Trump’s Dirty Dozen
Trump’s Dirty Dozen
Who are the main culprits enabling Trump’s authoritarian, self-serving and bizarre actions during the first 15 months of his second term in office?
Cartoon by Luc Nadeau
Trump's dirty dozen (front row, left to right): Elon Musk, Kristi Noem, JD Vance and (back row) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller
Who are the main culprits enabling Trump’s authoritarian, self-serving and bizarre actions during the first 15 months of his second term in office? Following is an annotated list of what I'll call Trump’s “Dirty Dozen” (with apologies to any other real or fictional dirty dozens). Feel free to recommend your own additions; there are plenty of (un)worthy candidates to choose from.
The Heritage Foundation
Kevin “The Founding Führer” Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, established Project 2025 with the goal of “building a governing agenda, not just for . . . January [2025] but long into the future.” Since Trump is unable to think beyond the profit he plans to make on his next deal, or his next source of ego-gratification or target of revenge, Roberts and company provided a pseudo-scientific analysis and long-term vision of what a far-right America could look like that is serving as the primary ideological underpinning of Trump II’s reign. Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics, has referred to the Heritage Foundation as a “propaganda shop pretending to be a think tank,. . . a producer of dishonest ‘research’ purporting to justify a right-wing agenda of deregulation, dismantling the social safety net, and tax cuts for the rich.”
Vance
JD “The Chameleon” Vance, Vice-President. There’s nothing like a trail of old text messages to reveal the character, or lack of character, of a politician. JD Vance’s former law school roommate, Georgia state Sen. Josh McLaurin, said in an interview with Atlanta News First: “Plenty of Republicans have flip-flopped on Trump and toed the party line, but I think JD is different, and I think the way he’s different is dangerous. . . .” McLaurin provided the Atlanta newspaper with a set of old text messages from Vance in which he compared Trump to Hitler (in a disparaging way, though you wouldn't know it now). Now, Vance is that would-be Hitler’s Vice-President.
Rubio
“Little Scruples” Marco Rubio, Secretary of State. In 2015, Rubio, as reported in a mid-January article in the Guardian, “vowed to ‘support the spread of economic and political freedom by reinforcing our alliances, resisting efforts by large powers to subjugate their smaller neighbors, maintaining a robust commitment to transparent and effective foreign assistance programs, and advance the rights of the vulnerable, including women and religious minorities who are so often persecuted.” In a complete flip-flop, Rubio is now “a vocal exponent of Trump’s America First foreign policy . . . .” In particular, he played a strong role in encouraging Trump to capture Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and to take indirect control of Venezuela's oil reserves.
Musk
Elon “Chainsaw Massacre” Musk. In his cameo appearance as the “director” of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, which is not in fact a federal executive department), Musk summarily cut off funding for the United States Agency for International Development. Brooke Nichols, an infectious disease modeler working at Boston University, created an impact counter to estimate the life toll of funding cuts on various USAID health programs. As of early February, 2026, the counter estimated that over 800,000 deaths in developing countries had been caused by the funding cuts devised by the world's richest man; about two-thirds of those deaths were of children.
Bondi
Pam “Lady Injustice” Bondi, Attorney General. The US Department of Justice Organization, Mission And Functions Manual contains the following quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “The most sacred of the duties of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.” Bondi, however, appears to see her job as Trump’s personal attorney. When Trump commands “Jump,” her response has consistently been “How high, and in what direction?” A few quick examples: her removal of non-partisan, career prosecutors; the opening of investigations into Trump nemeses such as Adam Schiff, James Comey, Letitia James and Jerome Powell; and her failure to release all unclassified Jeffrey Epstein investigative files by a December 19, 2025, legal deadline.
Miller
Stephen “Evil” Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. An early January 2026 article in The Atlantic, entitled The Wrath of Stephen Miller, cites some recent venom spewed by this hateful man: “[He] has declared an end to the post-World War II order of ‘international niceties’ in favor of a world that rebukes the weak, ‘that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. . . .’ His own uncle has denounced him, writing at one point that if Miller’s immigration policies had been implemented a century ago, their family—which fled anti-Jewish pogroms in Europe ‘would have been wiped out.’”
