Coop Scoop: Patel Signals New Phony War

The war has been declared. But the real fighting begins January 20.

December 3, 2024

By Marc Cooper

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I’ve written before that the cabinet of ghouls named by Trump are not all that important in themselves. They are largely replaceable by a loyal army of MAGA zombies who will comply with any order Trump grunts out. And he will be the one doing all the ordering.

The naming of Kash Patel as FBI director, however, is an entirely different matter—one that we should take with the utmost seriousness and alarm. It’s a declaration of war.

Patel is so covered in slime that he might fail the confirmation process, if there is one. What is truly concerning is that, of all the goofballs Trump has chosen so far, Patel is in a different category. He is not only by far the most depraved and dangerous, but he also most clearly signals the very worst of Trump’s intentions. It’s a confirmation of our worst fears.

Trump, with or without Patel, is determined to turn the FBI into a national political police force whose only loyalty is to King Trump, and not even remotely to the rule of law. Yes, we should oppose all the cabinet picks, at least as a muscle-building exercise for the bigger fights ahead. But all in against Patel.

Patel is a straight-up fascist—a brash and zealous ideologue who has no problem declaring that the FBI must commit itself to the task of persecuting and prosecuting Trump’s “enemies within,” i.e., those prosecutors who have raised cases against Trump, as well as those in Congress whom Trump has branded as traitors plus a long list of “enemies” he has in the appendix of one of his rant-filled books.

The enemies list in Patel’s twisted mind is endless—too long to type out. When Trump wanted to name him as Assistant CIA Director, even Trump patsy Bill Barr told Trump, “Over my dead body.”

The Associated Press reports:

While Patel joined the Trump administration during its final year and quickly rose through the ranks thanks to his hard-nosed style and unwavering devotion to Donald Trump, other Trump officials reportedly regarded Patel as "dangerous." This included General Mark Milley, who feared he would break the law for Trump, and former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, who said, "Over my dead body," when Trump entertained the idea of naming Patel deputy director of the FBI. Recently, Patel has threatened to prosecute journalists and political opponents of Trump. Patel has also reportedly spread baseless QAnon conspiracy theories and "earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from his own business dealings with Trump-related entities."

"We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes. We’re going to come after the media," he said to Steve Bannon. He also claimed he would hunt down those who, in his delirious view, "helped Joe Biden rig the elections… 'We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice… and this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.'"

Kash Parading His Merch At CPAC

In recent weeks, Patel has escalated his threatening rhetoric against the FBI, the agency he has been named to run. He says that on Day One, he will shut down the FBI headquarters, where 7,000 people work, and convert it into a "Museum of the Deep State"—which would likely be a massive non-attraction for tourists not interested in cubicles. white boards and empty chairs and desks.

He claims that the thousands of employees who work there are simply "cops" and should therefore be sent out into the field to do "real police work." This fever dream ignores the vital work these 7,000 individuals actually perform: counterterrorism investigations and operations, white-collar crime investigations, fraud detection, illegal mergers, crime data bases, fight against organized crime, and a thousand other felonies that cross state lines.

It's the mindset of a petulant, angry, and ignorant child—one who has a 105mm Howitzer locked and loaded. And an army of shoot-em-up cowboys already armed and in place.

Rolling Stone says of him:

“Patel’s reputation as a Trump loyalist stems not just from his overt devotion to the president-elect but his explicit willingness to do anything — rule of law and consequences be damned — to please his commander-in-chief.
In August, one Trump adviser told The Atlantic that the president-elect understands that 'Kash is the one you say to, "Hey, I’m not telling you to go break into the DNC. But …"'

“Patel was reportedly the author of the controversial Nunes Memo, a 2018 document alleging that the FBI had improperly obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

This year, Patel called for the security clearances of government officials involved in the Russia investigation to be permanently suspended.
'It’s not an act of vengeance. They have had the opportunity to recant, and all 51 of them have doubled down and tripled down,' he said of a group of 51 intelligence officials who opposed the public release of Hunter Biden’s emails ahead of the 2020 election. 'So pull them. I think I will.'“

Patel is by far the most dangerous of the scammers, flunkies, and fakes that Trump has named to his cabinet, simply because — excuse the overused cliché — he has no guardrails whatsoever. When Trump wanted to promote Patel in 2021 to a high position in the FBI, both Vice President Mike Pence and CIA Director Gina Haspel intervened with Trump to stop him. Pence is gone, and Haspel is soon to be a goner. Nest to be a goner is current FBI Director Chris Wray who has 3 years left in his 10 year term and who Trump will quickly dispose of as he has the power to simply fire him even though he put him in office.

Patel’s stands out like a smoking 9mm handgun among the other nominees who will have far less latitude.

The Christian white nationalist TV host Trump has named to the Department of Defense (DOD) has several branches of the armed forces and a couple of million soldiers and sailors who are not going to just roll over for him when he snaps his fingers. There’s an entire office corps that will not easily be dislodged by this Nobody.

