Trump’s tainted transition team
As Donald Trump prepares for his Washington take over, the rest of the country waits with bated breath to see who will be chosen to help him lead our government.
Less than a week after leaving the nation speechless with his shocking win, Trump has filled his transition team with a list of political scum, further increasing the fear many have regarding his presidency.
The Trump “Legion of Super-Villains” consists of gems such as Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who supported Trump’s ban on Muslims, Jared Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump who we have to thank for favoring homosexual-hating Mike Pence as the vice presidential candidate, Peter Thiel, an enigma in and of himself who is gay but somehow supports Trump and of course the wonder children Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
As disturbing as the wave of hate-mongers joining the team was, they were in no way the worst appointment made in the last few days.
Yes, bigots becoming leading members of the Trump presidency is a cause for concern. However, at the end of the day, hate is easily recognized and thus can easily be stopped.
Corruption, on the other hand, is often harder to spot and can have daunting repercussions. And which queen of corruption did Trump appoint to his team? Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Bondi and Trump stirred up quite a scandal earlier this year when it was discovered Trump’s foundation made a $25,000 gift in 2013 that just so happen to coincide with Bondi looking into Trump’s failing and now-defunct university. After receiving the gift, Bondi chose to not investigate the university — a decision that was obviously unrelated to the major paycheck.
Six months after Florida’s grand attorney general chose to forgo her morals and fail to do her job, Trump hosted a $3,000 per plate fundraiser for Bondi at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Her dalliances with our president-elect are just the tip of the depressingly large iceberg of misdeeds. In 2009, Florida judges began to rule the ban restricting same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Despite their ruling, Bondi continued to appeal and fight to keep the ban in place. It took the Supreme Court outlawing the ban for Florida to become an inclusive environment for the LGBT community.
The sound logic behind keeping two people in love from legally binding themselves together? Procreation.
“Disrupting Florida’s existing marriage laws would impose significant public harm,” wrote Bondi in a 2014 statement. “Florida’s marriage laws have a close, direct and rational relationship to society’s legitimate interest in increasing the likelihood that children will be born to and raised by the mothers and fathers who produced them in stable and enduring family units.”
In 2015 she, along with the rest of the state cabinet and Governor Rick Scott, used $700,000 of taxpayer’s money to settle an open records lawsuit alleging they violated state law by making email accounts to hide their communications from state public records laws and then continued to withhold the documents.
Bondi requested Scott postpone the execution of Marshall Lee Gore, found guilty of raping and murdering 30-year-old Robyn Novick in 1988 and killing 19-year-old Susan Roark, because the execution conflicted with Bondi’s re-election kickoff party. The move cost the Department of Corrections around $1,000.
She has endlessly fought against the Affordable Care Act, signed a brief attempting to allow 18-year-olds to purchase firearms and, most disturbingly, stole a dog from a victim of Katrina.
“The mission of our team will be clear: put together the most highly qualified group of successful leaders who will be able to implement our change agenda in Washington,” said Trump. “This team is going to get to work immediately to Make America Great Again.”
If these are the caliber of people whose hands Trump plans on placing the fate of our nation, we are in for a long four years.
Breanne Williams is a senior majoring in mass communications.