During a Senate hearing to review the FBI’s FY2026 budget request, Director Kash Patel was forced to admit that, despite the law requiring it, he had no such request ready to review.
This surprising development came during an awkward back-and-forth with Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking Democrat and Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which oversees and approves budget requests.
Senator Murray reminded the FBI Director that the budget request was legally required “last week,” and after the director responded, she surprisedly added, “And your answer is you just understand you’re not going to follow the law?”
Can’t imagine how you’d expect an idiot like Kash Patel to do anything right at all.
I wonder if they’re advising agency heads to do this so they can fuck with the budget for their wealthy tax break bill?
No, I think he’s that dumb. Look at the lies the Bush Jr. team came up with before the Iraq invasion. Those were great lies; handcrafted with Old World dedication and aged in oak barrels until they were perfect.
These clowns are just incompetent.
In the photo, the fucker looks like a little kid who didn’t do his homework and got caught in the lie.
Hardly the brightest and the best.
I feel like he always looks like that. He always looks like he’s guilty and looking for an exit or coming up with the next lie. I can’t imagine living like that
My dog ate the budget!
Reminds me of the Office: “I thought this was a meet and greet”.
Why would any of Trump’s administration care? None of them have been held accountable for anything, except to Trump.
The only people held to account in the US are the poor, disabled and non white.
yeah, Trump was accountable af, given that he ia now thw president again
Hold him contempt or stop clutching your pearls.
I’m sure Schumer will move quickly to form a search committee to form a task force with plans to complete a strongly worded letter by late 2027.
After a prolonged investigation taking many months and costing the taxpayer millions, the search committee regretfully concludes that they have been unable to find their balls.
that strongly worded letter will contain upwards of 12 strong questions. that way you’ll know he’s taking this serious
He’s super-cereal!
The fucking clownshow continues.
This is you going in to your Professor’s office hours to ostensibly turn in your final paper for a course, it is half your grade in the class, and you actually just sit down and explain you are ‘still working on it’ and ‘can i get it to you maybe by the end of next academic quarter?’
I am honestly so, so relieved by this high level public idiocy.
I really am not kidding.
I’ve struggled with impostor syndrome much of my life.
All gone. Done. No more.
I am legitimately more competent than almost everyone in this administration at their own jobs, despite the fact that I hardly have any relevant credentials to most of their positions.
In fairness, neither do they.
I’m saving your comment because this was my exact experience, too, and I’m glad to see this silver lining occurred for others.
These people truly are mentally children, running around playing grown-up. Meanwhile, when I was an actual child, I was expected to be held to the same standards as grown-ups by Boomer parents (and as you likely know, autism + adults not explaining their social expectations = very difficult childhood.)
It’s been a trip to see high-level government absolutely sucking at skills that I struggled with for ages, skills that I have been made to feel bad about for lacking. I work harder any day that I go out into public, even if it’s my day off, than any of these privileged losers ever seem to. I have to be extremely mindful of myself - my posture, my tone of voice, my volume, my face (can’t have resting bitch face), on top of whatever other tasks I have to do, every second of every minute that I’m around other people. I’m also expected to be aware of and mindful of the feelings of those around me, so I have to also accurately rate their posture, tone, etc. Fail any of these things, and anything I say or do has a chance of being misinterpreted poorly. It’s fucking exhausting, and I wish there were more understanding and acceptance that allowed us to relax.
These are part of a whole set of skills - situational awareness, social awareness, self awareness - that the modern GOP appears to completely lack. They were raised without needing to apply them, and we can see evidence of their privileged backgrounds whenever they pull some tone-deaf stunt and still expect approval. Whenever I’m feeling down, I can remind myself that I may not be perfect, but at least I’m not as out-of-touch as they are.
Oh my God…it’s not resting bitch face I’m just thinking… When I read that sentence I was like okay I totally get this person’s reality. I’m so tired of hearing smile more
… And I am saving this comment, as you have well voiced the madness of all of this experienced in particular by high-functioning / highly-intelligent Autistic children.
A short summary of how Ive felt much of my life would be: constantly being mocked and belittled by hypocritical idiots who are too stupid to realize they are hypocritical and have totally logically inconsistent worldviews, and inconsistent applications of them… as well as just that they are idiots in the sense of just being objectively wrong about most things.