The ludicrous DNI director, Tulsi Gabbard, will have to contend with a dozen separate intelligence agencies who already do not get along and are unlikely to accept her in any meaningful way.

Bobby Kennedy Jr. and fellow huckster Mehmet Oz will do their best to dismantle our national health agencies — that is, if there are not mass resignations and outcries from thousands of doctors, scientists, and most of all, parents who are sure to organize to protect their children. If they start pulling back on vaccines, blue states will find ways to obstruct, and while it isn’t 100% clear, I have to imagine that private doctors and health groups will explore effective workarounds. I certainly hope so,

But Patel has only to report to Trump’s rubber-stamp Attorney General Pam Bondi or a reasonable facsimile if she flunks out. She’s as bonkers as Patel, she’s just less histrionic. She’s been a total Trump flunky, a corrupt one I might add, with zero independent thinking, and she will simply be a communication conduit between the dictator and his top cop. If that.

If Patel or some doppelgänger is named to replace him, I think that would be the real red line for the death of democratic rule in America. I don’t care if you are tired of comparisons to Hitler. Trump is more like Mad King George than Adolf Hitler. But Patel easily qualifies as a fit commander of the Gestapo or the SS, and yes, Virginia, it can happen here.

Not all fascists wear those cool Hugo Boss Nazi SS uniforms or shout “Sieg Heil.” Fascists and their customs change with the times. In Chile, the fascist rank and file were among the best educated and well-dressed in the country, slathered in silk and antelope leather and driving Mercedes-Benz while kowtowing to a sub-verbal general who had to shave the hair off his palms. In Italy, they were of a somewhat different stripe. The current prime minister of Italy is a fascist who rules in coalition with center-right parties and supports NATO. In Spain, they were most loyal to a corrupt and reactionary church and did not support Germany during WWII. In Russia, Putin needs no uniforms, only some open windows from which dissidents keep falling out. Viktor Orbán would fit right in in any American Wall Street party — though he would need a better haberdasher.

Kash Patel is a Trump-fascist. They wear suits and ties and most of the time pay tortured lip service to democracy while making multi-billion dollar deals with homegrown and foreign oligarchs. They hobnob with “respected” CEO’s (soon-to-be Quislings) and take advice from the richest man in the world who is clearly on the spectrum, not just of autism but of a militant anti-democratic bent. One more dangerous crackpot to not have within 5000 miles of the Oval Office. The sooner ElMo gets to Mars, the better for this world.

We don’t have a street-brawling Trump Youth yet, smashing in the windows of immigrant shopkeepers, but no doubt there would be good people on both sides.

But Trump won’t need any rowdy brownshirts. He’s does not have an armed gang in the streets. No, not at all. He will have the FBI with a core group of 35,000 and no doubt some logistical support from the armed agents sent by the nincompoop Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security with its 47,000 agents. Throw in the lot of lawless “Constitutional Sheriffs” who have pock-marked the land and have already placed themselves above the law, and you already have a Trump army without even counting the armed forces.

French Women On the Beach 1939.

For those who think I am overstating the case, I would say we are currently, today, in the midst of an American Phony War. The original phony war lasted 8 months when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. The Brits and the French immediately declared war, and Hitler returned the favor. But for 8 months, nothing much changed in France . There was no real military action on Germany’s western front until the last days of spring 1940.

During those 8 months, life went on in France pretty much as usual. Simone de Beauvoir makes some references to it in her 1954 novel The Mandarins. She noted how the French carried on with their country picnics and sipped some wine on the beaches as if war had never been declared and there wasn’t a care in the world. No accident that France fell in 6 short weeks once the Nazis invaded.

Tom Shachtman’s The Phony War 1939-1940 is a real in-depth dive into this weird interval of denial and worth a read.

I would posit we are now in the midst of our own Phony War. Trump declared war on America’s institutions back in November but nothing has really changed and life goes on. The naming of Kash Patel as a possible FBI director is now a declaration of war against the writers, journalists, politicians, activists, and dissidents of America — against the people of America. But nobody has been arrested yet.

Thanksgiving went off without a hitch, setting a record for travel by car in spite of half the country three weeks earlier electing a psychopath fascist because gas prices were too high. Retailers are looking forward to Christmas as the stock market is hot and consumers are spending more than ever on cars, toys, and game boxes. Conversations among the bar stool regulars it is all about football. New Year’s Eve will be welcomed by the two drunk a-holes on CNN while thousands of others freeze their butts off in Times Square in some ritual I fail to understand.

All will be good and “normal” for another three weeks after that until Donald Trump is sworn into an office that he expects never to surrender, alive.

And then the real war will begin. The war that just a month earlier, millions of Americans thought was just bluff and bluster. The French found out the hard way. Hopefully, we can do better, because that it is coming, it is coming for sure. So, enjoy the normalcy until then because it will be a different America soon after. ++

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