By Rob C.
TL;DR: History books will record the second Trump administration as a monument to staggering corporate greed and public corruption. But focusing solely on the grift misses the defining characteristic of this regime: raw, unadulterated, weaponized stupidity. From RFK Jr.’s anti-vax pseudo-science at HHS to Pete Hegseth running national security blunders over Signal, and Donald Trump learning the word “groceries” means, we aren’t just being ruled by kleptocrats—we are being governed by absolute idiots.
We’ve spent a lot of time on this Substack documenting how the Trump administration is, hands down, the most corrupt in American history. Today I want to make the case for something almost as important: it’s also the dumbest. Not “dumb” as an insult for the sake of it — dumb as in demonstrably, provably, catastrophically bad at the actual jobs these men hold. Let’s take the tour.
Good morning. Grab your coffee, and maybe brace yourself, because today we’re ranking stupidity, and the competition is fierce.
“Dumb” — The Roadkill Chef at HHS
We always knew the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was going to be a disaster, but watching it unfold in real-time is like watching a medieval plague doctor take over Johns Hopkins.
This is a man who built a secondary career out of pushing bogus dietary supplements, hawking unproven detox regimens, and admitting to dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park after contemplating eating it. Naturally, Donald Trump decided he was the ideal candidate to oversee America’s public health infrastructure.
RFK Jr.’s HHS Prescription:
Since taking the reins, our “Roadkill Chef” has delivered a cascade of public health triumphs:
The Measles Revival: Kennedy has presided over the worst measles outbreak in a quarter century — the first child measles deaths in the U.S. in more than two decades — and responded by calling the outbreaks “not unusual,” even though measles was declared eliminated in this country back in 2000. RFK Jr. publicly suggested that vaccines were overrated and instead promoted treating the virus with heavy doses of cod liver oil, budesonide, and vitamin A—prompting pediatricians nationwide to issue emergency warnings about acute vitamin toxicity. He has flip-flopped so many times on the MMR vaccine that a former CDC Chief Medical Officer resigned in protest and told CBS his messaging wasn’t “based on science.” He falsely claimed the vaccine “routinely causes deaths.” He was recorded suggesting Black children on medications like Adderall should be “re-parented” into communities with no cellphones — a comment he then denied making, on tape.
Screwworm & Raw Milk: While agricultural authorities battled growing outbreaks of screwworms in livestock, a flesh-eating parasite that hatches maggots literally eating living tissue from the inside out — made its way back into the U.S. for the first time in decades on his watch, with critics directly tying its spread to a hollowed-out CDC that wasn’t even forthcoming with state veterinarians about the first case. Ground beef now runs over $7 a pound partly because of it. The man who had a worm eat his brain is now overseeing an agency that let a different flesh-eating parasite back into the country. All the while, RFK Jr. spent his time championing unpasteurized raw milk and gutting FDA food safety inspectors.
Supplement Grifting: Transforming federal health portals into promotional vehicles for unvetted wellness powders and holistic cures while childhood vaccination rates dropped to dangerous lows and deciding Glyphosate was safe, this man has been doing a heck-of-a-job.
Giving RFK Jr. control of the nation’s medical policy was like appointing a termite as the Chief Building Inspector. He is undeniably, breathtakingly dumb.
“Dumber” — The “Low T” War Department
If RFK Jr. represents medical incompetence, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense — sorry, Secretary of War, I keep forgetting, he changed it, brings full-blown fraternity-basement brain-rot to national security.
When “Testosterone Pete” isn’t shouting at reporters for daring to ask why the administration’s military misadventures in the Middle East keep escalating, he’s busy running the Pentagon like an aggressive workout video. Hegseth genuinely seems to believe that the primary challenge facing the most powerful military on Earth isn’t hypersonics, logistics, or cyber warfare—it’s low testosterone levels in the officer corps.
Hegseth has spent his tenure obsessed with “lethality” and “warrior ethos” while committing what might be the single dumbest operational security failure by a sitting Defense Secretary in modern American history.
Twice. He did it twice.
The Signal App Leak: The first time, Hegseth created commercial Signal group chats—which included family members and even inadvertently added a senior journalist from The Atlantic—where he broadcasted precise, classified operational details and strike times for airstrikes in Yemen before aircraft were even in the air.
The Pentagon’s own Inspector General opened an investigation. Then, weeks later, we found out about a second Signal chat, where Hegseth shared the same sensitive operational details with a group that included his wife, a former Fox News producer with no security clearance or official role, and his brother, who he’d installed at the Pentagon as a “senior adviser.” When the story broke, his response wasn’t to explain the operational security failure — it was to blame “disgruntled former employees” trying to “sabotage” the administration.
This is a man in charge of the most powerful military on Earth who apparently learned classified information handling from group-texting lunch plans. Watching Hegseth manage national defense is a sobering reminder that shouting loudly on television does not equip a person to command an army.
