Victor Davis Hanson makes more great points:
Paradox: How does a supposedly bad man appoint good people eager to advance a conservative agenda that supposedly more moral Republicans failed to realize?
We variously read that Trump should be impeached, removed, neutralized — or worse. But until he is, are his appointments, executive orders, and impending legislative agenda equally abhorrent?
General acclamation followed the Trump appointments of retired Generals H. R. McMaster as national-security adviser, James Mattis as defense secretary, and John Kelly to head Homeland Security. The brief celebration of Trump’s selections was almost as loud as the otherwise daily denunciations of Trump himself. Trump’s equally inspired decisions, such as the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and Jeff Sessions as attorney general, presented the same ironies.
Most of these and other fine appointments came amid a near historic pushback against Trump, mostly over what he has said rather than what he’s done. But again, do the appointments create a dilemma for his existential critics who have gone beyond the traditional media audit of a public official and instead descended into calls for his removal — or worse? Indeed, removal chic is now widespread, as even conservatives ponder impeachment, invoking the 25th Amendment for mental unfitness, while the more radical (here and abroad and both Right and Left) either abstractly or concretely ponder a coup or some other road to his demise.
How do his opponents square such excellent appointments with Trump himself? Even bad people can occasionally do good?
Are his Cabinet secretaries patriotically (as I believe) serving their president, even if prepared at times to nudge him away from what they might feel are occasional unwise detours? Appointees of the caliber of a Mattis, McMaster, or Kelly do not go to work for any president with the likelihood of becoming undercover actors — undercutting his authority, or posing to the press that they are the moral superior to their boss, or leaking information to massage favorable accounts of their superior savvy or morality at the president’s expense. No, they serve the president because they want their country to prosper and think that it can if their commander in chief (whose agendas for the most part they share) is successful.
Read more: National Review
