On my previous question on Facebook of who is the second-most dangerous person in America, there were two votes for Robert Kennedy Jr., one for Ron DeSantis, one for Mike Johnson, and two who were simply overwhelmed by the multitude of possibilities. My thanks to all. I guess I’m in that last camp as well, but since I asked for one individual, I guess I should give just one myself. My candidates were: Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr., Secretary of DEFENSE (not “War”) Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Vice-President J. D. Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Presidential consigliere Steven Miller, OMB Director and Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought, and finally Chairman and CEO of Fox News, Lachlan Murdoch (his father Rupert is now Chairman emeritus).
Under this administration, America faces a vicious interplay of actual threats from the White House and loss of respect from abroad. From the administration’s anti-science ignorance represented by Kennedy; to the autocracy-loving malice of Miller, Vought, and Hegseth; to the clinking of champagne glasses in Moscow and Beijing after the demolition of agencies like Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, USAID, and others; to the firing of senior military officers and intelligence personnel considered insufficiently Trump-loyal, the sunsetting of American democracy and the wavering in national security are clear and present dangers.
As for my own choice, my original thought was Robert Kennedy, autism provocateur and Center for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health deconstructionist. I do believe there is a high probability of people getting diseases or dying who might not have done so with a competent health professional in his place. Under his rule at HHS, we will be less prepared for our next pandemic or measles outbreak. But I also believe that he is an ideological ignoramus, at least more than he is a malicious underminer of national security. And since I am particularly concerned with American decline on the world stage, America’s retreat from democratic principles, and its slide to join the autocratic world with no other equally strong democracy in the wings, I ruled him out. As journalist and historian Anne Applebaum has succinctly noted, we have entered a new era: the “post-American world.”
I toyed with Murdoch, given his extraordinary influence through Fox News, the propaganda arm of the Trump administration. Perhaps unknowingly employing an apt term from the Reagan administration—“perception management”—Fox News* has captured the minds of far too many Americans who love Trump’s bogus machismo and his daily falsehoods. I also toyed with Hegseth, an unqualified macho Signalgate incompetent and former Fox News host subverting our national defense and obsessed with “lethality” and “warfighters.” The chasm between him and former Secretaries of Defense like James Mattis, George Marshall, Clark Clifford, Leon Panetta, or Robert Gates is almost as wide as the Grand Canyon between Republican Presidents Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln.
But finally I settled on Vance. Sure, he has Trump’s ear, “couldn’t care less about Ukraine,” excoriated Trump in 2016 but in a fit of fevered ambition flipped to unabashed Trump lapdog, all while exhibiting his own fascist instincts—his embrace of the German extreme right-wing party AfD and “the professors are the enemy” speech as two examples. But perhaps his greatest threat lies in the future, when he is likely to be the GOP presidential candidate in 2028. If he wins, he will assume the Trumpist mantle and agenda, he will know where Trump faltered, and with his cunning, intelligence, and lean and hungry look, he would make restoring democracy and actually making America great again an even more distant goal.
*Exemplifying Fox News’s extreme Trump bias, Charlie Warzel, writing of the Jeffrey Epstein “birthday book” in which Trump has apparently drawn a “bawdy” picture and says “May every day be another wonderful secret,” notes that “Fox News’s article about the birthday book, which was on its front page earlier this evening, mentions Clinton in the headline [and text] but contains zero mention of Trump at all.” “You Really Need to See Epstein’s Birthday Book for Yourself,” digital Atlantic, 9/9/25. Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal, owned by the Murdoch family, first reported the Trump quote.
John Rachal's Blog
Who’s Number Two?
September 14, 2025 at 12:07 pm (Political Commentary)
On my previous question on Facebook of who is the second-most dangerous person in America, there were two votes for Robert Kennedy Jr., one for Ron DeSantis, one for Mike Johnson, and two who were simply overwhelmed by the multitude of possibilities. My thanks to all. I guess I’m in that last camp as well, but since I asked for one individual, I guess I should give just one myself. My candidates were: Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK Jr., Secretary of DEFENSE (not “War”) Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Vice-President J. D. Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Presidential consigliere Steven Miller, OMB Director and Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought, and finally Chairman and CEO of Fox News, Lachlan Murdoch (his father Rupert is now Chairman emeritus).
Under this administration, America faces a vicious interplay of actual threats from the White House and loss of respect from abroad. From the administration’s anti-science ignorance represented by Kennedy; to the autocracy-loving malice of Miller, Vought, and Hegseth; to the clinking of champagne glasses in Moscow and Beijing after the demolition of agencies like Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, USAID, and others; to the firing of senior military officers and intelligence personnel considered insufficiently Trump-loyal, the sunsetting of American democracy and the wavering in national security are clear and present dangers.
As for my own choice, my original thought was Robert Kennedy, autism provocateur and Center for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health deconstructionist. I do believe there is a high probability of people getting diseases or dying who might not have done so with a competent health professional in his place. Under his rule at HHS, we will be less prepared for our next pandemic or measles outbreak. But I also believe that he is an ideological ignoramus, at least more than he is a malicious underminer of national security. And since I am particularly concerned with American decline on the world stage, America’s retreat from democratic principles, and its slide to join the autocratic world with no other equally strong democracy in the wings, I ruled him out. As journalist and historian Anne Applebaum has succinctly noted, we have entered a new era: the “post-American world.”
I toyed with Murdoch, given his extraordinary influence through Fox News, the propaganda arm of the Trump administration. Perhaps unknowingly employing an apt term from the Reagan administration—“perception management”—Fox News* has captured the minds of far too many Americans who love Trump’s bogus machismo and his daily falsehoods. I also toyed with Hegseth, an unqualified macho Signalgate incompetent and former Fox News host subverting our national defense and obsessed with “lethality” and “warfighters.” The chasm between him and former Secretaries of Defense like James Mattis, George Marshall, Clark Clifford, Leon Panetta, or Robert Gates is almost as wide as the Grand Canyon between Republican Presidents Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln.
But finally I settled on Vance. Sure, he has Trump’s ear, “couldn’t care less about Ukraine,” excoriated Trump in 2016 but in a fit of fevered ambition flipped to unabashed Trump lapdog, all while exhibiting his own fascist instincts—his embrace of the German extreme right-wing party AfD and “the professors are the enemy” speech as two examples. But perhaps his greatest threat lies in the future, when he is likely to be the GOP presidential candidate in 2028. If he wins, he will assume the Trumpist mantle and agenda, he will know where Trump faltered, and with his cunning, intelligence, and lean and hungry look, he would make restoring democracy and actually making America great again an even more distant goal.
*Exemplifying Fox News’s extreme Trump bias, Charlie Warzel, writing of the Jeffrey Epstein “birthday book” in which Trump has apparently drawn a “bawdy” picture and says “May every day be another wonderful secret,” notes that “Fox News’s article about the birthday book, which was on its front page earlier this evening, mentions Clinton in the headline [and text] but contains zero mention of Trump at all.” “You Really Need to See Epstein’s Birthday Book for Yourself,” digital Atlantic, 9/9/25. Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal, owned by the Murdoch family, first reported the Trump quote.
Share this:
Related