Donald Trump never fails to entertain. The US president once again showed his incompetence in handling the coronavirus crisis in the country by sacking the independent inspector general appointed to monitor spending from the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.
Glen Fine, who is the acting Defense Department inspector general and a veteran watchdog, had previously been selected by peers last month for the position. The announcement threatens to pull the plug on all the hard work that democrats in congress put in when they demanded rigorous oversight for the huge sums of cash that’s meant to be pumped back into the economy.
When you think about it, the move by Trump should hardly come as a surprise. Besides being consistently incompetent throughout his tenure as president, he’s also time and time again displayed an aversion to outside criticism. He’s a man that surrounds himself with cronies and puts down any reporter who questions his baffling logic.
That being said however, this is still a bold move to undermine federal oversight. On Monday, the president nominated Jason Abend, a senior policy adviser at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, for the role. He also designated Sean O’Donnell, the inspector general for the Environmental Protection Agency, to serve as the acting watchdog at the Pentagon.
As you would expect, Democrats are clearly outraged at the move. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer slammed the decision in a statement on Tuesday. “President Trump is abusing the coronavirus pandemic to eliminate honest and independent public servants because they are willing to speak truth to power and because he is so clearly afraid of strong oversight,” he said.
And he’s not alone. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented on the sacking, saying “The president thinks he should be the ‘one’ and that is exactly upside down…. The president is sending in some of his loyalists. This is really a problem,”
The whole situation reeks of the same kind of funny business that former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak tried to pull when people started asking questions about corruption within the government. Of course, i’m not saying Trump is corrupt. But anyone who’s constantly trying to undermine oversight and accountability have something to hide in my books.
