The Avengers is the OG superhero team-up movie, the nerd’s dream come true, where after a few good standalone movies, the heroes come together for the ultimate smash-and-grab film with so many memetic moments.
Tony Stark taking over a SHIELD aircraft and blasting his signature AC/DC tune “Shoot to Thrill.”
Bruce Banner telling Captain America he’s always angry before proceeding to smash Loki like a ragdoll.
Stark using an iconic erectile dysfunction stat to mock Loki.
And Bruce Banner telling Nick Fury: “We’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We’re a time bomb.”
The Avengers – “We’re a Time Bomb” – Tony Stark vs Steve Rogers (Scene) Movie CLIP HD
And based on the establishment’s reaction so far, this Trump team is a collection of ticking timebombs, each candidate “more unqualified” than the next. It’s already giving Washington the willies and confusing both The View-loving progressives and MAGA Trumpers who believe that too many neocons spoil the broth.
Trump’s former communication director Anthony Scaramucci said that choices were meant to “own the liberals” and “trigger people,” something the sweatshirt-wearing Dem Rep John Fetterman agreed with, calling it “god-tier trolling to trigger a meltdown.”
By the time Trump announced most of his team, Marco Rubio – whose appointment really angered MAGA crowds who see him as a neocon – seemed like the sanest choice. Of course, Trump choosing him as Secretary of State is a bit on the nose, given Rubio’s hardline pro-Israel stance and a bulk of Muslim voters in the swing state of Michigan voting for Trump. Voters who said the Israel-Hamas War was their most pressing concern. Among the more normal picks is Mike Waltz, whose neocon credentials aren’t to everyone’s liking, as is his seemingly pro-India stance.
The first one that shocked mandarins like John Bolton – who waited till the 11th hour to tell select media outlets Trump was fascist – was Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, the boss of all US spy agencies including the CIA and FBI. A veteran CIA officer called the appointment an “affront to the intelligence community.”
But even Bolton decided to give Gabbard a pass after he learned that Trump had opened the Gaetz of hell. Bolton said: “I thought it was the worst cabinet-level appointment in history until we then heard about the Matt Gaetz appointment.”
Gaetz, the Florida Rep, has been tapped to become Attorney General, and it will be a tough Senate fight to get him through, given he just walked away from a House Ethics Committee report on sexual harassment. Gaetz, if he makes it past the Senate hearing, will head the Department of Justice, one that Trump and his supporters feel went out of its way to victimize the former president in a way that one often associates with banana republics. In fact, if it were any other country using its forces of law and order to target a former premier, V-Dem would downgrade it faster than you can say YMCA.
Another deeply triggering candidate is former Fox and Friends Weekend host Pete Hegseth, whose appointment as Secretary of Defense will make him the boss of the Pentagon, and whose appointment led one defense contractor to ask: “Who the f*** is this guy?” The guy has 20 years of military experience, including tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and Cuba.
What’s particularly worrying for his critics is that Hegseth believes one-third of the military top brass is complicit in politicizing the US military and often rails against “woke, critical race theory, DEI, and gender stuff” seeping into the military and has asked for the firing of some senior leaders. Soon, as head of the Pentagon, he might have that power. He said last week: “The dumbest phrase on planet earth in the military is our diversity is our strength.” Many have already called him the “least qualified nominee for SecDef in American history,” which has become something of a leitmotif for Trump’s picks.
Moving on from defense to health, RFK Jr., the country’s most famous anti-vaxxer, is going to be the ‘health czar.’ It’s more remarkable when you consider that producing massive vaccines in very quick time was one of the Trump government’s biggest achievements, but it has been downplayed given a huge chunk of the voters were against both vaccines and what they see as a COVIDism cracking down on their everyday lives. RFK’s MAHA was a crucial part of MAGA, and during the campaign, Trump had promised to let RFK Jr. “run wild for a while before reining him in.” If RFK Jr. is confirmed by the Senate, he would oversee the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which controls key agencies like the CDC and FDA. A vocal critic of the CDC and vaccines, Kennedy has promoted debunked theories, including claims that HIV does not cause AIDS, that 5G networks facilitate mass surveillance, and that Black Americans should avoid vaccinations. Furthermore, he has questioned the CDC’s longstanding endorsement of community water fluoridation as a means to prevent tooth decay, advocating for its discontinuation by local authorities.
