Mr. Trump recorded his contribution at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, while the choir was recorded with a phone in the Washington jail. The song - a fund-raising effort that the Trump loyalist Kash Patel, now the president-elect's nominee to head the F.B.I., helped produce - concludes with a defiant echo of the "U.S.A.!" chants that resounded during the Jan. 6 attack.
Kash Patel has been central to the success of Trump's repackaging of his own crimes as grievance from the start. And I've been trying to figure out how that'll work as I contemplate what I think of as Trump's Conspiracy Cabinet.
That's most evident in virtually all of Trump's health-related appointments, starting with Bobby Kennedy (who might yet lose his confirmation battle). I don't, for a second, believe the claim from someone adjacent to Roger Stone that Trump picked RFK and Tulsi Gabbard as a way to tap into a realignment of Democrats.
Rather, Trump had to appoint them to keep the likes of Matthew Livelsberger, who invoked RFK in his manifesto, engaged, no matter the cost. And so after having presided over a heroic rush to develop a COVID vaccine in his first term, Trump will hand over America's scientific crown jewels to people who don't believe in science.
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