Hillary Clinton asserts President Trump is surrounded by selfish & stupid people

By James J. Devine

In a New York Times essay that reads like a frustrated teacher’s note pinned to America’s locker, Hillary Clinton—former secretary of state, senator, and frequent subject of Trumpian tweetstorms—delivered a withering review of the Trump administration’s governance, which she seems to believe is being run by someone who misplaced the instruction manual for global superpowerdom.

With the exasperated tone of a woman who’s seen this movie before and knows the villain wins in Act III, Clinton painted a portrait of an administration so bafflingly inept that one wonders if they’re sharing nuclear codes via TikTok duets or outsourcing military strategy to a Magic 8-Ball.

“It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity,” wrote Clinton, no stranger to diplomatic nuance, suggesting that “smart power”—a concept involving things like strategy and not “sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly (inviting) a journalist into the chat”—has been replaced by what she dubs “dumb power,” a philosophy best summarized as “light everything on fire and blame the ashes on wokeness.”

She marveled at the administration’s ability to bungle national security with the finesse of a toddler armed with a sledgehammer, pointing to such highlights as firing the people who keep nuclear weapons from exploding on their own, shutting down pandemic defenses mid-Ebola outbreak, and purging seasoned generals faster than a reality show contestant.

“Five former secretaries of defense, Republicans and Democrats, rightly warned that this would ‘undermine our all-volunteer force and weaken our national security.’ Mass layoffs are also hitting the intelligence agencies,” Clinton wrote, “As one former senior spy put it, ‘We’re shooting ourselves in the head, not the foot.’ Not smart.”

“Why hire experts,” Clinton seemed to ask, “when you can just wing it and hope Putin sends a thumbs-up emoji?”

The essay took a detour into the surreal when Clinton questioned the logic of scrubbing tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen from military bases, as if historical erasure were a viable substitute for, say, preparing for war.

Nothing says ‘strong national defense’ like being offended by the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, she quipped, “because its name is the Enola Gay. Dumb.”

Meanwhile, the State Department, she noted, is being gutted with the care of a garage sale—shuttering embassies, firing diplomats, and essentially handing Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping a “World Domination Starter Kit” wrapped in a bow.

China now has more embassies and consulates around the world than the United States, but who needs allies when you can have a robust collection of fist-and-flag emojis?

Clinton saved special scorn for Trump’s habit of cozying up to autocrats while alienating democracies, a strategy she likened to bringing a Russian nesting doll to a knife fight.

“Diplomats win America friends so we don’t have to go it alone in a competitive world,” Clinton wrote, “Trump’s own former secretary of defense Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps four-star general, told Congress, ‘If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition.’”

She reminisced about the days when diplomacy meant rallying global coalitions rather than rage-quitting alliances like a gamer who just lost Wi-Fi.

Turns out, she mused, defunding nuclear inspectors doesn’t magically make Iran less interested in nukes—who knew?

Her parting shot likened Trump’s leadership to his Atlantic City casino ventures: a lot of glitter, a whiff of bankruptcy, and a lingering question of whether anyone thought to check if the wheels are attached to the bus he’s driving off the cliff.

“Now he’s gambling with the national security of the United States,” Clinton wrote.

In the end, Clinton’s essay felt less like a policy critique and more like a plea for someone—anyone—to hide the matches before the whole place burns down.

One can almost picture her shaking her head at the spectacle, muttering, ‘We used to be a country.’

One might find innumerable reasons to dislike Hillary Clinton, but even if ascribed entirely to sour grapes, her logic is impeccable.

“Today they are not reinventing government; they’re wrecking it,” Clinton wrote, “All of this is both dumb and dangerous. ”