“Dumbest” — Nostra-dumbass and the Word “Groceries”
Which brings us to the top of the pyramid. The Crown Prince of Cognitive Collapse himself: Donald J. Trump.
Despite repeatedly boasting about “passing” basic cognitive assessment tests (congratulations on identifying an elephant and counting backward from 100), Donny Dumb-shit takes the absolute crown.
“GROCERIES”: AN EXPLORATION BY DJT
“It’s a very simple word... like, almost nobody uses the word.
I started using the word, ‘the groceries.’ It sort of means...
like, everything you eat.”
— Donald Trump
That’s an actual quote, from Meet the Press. On his own Liberation Day tariff announcement, standing at a podium about to reorganize the entire global economy, he paused to explain that “groceries” is “an old-fashioned term” that “sort of says a bag with different things in it.” He’s described the word as “beautiful,” “descriptive,” and “old-fashioned” across no fewer than half a dozen separate public appearances over the past two years, each time as though it were the first.
Nothing captured the leader of the free world’s mental acuity quite like his bizarre, rambling obsession with the word “groceries.” Standing in front of cameras, Trump treated a basic, everyday noun like an ancient, lost dialect he had personally unearthed:
“Groceries. It’s a sort of simple word, but it sort of means like... everything you eat. Nobody uses the word anymore, but I started using it...”
Think about that for a second. The President of the United States spent three minutes explaining to working-class voters that “groceries” are the things you buy at a store and put in your mouth. It’s an insight that would embarrass an average toddler, delivered with the smug pomposity of a man revealing the secrets of quantum physics.
And this is the same man who has, for years, bragged uninterrupted for entire interview segments about acing a dementia screening test by memorizing five words — “person, woman, man, camera, TV” — treating a basic cognitive baseline exam, the kind designed to catch early signs of decline, as though it were a Mensa qualifier. “They said nobody gets it in order. It’s actually not that easy. For me it was easy.” Sir. It is a memory test. Toddlers pass harder versions of this at the pediatrician. This is the same strategic mastermind who once suggested injecting disinfectant to fight viruses, wondered out loud if we could nuke a hurricane, and stared directly into a solar eclipse without protective glasses.
The Ranking
So here’s where I land it. RFK Jr. is dumb in the “actively dangerous to public health, brain-worm-having, screwworm-inviting” sense. Hegseth is dumber in the “texted classified war plans to his wife’s group chat, twice” sense. But Trump tops the list, and it’s not particularly close, because he combines both — the certified cognitive concerns and the sheer, weapons-grade confidence that he’s the smartest man in any room he enters, groceries and all. Being dumb is forgivable. Being dumb while holding the nuclear codes and insisting loudly, constantly, that you’re a genius is a genuinely dangerous combination, because nobody around him is incentivized to correct him.
Honorable Mention: The GOP’s Self-Destructive Lemmings
We cannot conclude this roll call of stupidity without awarding an honorable mention to Congressional Republicans.
Month after month, these elected officials parade in front of news cameras to defend every constitutional violation, every security breach, and every economic disaster coming out of the White House. They line up like dutiful lemmings, convinced that if they just bow low enough, Nostra-dumbass will protect them.
History has one lesson on this, repeated over and over with total consistency — loyalty runs one direction in Trump World, and it isn’t down. Ask any of the dozen-plus former allies, aides, and cabinet members he’s turned on the moment they stopped being useful. These guys aren’t just watching the parade of stupidity from a safe distance. They aren’t. Believing you are the one special exception to his lifelong pattern of betrayal isn’t loyalty—it’s pure, unadulterated stupidity.
It is easy—and necessary—to laugh at these people. The absurdity of an HHS Secretary telling parents to cure infectious diseases with cod liver oil or a Defense Secretary leaking military strikes on an app is objectively funny.
But behind the laughter lies a grave warning.
Weaponized stupidity
When corrupt kleptocrats are smart, they at least calculate the risks to system stability so they can keep stealing. When corrupt kleptocrats are dumb, they burn the whole structure down around themselves because they lack the foresight to realize the roof is falling.
Donny Dumb-shit and his crew of juvenile court jesters may be the most incompetent administrators in American history, but they still hold the keys to the federal justice system, the nuclear codes, and the national economy. A foolish leader surrounded by sycophants isn’t just a punchline—it’s a national security hazard.
It’s time to stop treating their endless gaffes as mere entertainment. Every time they act like fools, real people lose their healthcare, real soldiers get put in harm’s way, and real working families pay the price at the grocery checkout. Let’s keep pointing out the joke—and then let’s make sure we vote the clowns out of the circus.
F*CK ICE. RELEASE ALL THE FILES!
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Robert Cain is the author of “Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet.” Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and independent booksellers everywhere.