…
Yeah, it is quite cathartic to realize that masses of the general public are themselves, and voted into power officials who… are just literally schoolyard bullies, absurd, malignant, anti-social narcissists who literally cannot concieve that they could ever have any flaws or ever be in error, who are actually incapable of empathy, of mirroring emotions of others experiencing or describing something that did not happen to them personally.
…
I no longer mask.
There is no point, and it is too exhausting to be expected to be some kind of mind reader.
If people can’t actually succinctly verbalize their thoughts, or express them in writing, that’s their problem, not mine.
Just say what you actually mean.
Use your words, and know what those words actually mean.
I am done learning how to be an interpreter for every different person I meet.
Idiots and the uninformed love bullies, they assume they must be bullying people that deserve it, instead of just whoever makes them feel stronger.
My work involves emptying dog shit bins in public parks, and I’m also pretty sure I could do a better job than this guy. We could swap roles - except that I couldn’t bring myself to kiss trump’s flaccid saggy butt. I’ll stick with the dogshit bins - I’ve got standards.
Don’t sell yourself short. I bet you’re more competent than everyone in this administration.
I am only hesitant to agree because:
1: I have terrible social anxiety (yay autism and trauma)
2: I assume, at least, some of them are competent people… at… at least something.
That being said, I also cannot think of a single one who falls into category 2.
Hrmm.
Not only are you personally more competant than anyone in this administration, but you’re also not a Nazi (I’d imagine), which alone already makes you better than any Republican politician.
The fact that you think you might not be competant at the job is one of the things that makes you more competant (because you actually think before you act/speak).
Its the age old problem of government:
Anyone who strongly desires to be in a position of power likely is not the kind of person you would want in a position of power.
I appreciate you saying that though. =D
Impostor syndrome is basically the inverse of the Dunning Kruger effect, as it is known in popular culture.
If you actually read the actual studies by Dunning and Kruger, and subsequent work based off of it:
Idiots consistently wildly overestimate their correctness.
… But people who actually are quite correct, quite competent… well they actually tend to self evaluate themselves as somewhat less competent than they actually are.
Because humility and a fundamental idea of ‘i could be wrong’ are foundational to a rigourous system of critical thinking that can actually allow for that true, detailed knowledge to be gained.
So, ironically, Dunning Kruger effect also describes more or less impostor syndrome, its just that that isn’t the aspect of those kinds of studies that pop culture focuses on…
So we now have a situation where understanding of the ‘Dunning Kruger effect’ itself is subject to the ‘Dunning Kruger effect.’
There are a couple evil yet competent people in the administration. Russell Vought is one, a hire direct from the Heritage Foundation. Another is Stephen Miller. Heritage seems to be full of actually competent yet completely evil men. But I guess that what happens when a majority of your funding comes from oil, gas, and now tech barons.
Dismantling the FBI seems like a good idea to me anyway. It’s not like their mission is a good one. Maybe in the next government the FBI can be brought back as a federal agency that is narrowly focuses on investigating/punishing local/state level law enforcement.
But of course the Dems will just approve whatever budget the republicans come up with and facism will continue unabated.
It’s actually a worse idea. There will still be, nominally, federal control, centralized in him. Other than that, every local and state FBI branch will act as, effectively, a terror cell - they work their own leads, make their own arrests on their own recognizance, and generally conduct business as they see fit. This makes for an incredibly dangerous form of secret police - they have no leaders above the local level, no real command and control, and they’re all tasked with only one thing: make less crime.
Imagine the Cheka, but they’re organized like al-Qaeda.
I’m so tired of the theatrical outrage and shock and surprise. Of fucking course they’re working in bad faith. But no - let’s give all the fucking fascists the benefit of the doubt. You’re not allowed to be fucking surprised by this. It was all in the playbook. The playbook has been published openly on the internet since early 2020.
I doubt a single one of our Democratic party elected officials actually sat down and read all of Project 2025.
I think some of the young progressives probably did, but I still think the count is probably in the single digits.
Its not tin-foil hat, it’s Putin. Its always Putin, using Skum and HitlerPig as his muscle.
When will people truly internalize that the two biggest foreign Sociopathic Oligarchs, have partnered up with the most prolific traitor in American history? None of them have any loyalty or patriotism toward America, and only see us as a big, rich, fat, lazy target to be ruthlessly exploited and looted, and it’s happening in real time before our eyes.
