The tarps on the Kennedy Center, erected to hide the shame of a building that no longer bears Donald Trump’s name, are still in place, but we now know two things about them. One, as pictures taken from behind the tarp show, Trump’s name is now definitely, 100 percent gone. Two, Trump’s guys at the Kennedy Center are hilariously claiming that the tarps “will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels.” (This is somewhat true: Trump needs the marble and soffit panels to remain obscured from view, as it would be embarrassing if they weren’t.) Happy Tuesday.

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Dictatorial Dementia

by William Kristol

Donald Trump is 80 years old. He’s lost a step. He’s even more willful and erratic than he once was. His self-indulgence and narcissism are even more out of control.

And it’s only getting worse. This may be in part because, to adapt Andrew Marvell’s famous lines a bit,

At his back he always hears
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near.

A sense of impending mortality seems to be making our president even more unhinged than ever.

So you look at him, and you try to reassure yourself: He doesn’t really have the patience to carry out a thoroughgoing subversion of the rule of law, of our political and civil liberties, or of our elections. He doesn’t really have the ability to execute a full-scale authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.

On the other hand, there’s no doubt he would like to see such a takeover.

And he does have young men with a lean and hungry look in positions of authority and power in the executive branch who are committed to making his dream of power without limits a reality.

Some of the men running the key national security agencies in the U.S. government are more competent than others. But they all have lots of energy. They’re all young men in a hurry to reshape our government and our country.

Bill Pulte, the new acting director of national intelligence, is 38. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller are all 46. OMB Director Russell Vought is 50. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is 51.

They’re young, but they’re as determined as the old man they work for not to hand their positions over to anyone other than fellow loyalists after their terms in office, if they intend to leave office at all. They’re as determined as the old man they work for not to step aside from their powers and allow political opponents to look into what they have done. And like the old man they work for, they aren’t committed to the peaceful and democratic transfer of power after an election, or to the political norms or lawful procedures of a liberal democracy.

None of these men should be in a position of power and authority in the government of the United States. Yet here they are, hiring and firing at will, abusing their authority and politicizing their agencies in unprecedented ways.

Pulte is probably the least impressive of the bunch. But he is an eager henchman. And during her tenure as DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, 45, had already begun to lay the predicate for involving the intelligence community in our domestic elections under the excuse of possible foreign interference. During his tenure at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Pulte had shown an eagerness to weaponize his access to government information to go after Trump’s critics inside and outside of the federal government. And now Trump has gone to a lot of trouble to get Pulte in the position he’s now in as quickly as possible.

Gabbard announced her resignation as DNI on May 22, saying in her resignation letter that her last day would be June 30.

Trump announced Pulte’s appointment as acting director of national intelligence on June 2. When there was criticism even from Republicans of his lack of qualifications for the job, Trump tried two days later to reassure everyone that “It’s an acting position. It’s not permanent.” But the next day, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the fact that Pulte would be acting director would leave him “less shackled” than someone who would have to go through Senate confirmation for the position.

Then on June 9, Trump announced Gabbard would be leaving and that Pulte would be taking over sooner than expected, on June 19. This led to another wave of criticism, which Trump tried to damp down by announcing on June 11 that he intended to nominate the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, for the job. The Senate moved to quickly schedule a confirmation hearing for Clayton on June 17, int