What did Donald Trump do today?

He promoted a self-described "Nazi" and sexual harasser.

Paul Ingrassia was supposed to be Trump's nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel, the agency that—under normal circumstances—acts as a watchdog against abuses in the executive branch. But Ingrassia quickly proved so toxic that even Senate Republicans signaled that they'd vote against his confirmation, and his nomination was pulled. 

The reason, other than the 30-year-old's lack of experience, was that Ingrassia was under investigation for an incident in which he canceled a female subordinate's hotel room during a business trip in order to force her to share a room with him. (A Trump spokesperson insisted that the woman, who withdrew her complaint under pressure, had "misunderstood" what Ingrassia was trying to do by making her share a room with him.) It was also revealed that he'd had said on a text message that Martin Luther King, Jr. deserved to be "tossed in the seventh circle of Hell," made racist jokes about "Chinamen and Indians," and that Ingrassia had described himself as having "a bit of a Nazi streak." That was apparently not a joke: Ingrassia promoted Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier. (Trump himself has met with Fuentes.)

Ingrassia had been expected to quietly leave the Trump administration, where he had been working in the Department of Homeland Security. (He also had a sideline doing favors for his former client, accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate, a celebrity Trump supporter.) But today, Ingrassia announced that he'd been promoted to a different job: deputy counsel at the General Services Administration. 

Trump did not face questions about Ingrassia's promotion today during his one very brief appearance in front of reporters, because they were shouting questions instead about the revelations in yesterday's release of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's texts and e-mails. Trump refused to respond as White House staff desperately tried to clear reporters from the room.

 

Why does this matter?

• It's extremely bad when promoting a racist and creepy sexual predator who describes himself as a Nazi isn't the biggest scandal of a president's day. 

• It actually matters whether the government is staffed by competent, qualified professionals or loyalists who happen to have done terrible things the president can relate to.