Also relegated to footnotes is Secretary of Homeland Security pick Kristi Noem, who shot her own dog, or ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan, the former head of ICE who tussled with AOC and told Pramila Jayapal she worked for him (since he was a taxpayer).
And lastly, you have ‘Space Oddity’ Elon Musk, who has been crucial in helping Trump pick his team, and will co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which sounds like a Yes Minister spoof (Ministry for Administrative Affairs), along with Vivek Ramaswamy, which has left most wondering how to react. How will two billionaires shave $2 trillion from the federal budget? Time will tell.
In fact, the team is, to borrow a term from the Democrats, quite diverse. You have your first Latino Secretary of State, neocons, America First isolationists, those accused of sexual harassment, separating immigrant families, conspiracy theorists, and of course, someone who shot her own dog.
But it’s not like this wasn’t what Trump promised. Much like Thanos’ promise to wipe out half the universe, Trump is doing what he always said he would do: drain the swamp.
In 2016, Trump was often hindered from doing so by a host of Washington mandarins, and so, the MAGA logic is, this time he has picked folks who will do his bidding and help him keep the promises that he made to the voters, no matter how obscene they might seem to the Washington establishment.
While the old elite and their vocal allies do a Dylan Thomas (not go quietly into the night, raging against the dying light), one wonders about what a fictional anchor told a liberal during his opening monologue: “You know why people don’t like liberals. If you liberals are so f*** smart, why do you goddamn lose all the time?”
After predicting a Harris win and being an outpost of the Democratic Party, instead of introspecting, mainstream American media is still trying to find bogeymen to blame instead of accurately deciphering why Trump won so comprehensively. Instead of wondering why Black and Latino voters made Republicans the ‘working-class party,’ they are claiming that the voters were misinformed.
The matter of the fact is that the Biden administration was in charge when the world went to hell in a handbasket. From COVID to Afghanistan to Ukraine to the Middle East, the world didn’t sigh with relief that adults were back in the White House. They were in charge when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, and while Israel continues to retaliate, they couldn’t get Netanyahu to stand down. They couldn’t stop Putin from invading Ukraine, and Russia is more bullish than ever. Iran’s nuclear program is now closer than it was under the Trump regime, who didn’t behave presidentially but kept the peace by angry tweeting. Unless one has extreme blinkers on, one can’t say the world was less chaotic under Biden than Trump.
Closer home, America has struggled to stem illegal immigrants coming or even stop fentanyl from crossing its border and causing another opiate crisis. Post-COVID-19, the Biden administration’s most important member in dealing with the pandemic Dr Anthony Fauci is on record saying that COVID protocols were not backed by science. Anyone who questioned the official wet market theory was deplatformed, while those who spoke about the lab leak theory were deemed racist. The mainstream media, aided and abetted by social media, started behaving like the Ministry of Truth, and for a lot of Americans, this was the reason they voted for Trump so they could have more say in what their government did instead of being patronized for speaking out. Being told what to do in life by their government is viewed often as deeply un-American, and that’s how a majority of Americans came to view their government.
One of the things unique about X is that it allows all viewpoints – a town hall of ideas – no matter how repugnant the idea. Of course, liberals have labeled this oppressive because when you are used to a perch of privilege, equality definitely feels like oppression. The same goes for the old elite of America, screeching into the night because what they considered their birthright (to rule over the masses) feels like it has been taken from them. Time will tell whether the motley crew of ticking timebombs Trump has picked will get the job done, whether they will make America healthier or the world safer, but this is what the American people voted for, a break from the forced simulation they were living. Where they go from there, only time will tell.