LAMENTABLE OR LUDICROUS—OR BOTH? PART 1

HAVING READ FRANK BRUNI’S “We Are Being Governed by Unserious People,” The New York Times, March 9, 2026, I’m left with an intellectual quandary: Are Trump and his cohorts lamentable or ludicrous—or both? Are they evils of history or merely doofuses? (I considered “doofusi” but found it unconventional.) Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are tidbits exploring aspects of this lamentable/ludicrous quandary.

Image by Ben Wiseman for The New York Times. A great one!

Christi Noem. Purely by a quirk of timing, “Doubling Down—And Reminding Me Of An Old Joke” appeared at SimanaitisSays seemingly prior to Trump’s firing her to a new assignment no one has ever heard of. Special Envoy of the what??

Bruni posits, “Is there a heart somewhere inside Kristi Noem, underneath all those costumes, behind all that lacquer? She makes no attempt to show it. Whether killing an inconvenient dog or slandering Minnesotans gunned down by federal agents, she picks cruelty over compassion — and, sadly, seems to equate that choice with strength.”

“Does she have a pinch, even a grain, of modesty?” Bruni asks. “She spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on advertisements for, well, Kristi Noem. That seemed to peeve the president. From his underlings he expects compliments, not competition.” 

A Less Colorful Trait. Bruni continues, “But another, less colorful trait of Noem’s should have disturbed him, and should unsettle us, even more, because it’s the root of so much of what’s wrong with Trump’s White House—an explanation of its dysfunctions, a key to its disgraces, a signal to the world of how fickle and foolish America has become: She’s unprofessional.”

Unprofessional—and, what’s worse, bad at it. Bingo: lamentable and ludicrous.

Kash Patel. Bruni continues, “And … familiar. Fancy trips, airborne love, unconventional doings with the security detail — it’s so very Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who timed a recent, government-funded excursion to Italy to coincide with the Winter Olympics, where he guzzled beer and whooped it up with the American men’s hockey team after its victory over Canada. On many flights he’s accompanied by his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, ‘one of the best-protected country music singers in the United States,’ as my Times colleague Elizabeth Williamson wrote recently in a triumph of understatement.”

Kashyap P. Patel. Image by U.S. Army Sgt. Keisha Brown for the U.S. department of war (sic).  

Bruni recounts, “ ‘F.B.I. tactical agents have ferried her to a resort in Britain before a dinner at Windsor Castle and to an appointment at a hair salon in Nashville,’ Williamson continued. ‘Last April, agents in two S.U.V.s stood guard outside a senior center in Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home of Dixon, Ill., while she sang for a few dozen young conservatives.’ I hope they enjoyed the concert.”

Quite apart from Patel’s deer-in-the-headlights look, there’s another double whammy of the lamentable and the ludicrous.

Tomorrow, Part 2 is focused on Donald “The Golf Cap” Trump. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026