President Donald Trump’s habit of selecting former media personalities for top government roles hasn’t gone well, to put it mildly. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former weekend Fox News host, shared military secrets in a group chat that included the editor-in-chief of a national magazine — a scandal that has metastasized in recent days. And Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, a former Fox News contributor, is overseeing a Federal Aviation Administration that has laid off staff amid a raft of deadly flight incidents that the White House claims, to the dismay of the FAA staffers’ union, is unrelated to those cuts. Those are perhaps the most glaring examples.
But these fumbles don’t seem to have deterred Trump from plucking names from conservative media to place in his administration. (You can read a list of personalities Trump has plucked from Fox News alone here.) Now, we can add radio host Mark Levin and political commentator Bo Dietl to the list, as Trump announced last week that both will serve on a Department of Homeland Security advisory council. In his announcement on social media, Trump also said South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and Florida state Sen. Joe Gruters will join the panel, which works alongside DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
A website for the Homeland Security Advisory Council lists its duties:
- “Provides organizationally independent advice and recommendations to the Secretary, including the creation and implementation of critical and actionable policies for the security of the homeland.”
- “Conducts research and provides policy analysis and recommendations on a variety of security issues.”
- “Evaluates the impact of security related public and private policies in an attempt to formulate prospective security policies.”
Policies upon policies! “Analysis” and “independent advice” on “security policies” — sound like important stuff. And I question whether such positions are well-suited for pundits with no background in national security policy. It’s reminiscent of Trump naming a right-wing influencer like Charlie Kirk or former personal aide Walt Nauta to the boards of military academies.
For those unfamiliar with Mark Levin, he’s a MAGA propagandist who encouraged Trump to pardon Jan. 6. rioters who participated in the 2021 insurrection attempt, echoed themes from the racist “replacement theory” by alleging Democrats are allowing illegal immigration to “change the citizenry” of the U.S., and supported Trump’s fake elector scheme that was part of the effort to block certification of his 2020 election loss.
Dietl, a former New York City Police Department detective, was a frequent guest on Fox News until 2016, when he says he was hired by the network’s lawyers to investigate two women who accused executive Roger Ailes and host Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment. (The lawsuits were settled, and O’Reilly and Ailes both denied any wrongdoing.) Dietl, who at one point ran for mayor of New York City, also has a history of peddling racist rhetoric and once suggested the government should “stop worrying about people’s rights” while eavesdropping on Muslims in mosques.
Given the open lack of respect for the kind of democratic values that DHS should be trying to protect, it’s hard to imagine these are the people Americans would want guiding policies at the department.
