'They are the swamp': Libertarian reveals what top FBI official 'too stupid to understand'
Dispatch writer Kevin Williamson says FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, “the emotionally incontinent former cop turned podcaster appointed for some inexplicable reason by Donald Trump,” doesn’t realize he is now the swamp.
“What Bongino is doing—and whining about!—is the swamp-thing two-step,” writes Williamson, “the swampy revolving-door career path, the exploitation of one’s former position and contacts to make money in a purely self-interested way after leaving government—or, as in Bongino’s case, between feeding sessions while tearily attached to the taxpayers’ teat.”
“The question that interests me,” asks Williamson “… is whether Bongino and others like him are simply too stupid to understand they are The Swamp.
READ MORE: Outrage grows over a single paragraph buried deep in Republicans' 'Big Beautiful Bill'
Bongino has described the FBI, which he now leads as “irredeemably corrupt.” But Williamson said if Bongino genuinely believed the FBI was irredeemably corrupt, he would not waste time on the impossible project of trying to reform it.
“If he were a man of integrity acting in good faith. Irredeemably means something,” Williamson said. “On the other hand, if he were a purely cynical and self-serving calculator, then doing a stint at the FBI would be worth something: A dishonest man coming out of a senior management role at the FBI could milk the conspiracy nuts and rage-monkeys for millions in book sales and appearance fees promising to expose the secrets that “they—THEY—don’t want you to know.”
Williamson, A former National Review writer, says Bongino belongs to the “too stupid” set because he does not think “such energetic, sanctimonious, and utterly unexamined self-righteousness is the kind of thing that even a genuinely wicked person can fake for so long.”
“There is a genuine sense among these Trump sycophants that what they do isn’t corrupt when they do it,” Williamson argues. “… There is no crime that cannot be set aside for Trump supporters … like Scott Jenkins, a former Virginia sheriff convicted of taking bribes, as well as … Larry Hoover, the founder of what is arguably the single most significant criminal enterprise in these United States … responsible for who knows how many thousands of murders.”
READ MORE: America 'being ripped apart': Vietnam vet removes U.S. flag in Trump protest
But Williamson fears there isn’t much to be done about the federal revolving door between public and private sectors, and definitely not by Bongino—who is fresh from the private sector himself after his own stint in government.
Read the full Dispatch report here.
