 3) Shadow Power.

We need a shared understanding of what we’re facing before we can fix it.

Utterly Incompetent

These are the hires who mistake loyalty for qualifications. The ones who wouldn’t even make it to vetting in any other non-Trump administration.

RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth are the poster children. Others are lower-profile but still dangerous, such as prosecutors who’ve never tried a case.

The incompetent don’t just mismanage. They amplify incompetence. They hire down, replacing experts with flatterers, silencing dissent, and rewarding paranoia.

The result is reckless and destructive public decision-making that costs lives and careers. And it’s institutional rot.

And then there’s the performative incompetent. The Dunning-Kruger all-stars are so bad at their jobs that shamelessness is substituted for effectiveness.

Karoline Leavitt comes to mind...selling lies with a smile.

Crony Climbers

The first group can’t do their jobs. This one knows how, but won’t unless it serves their interests or promotes them.

They have the resumes and credentials. Yet, they traded integrity for a bet on their future.

Think JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, Scott Bessent, Pam Biondo. Of course, the man with a bag of bribe money, Tom Homan. Even Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, until his recent deviation from the Epstein script, fits into this club.

I believe their loyalty is transactional. Every statement, vote, and silence is aimed at keeping them relevant for the post-Trump era.

They think they are players. But are they? I don’t think so.

They are in survival mode, mistaking self-preservation for strategy.

Worse, they give an illusion of stability while hollowing out what competence remains.

Shadow Power

Behind them stand the ones who don’t focus on titles, but on the real levers of power.

To quote Yoda - Always two there are, no more, and no less.

Stephen Miller took the best/worst from all past propagandists: relentless, racialized, and singularly focused on division. He’s been planning since the first term and isn’t going to let his moment pass.

But the true master is Russell Vought. The quiet engineer of Project 2025. While the public fights over personalities, Vought is remaking our government. Republican congressional leadership has effectively ceded its authority to him, and most Americans don’t know his name.

This is the hardest group to fight because they try to stay in the dark. They focus on access, leverage, and secrets.

And their motivations are unclear. Patriots? Or traitors for hire?

Chaos isn’t their endgame. Miller wants, as he slipped and said, plenary authority.

What’s that? Cornell Law says it is “complete power over a particular area with no limitations.”

The antidote to this madness is exposure, documentation, and challenge. Anything that breaks their illusion of inevitability is their kryptonite (sorry, mixing movie series here).

What about Tulsi Gabbard you ask? Well, she’s a former client of my old firm when she was a progressive. I can’t tell you her motivation. Her influence in the administration may be limited. But I can tell you this: whatever she does weakens America and strengthens Russia. Take that for what you will.

My first post referred to Trump’s White House as the “Pennywise Presidency.” Clowns. But dangerous clowns.

To keep mixing genres, the only way Pennywise maintained his power was through fear.

We can acknowledge the destruction, but remain resolute in our commitment to create something better for all Americans from the wreckage.

What do we do?

It’s easy to get discouraged when incompetence, ambition, and shadow power feed off each other.

The first thing we need to do is call out the incompetence and horrific behavior of these people.

Contrast that with quiet competence, the people who’ve built coalitions and get results. These are the people you rarely see on TV or online because they are doing the work to help Americans.

That’s at every level—federal, state, and local.

Next, our universities and colleges are under attack. The administration is trying to silence and buy them off. That will only reduce the amount of science and research in our nation. It’s a massive self-inflicted wound that could take a decade or more to reverse, while countries like China continue to move ahead of us.

Finally, as I’ve written before, please take the time to support your local public schools. This means fighting for the funds at the state legislature, engaging in local school board elections and meetings, and pushing districts to adopt a balanced curriculum that combines real-world learning with foundational academics.

The powers behind this administration have been working to break us for decades. And now, this administration is attempting to dismantle our institutions to consolidate power within its own walls.

We can rebuild faster than that. But, today, right now, we need to loudly defend our city and state leaders, schools, universities, and facts themselves.

Coming up on B Positive

Next week, I’ll be writing about Jesse James in response to a question from a couple of weeks ago.

However, it may take a direction you don’t expect and tie directly to what’s driving the “war from within” approach of this administration.

The attacks on our cities are disgusting. I’m going to try to put the hyperbole and histrionics of the Administration in context.

Unless, of course, something else crazy happens.

Reading Recommendations

I read a lot to learn a lot.

Two books I’m dusting off: one shows how power corrodes character, the other reminds us it’s always been that way.

Brian Klaas’s Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us.

And, Machiavelli’s The Prince.

Both seem about right to pull off the shelf this weekend.

I also recognize that most people don’t have a ton of time to read books. With that in mind, I’m going to try to share interesting articles - and will gift them as I can if they are behind a paywall:

Here’s a more hopeful view from John Fabian Witt that uses the challenges facing America in the 1920s to show that we don’t have to end up in a dystopian novel.

And here’s an opinion piece from David French, no friend of DEI programs, arguing that the Trump team is much worse.

Today’s Action(s)

Last week was about posting corruption and cheating.

This week, it’s about incompetence.

Last week, I suggested you post a case of corruption and cheating.

This week, I’m going to make it a little lighter. And I’ll return to this from time to time.

Post a song, movie, or lyric that inspires you to resist the corruption, cheating, and incompetence.

I’ll go first.

From my hometown: The Dropkick Murphys “Who’ll Stand With Us?”