Donald Trump is unlikely to have the time or energy for a TV rerun after his presidential term. But if he did at age 85, he might call it You’re Not Fired! In this version of his The Apprentice franchise, Trump has never-been-fired officials and government employees despair over egregious mistakes, many of which cost lives.
They compete to see who made the biggest mistake without ever taking responsibility. Extra points are awarded to players who can say things like “The buck stops with me” with the most saccharine insincerity while still keeping their job. At the end of the episode, Trump tells the winner, “You get to keep your job forever. Better yet, we’ll give you a raise.”
It will be a resounding success. He can certainly speak from personal experience that government service is a gift that never ceases to pay off, both for its employees and its contractors. Last weekend, for example, a complete blunder by the Secret Service nearly cost Trump his life in front of a worldwide television audience. As snipers desperately tried to take out one shooter, Secret Service agents heroically positioned themselves over the president’s body (at least those who were tall enough to shield Trump from enemy fire).
The term heroically is key here. While the guys in sunglasses and walkie-talkies risked their lives in service to the president, their superiors, safely in a Washington office, cowardly insisted they would do better next time. In an interview with NBC, Biden appointee Kim Cheatle claimed responsibility that “the responsibility lies here.” She promised transparency to find out why her department had failed at so many basic tasks in the raid, almost to the point of getting Trump’s head blown off.
What she didn’t do was resign in shame for having nearly gotten the former and likely future president of the United States killed. Nor did her boss at Homeland Security, Antonio Mayorcas, ask her to resign. So did the big boss, Joe Biden. Even when Cheatle, a DEI appointee and friend of Jill Biden, tried to create a cheeky meme about the sniper’s roof being unsafe (too steep a slope), no one asked her for the keys to her office.
She clung to her pension even as it was revealed that her team knew the shooter was nearby hours before the shots that wounded Trump and killed at least one other person. That Trump was allowed on stage as the sniper’s parents were desperately calling police to find him. That her claim that local police had made a mistake was debunked. That the team was short-staffed while a more experienced team worked at a Jill Biden function.
Look, this isn’t about reviewing failed protocols and abandoned roofs. This is about accountability. To say there is no glory without honor. And from Biden on down, honor has been missing over years of affirmative hiring and official bungling. They claim glory, but it’s a broken chalice.
As an example, DHS director Mayorcas still has a seat at Joe’s cabinet table despite the total collapse of border security. The same goes for Kamala Harris, who was appointed border security “czar.” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttiegieg has overseen fatal bridge collapses, train derailments, and mass transit shutdowns without linking them to his stewardship of the department.
The same lack of accountability has pervaded Justin Trudeau’s decade-long Liberal government in Canada. Whereas his father won (and then squandered) a certain honour by standing up to rock-throwing separatists in 1968, Justin has been the brave Sir Robin, scuttling away at the first sign that he might be asked to produce some rocks.
While his sycophants in the media downplayed Ol’ Yellow Stain at the time of the truckers’ caravan, most now acknowledge that had he emerged from under his desk at Rideau Cottage in the early days to confront the protesters, the disaster might have been avoided. Instead, Skippy sent the Ottawa police and the RCMP to do their jobs, thus turning a temporary problem into a historic attack on civil rights and the dignity of his office.
Whenever the coast was clear, Trudeau has behaved like a schoolyard bully to win the trust of others. Besides the Convoy, there was a draconian attack on vaccines against the undecided, a cemetery pantomime that led him to call his nation genocidal at the UN, the imposition of the carbon tax and the tribute to a former Nazi in Parliament to silence his critics of Ukraine. To impress his friends at the UN, the EU and the World Economic Forum, he has criticised Donald Trump from afar, something that will now haunt him after November.
His cabinet and party quickly learned that they would never be fired if they gave the prime minister a good smackdown. Recently, news came that a cabinet minister had ordered the military to prioritize his fellow Sikhs in the frantic retreat from Afghanistan. Using the military to protect his kin? Trudeau gave Harjit Singh Sajjat a pass because Harjit thinks (at least publicly) the Boss is cool.
The Chinese in his parliamentary group are also exempt from accountability, because Justin wants to be liked in Beijing. Why not? When he has been repeatedly accused of ethical violations or acting for his own benefit, he has simply made a fool of himself and moved on to new catastrophes. Or he has hired a former governor-general to cover up his devious maneuvers.
In fact, the only way to get into trouble with Trudeau is to DO your job well. Justice Minister Jodi Wilson Raybould, one of the appointees who is a woman and a native, was fired by Trudeau for insisting that the RCMP get to the bottom of a scandal at Quebec-based SNC Lavalin. Bill Morneau was sidelined, because his vision of a functioning economy did not include the imposition from above of fanciful climate and gender dictates.
Both Biden and Trudeau keep talking about restoring people’s faith in government without ever asking if that’s the problem. When your heart is pure, they say, your mission is noble. Now, shut up.
Except Biden and later Trudeau are about to discover that their audiences are no longer in the mood to keep quiet.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of It is not the public broadcaster A two-time Gemini Award winner as Canada’s leading television sportscaster, he is a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh best pro hockey book of all time by authorityofthebook.org His 2004 book, Money Players, was voted sixth best on the same list and is available through brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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