Scott “Mr. Diplomacy” Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman is not a fan of this flim flam man. “[Bessent’s] attacks on the Federal Reserve, part of Trump’s campaign to destroy the Fed’s independence, are vile, underhanded and sleazy. In a better world they would lead to his immediate removal as Treasury secretary.” The Guardian reported on January 21 that Bessent’s “dismissal of Denmark as ‘irrelevant’ at . . . the annual World Economic Forum at Davos . . . is likely to earn him a place in the annals of infamy rather than diplomacy.”
Hegseth
Pete “FUBAR” Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, has displayed a jaw-dropping level of malfeasance in his professional conduct and personal history. Here's a quick summary of some of his most outrageous actions: using the unclassified messaging app Signal to share sensitive, pre-operational details before missions in Yemen; ordering illegal missile strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean; creating a “paranoid and chaotic” atmosphere as Secretary of Defense, marked by staff infighting and the purging of top aides over leak investigations; opposition to women in combat, arguing they make the military “less lethal”; and multiple accusations of sexual assault, drunkenness, and financial mismanagement.
Private Banking
Howard “Guess You're Shit Outta” Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce, had an estimated net worth of over $3 billion in January 2026, earned primarily from his time as the CEO of a private investment bank. According to a March 2025 article in Axios, “Lutnick suggested . . . that only ‘fraudsters’ would complain about missing a monthly Social Security check, and that most people wouldn't mind if the government simply skipped a payment. . . .”
Kennedy
Robert “The Virulent” Kennedy, Jr, Secretary of Health and Human Services, said during his confirmation hearings that he would not do anything as head of HHS that “makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines.” However, as NPR reported in May 2025, Kennedy ordered the removal of the Covid vaccine from the CDC's immunization schedule for “healthy children and healthy pregnant women. Less well known is Kennedy’s refusal to renew US funding for Gavi, a global vaccines alliance, as reported by the Guardian in June. “Kennedy will be ‘personally responsible’ for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children after he refused to renew US funding for a global vaccines body, public health experts said. . . .”
Fracking
Chris “Isn’t” Wright, Secretary of Energy, generated most of his wealth as the CEO of Liberty Energy, North America's second largest fracking company. Fracking is the process of injecting water, chemicals and sand into horizontal wells under high pressure to crack rock and release oil and gas. Numerous studies and environmental experts indicate that fracking is harmful to the environment and human health. (See for example: Why fracking is bad for the environment.) Not surprisingly, Wright is using his role as Secretary of Energy as a bully pulpit for expanding fossil fuel production and disparaging renewable energy at a time when solar power is substantially cheaper and infinitely cleaner.
Noem
Kristi “Fire, Aim, Ready” Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security. Following are a few examples of her mismanagement in office: bungling disaster relief by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, overseeing thuggish immigration raids, including the fatal ICE shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January; allegedly steering multimillion-dollar, no-bid government contracts to a consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to her and her aides; authorizing the purchase of two private Gulfstream G700 jets during a government shutdown; and allegedly taking a “cut” of political donations for personal benefit.
Conclusion
This, of course, is just a partial selection of the worst cast of characters to ever serve as presidential cabinet members and enablers. Additional candidates for (dis)honorable mention include: Kash “Wannabe Hoover” Patel, FBI Director; Karoline “Factless and Tactless” Leavitt, White House Press Secretary; Mike “Which Cheek?” Johnson, Speaker of the House; and too many others to mention in this brief article. Without these henchpersons, Trump would not be getting away with his corrupt efforts to destroy American democracy and to drastically weaken the United States’ constructive role on the world stage.
E.G. Nadeau is co-director of the Cooperative Society Project, dedicated to the idea that humanity may be on the verge of a new era of cooperation, democracy, equitable distribution of resources and a sustainable relationship with nature.
https://shepherdexpress.com/news/features/trumps-dirty-dozen/
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