FBI Director Kash Patel listens while President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., October 15, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Standards for new recruits are reportedly plummeting at the FBI, but according to a new analysis from MS NOW's Steve Benen, this is just the latest example in an "unfortunate" trend across Donald Trump's presidency.
Writing on Friday, Benen, a longtime producer for The Rachel Maddow Show, highlighted a recent report from Reuters about the decline in recruitment standards put in place at the FBI in order to address hiring issues. According to the report, existing Bureau employees will now be able to report for training as a field agent in Quantico after simply completing an online exam, removing the previously needed steps of a written assessment and interview from the process.
Among the sources cited in the report was Jeff Crocker, a retired FBI special agent who worked to vet candidates for over 20 years. The FBI denied that any changes made to its process constituted a lowering of standards.
While not cited by Benen, ICE has frequently made headlines for its lowered recruitment standards amid Trump's mass deportation agenda. New recruits have reportedly struggled to pass rudimentary physical tests, and had trouble with entrance exams even when allowed to use their textbooks.
Benen noted in his analysis of the story that recruitment and employment standards have been in freefall all across the Trump administration during his second term. These changes have most often been made to cover hiring shortfalls, either from an exodus of past talent or to meet the demands of Trump's major goals.
"Complicating matters is the familiarity of the circumstances," Benen wrote. "It was last summer, for example, when the Trump administration also lowered its standards for those seeking to work as agents at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Around the same time, the Republican administration also lowered Justice Department standards on the qualifications to serve as immigration judges."
Benen further argued that "lowering standards" was a key theme across Trump's entire tenure in politics, especially so in his second term. Trump himself famously held no elected office before his first term and boasted none of the typical experience associated with the job. His appointees across both terms have been widely criticized as having no expertise in the jobs they were given. Most often, these appointees have tended to be wealthy donors or associates of Trump, or Republicans with a history of loyalty towards him.
"Indeed, by some measures, the entirety of the Trump presidency has been a grand experiment in what happens when a nation lowers its standards," Benen surmised. "Trumpism, in other words, is defined in large part by a lowering of standards. The FBI is apparently just keeping up."