Newsweek noted that the Bible passage was a condemnation of Philistines and the Cherethites, historic enemies of the Israelites, dating to the fifth century BC. Ezekiel, the Old Testament book in which it appears, focuses on a demonstrative prophet of the same name who engages in street theater to attract the attention of crowds to deliver his message.

Er, it wasn’t a condemnation of the people groups; it was a condemnation of those who practiced child sacrifice, took bribes, and exploited orphans and widows. It just happened to tie this to the governments of the Philistines and Cherethites, who were known for doing these things.

The entire mar-a-lago mafia is incompetent. If they could be combined into one person, you still wouldn’t be able to find a competent person. Probably because Trump it’s an idiot that has to be the smartest person in the room.

If I understand correctly, the classic dictator approach is to appoint relatively competent underlings in positions of power, as long as they aren't real threats, with most of their aggression spent punching down or squabbling amongst themselves.

By contrast, the idea here seems to be in appointing bumbling nitwits at said positions, such that after they make fools of themselves, they can then be blamed for this or that and ejected like a used diaper.