In his first few choices for Cabinet secretaries, President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear – even clearer than many predicted – that his main selection criterion is blind loyalty. Qualities such as competence or experience have no influence whatsoever.

One of the nominees, a combat veteran and Fox News host named Pete Hegseth, is so patently unqualified — a caricature of MAGA allegiance — that some insiders say even the Senate sworn in in January, with its 53 Republicans, could vote to remove him cannot be confirmed. as leader of the Ministry of Defense.

The same could be true (one can always hope) of Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, the far-right Democrat turned MAGA Republican who has no relevant experience except perhaps that she has eagerly parroted Russian propaganda lines to explain a wide variety of international developments.

Slightly less overwhelming is Trump’s choice of former Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe as CIA director. An even slightly less lopsided Senate would likely reject Ratcliffe for fear that he would politicize the intelligence community — as he did during the brief period at the end of Trump’s first term when he was director of national intelligence, the agency that oversees establishes and coordinates the 18 American intelligence services. But especially if enough Republicans feel they can’t stomach Hegseth or Gabbard in high office, they’re likely to let Ratcliffe through.

Other beneficiaries of political payback include South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, nominated to be secretary of homeland security, and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is expected to become ambassador to the United Nations. Neither has any experience remotely related to the task they will be performing. However, both have been ardent supporters and defenders of Trump; Stefanik has the distinct honor of becoming chairman of the House Republican Conference after Rep. Liz Cheney was impeached for criticizing Trump following the January 6 riots.

The odd one out, the nominee who appeared out of nowhere, is Hegseth, a complete stranger to anyone not looking. Fox & Friends weekendthat he has been a co-host for ten years. Of course, Trump is one of the regular viewers of that program, and to the surprise of his advisers, he has selected Hegseth to head the Defense Department — the nation’s largest bureaucracy, with 2.8 million employees and a budget this year of $841 billion – because he really liked what the rough-looking co-host said.

Hegseth fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, but his rank – a major in the Army National Guard – was hardly a leadership position. Notably, he has written a number of bestsellers The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. In it, as well as on several Fox broadcasts, he denounced the introduction of diversity requirements in the military, saying they were triggering the rise of “woke generals,” who in turn weakened the military’s fighting spirit. He has also said that lowering entry requirements to allow women to join combat units has had the same damaging effect. (Many military officers say critics like Hegseth exaggerate the amount of time spent on diversity training and that the women who serve in combat — in some cases in elite units like the Rangers and Green Berets — have had to endure the same grueling tests. as the Gentlemen.)

The anti-woke attitude is perhaps what appealed most to Trump, who wants to fire generals who show insufficient loyalty to him. Hegseth has said he would appoint a board of retired officers, no doubt of the same mind, to draw up lists of active officers to be dismissed.

On his Fox show, Hegseth also vigorously protested the prosecution of soldiers for war crimes, even to the point where he convinced Trump, while president, to pardon two perpetrators of particularly gruesome murders of civilians.

But when it comes to the core duties of a Secretary of Defense – setting budgets, assessing weapons systems, managing inter-service rivalry, conducting inter-agency policymaking, conducting diplomacy with foreign counterparts, and so on – Hegseth does not have any clear qualifications.

Even some MAGA Republicans see the benefits of having someone with at least a bit with political insight and organizational talent run an enterprise as large, complex and essential as the Ministry of Defense. It would take four Republican senators to reject his nomination. Some on Capitol Hill think four can be brought together to vote their conscience. If not, and if Hegseth is sworn in, others doubt he would last more than six months. The Pentagon’s bureaucracy is deeply entrenched; it can wear out much more skilled players than Hegseth.

Before Trump launches a political crusade against military officers, he may also want to review the biography of his own corporate attorney and mentor Roy Cohn, who began his career as counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Cohn, who died in 1986, could have told Trump that McCarthy — who rose to fame by rooting out and prosecuting suspected communists in the government — had made his big mistake when he went after military officers. It was during the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 that Joseph Welch, the attorney for an accused officer, snapped at the senator, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” And that meant the end not only of McCarthy’s witch hunts, but also of his career – and, three years later, his life as a result of excessive drinking.

Hegseth has probably read some history as an undergraduate at Princeton and as a graduate student at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, so he might want to ponder the conclusions of this story: Is anti-woke the new anti-communism? Will Hegseth be his Cohn or McCarthy?

As for Gabbard, who has been chosen to oversee and coordinate the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, not much more needs to be said than “Holy shit!If confirmed, she will replace Avril Haines, who — in contrast to Gabbard’s thin resume — served as deputy director of the CIA and deputy national security adviser before President Joe Biden nominated her for the job. Haines also has degrees in law and theoretical physics.

If the Senate does not reject Gabbard’s nomination as an affront to the enterprise of intelligence gathering and analysis, then we are in serious trouble as a nation. At the very least, expect hundreds of intelligence professionals to resign – which may be Trump’s intention. He wants to destroy “the administrative state,” as his former strategist Steve Bannon once put it. Putting Gabbard in charge of the intelligence apparatus is one way to do that.

Ratcliffe’s appointment as CIA director is only slightly less egregious. In many ways, his and Gabbard’s selections are more awful than even Hegseth’s. While defense secretaries are expected to implement the president’s policies, the head of the country’s top intelligence agency is supposed to be strictly independent — and Ratcliffe is anything but that.

He first caught Trump’s attention as the congressman who spoke out most strongly against the officials investigating the then-president’s various alleged improprieties, particularly the Mueller Commission’s delving into stories of Trump’s collusion with Russia. Trump wanted to nominate Ratcliffe as director of national intelligence until even Republican senators warned him that the Texas congressman was too partisan and inexperienced for the job. Trump nominated a more moderate congressman, Dan Coats, who filed too many honest reports that conflicted with Trump’s own talking points on Iran, North Korea and Russia. In his final year as president, Trump fired Coats and nominated Ratcliffe, this time sticking with his defender. Republicans, who were nipping at Trump’s heels as the 2020 election approached, relented. Ratcliffe was confirmed by a narrow margin, 49-44.

In his 18 months in office, Ratcliffe confirmed every fear about him, using his office to validate various conspiracy theories, many about Trump’s political opponents. These included claims that the Russians had supported Hillary Clinton more than Trump in the 2016 election, and that the Iranians had hacked into the servers of the pro-Trump Proud Boys militia group in the 2020 election and sent emails to voters in three battleground states, warning them: “You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you.” Other intelligence services even concluded that the Russians had supported Trump, not Clinton, in 2016. And even Ratcliffe had to admit in the report on the battleground emails that the evidence about Iranian involvement was inconclusive.

Just over a week after Trump’s transition to the White House, the former and future president is making good on his most chilling threats. Those who have dismissed his agenda as theatrical and told us not to worry, that he doesn’t mean them, or that institutional guardrails will keep them from happening – well, we’ll see. It’s up to four Republican senators out of 53 to play hero, and as Liz Cheney learned, playing hero in defiance of Donald Trump can end your career. Be whole nervous.

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.