All they care about is money, and either Putin is paying them directly out of the Russian Treasury (HitlerPig would rape and murder his own mother for far less than a billion bucks, and Putin could order a lot more than that), or they’ve cut a deal to split the booty like the pirates they are.
When it’s not working, it’s working.
I feel like, if this were true, wtf are literally all the other countries’ intelligence and agencies doing to prevent such a thing?
I’d like to think China, while mostly on Russia’s side, would not want Putin having control over the U.S.
ofc most of NATO wouldn’t want that either.
Is every other country incompetent, complicit, or is the U.S. just becoming its own oligarchy?
The US was warned about Russian influence before Trump’s 2016 election by intelligence agencies in Great Britain, Germany, Canada, France, Estonia, Poland, and Australia- and those are just the ones that spoke out publicly.
They were called “fake news” and “DNC operatives.”
Don’t pretend the rest of the world was surprised by this.
Well, I’m glad they spoke out publicly. Maybe they (World Governments) can put in a bit more elbow grease next time to prevent one of the world’s largest militaries from being bought by an authoritarian country at discount prices.
The CIA can destabilize governments across the world.
Russia can take over U.S. “Democracy” right in front of the world.
I guess nobody has inside men anymore. Does Germany, France, Britian not have a CIA of their own?
My point is that these World Governments have kinda gotten soft if this is where we’re at. Hell, the fact that Ukraine is still at war and not being physically backed is proof enough (though stepping in w/ Russia holding U.S. means that ship has sailed).
Are you proposing more election interference…?
I mean…if it prevents a fascist takeover…
I think respecting another country’s sovereignty is better.
So… the fault lies with rest of the world who should have worked harder to save the US from itself while Americans plugged their ears and gave them the finger?
Just typical American exceptionalism.
Oh they’re exceptional, all right
china is frenemies with russia, they are definitely not on thier side. China does have russia by the balls though, since they bought up some of siberia.
President Donald Trump’s nomination of Patel to lead the FBI caused a raft of controversy. Patel had publicly pledged to take the agency down and turn its building into something of a “deep state” museum. His apparent lack of preparation for this fundamental hearing will give no solace to critics convinced he was not prepared for the task at hand.
never trust someone with a crazy eyes.
Soooooo, zero budget for the FBI then.
Does that mean they won’t be able to notice people organizing against the Trump administration? Or is ICE the new FBI (do they have the capabilities)?
No, they get a contigency budget of 20 bucks and this pallet of expired lunchables.
Sorry, due to ‘gestures vaguely’ whatever, they’re expired, moldy Feastables, brought to you By Mr Beast Burger
Those expired lunchables will be worth a fortune when there’s nothing left at walmart!
Why aren’t we deporting this law breaker?
Wait, didn’t this guy quit by not showing up to work for a few weeks? Am I thinking about another person?
He quit his second job by not showing up.
A guy living in an oligarchs mansion in Vegas was appointed director of 2 federal law enforcement agencies.
You are thinking of someone else, this is the guy who writes deranged children’s books where Trump is the king.
Nah, he was removed from his position as head of the ATF. They just tried to make light of it.
Shit, I missed that.
“flood the space” is their goal. Hit you with 1,000 shit things, and hope 100 stick. We will miss a lot. Banon said it is was their goal and they cherish it. Problem is that if they were opposed by such an enemy they would say there is one solution, end them. Most everyone in this country left of MAGA is against slaughtering criminals. Hence the criminal and his thugs in the white house. A man who commits 32 felonies is looked at by a base as better than a person who commits 1 misdemeanor. The misdemeanor, trying to exist, the felonies, stealing from the banks we paid out of pocket to bail out of bankruptcy. The “criminals” paid 94 billion in taxes or some shit in 2022, we are paying more than that to remove them from this country, to get no returns. 94 billion is more than we paid out defense companies to build new weapons to replace old weapons we wanted to retire and sent to Ukraine to defend against our worst enemy for the entirety of our existence. Not even 2% of our defense budget went towards it. Yet the most senile old man that has ever stepped foot in the white house is ordering us to stop following up sanctions on the people HE OWES MONEY too.
Make America Great Again should clearly mean to remove him from the white house, as well as Johnson and Vance. Tax the rich and actually build back the middle class. Anyone who believes in capitalism should never believe in Johnson
Why are they surprised?
Fascists gonna fasc.
