“A lot of people say he’s crazy,” Donald Trump is reported to have once said of Kash Patel. “I think he’s kind of crazy. But sometimes you need a little crazy.”
If Trump gets his way, crazy will now be coming to the FBI, the 116-year-old national security and law enforcement agency charged with protecting the US from terrorism, cybercrime and other threats.
Last weekend the president-elect said he would nominate Patel as FBI director, the latest in a series of incendiary names plucked from the rightwing media ecosystem. Joy Reid, a host on the liberal MSNBC network, told viewers that he “might be the worst pick in the worst cabinet in US history”.