There’s little worse than watching a nervous actor onstage—especially when the poor guy isn’t just skittish but seems genuinely unprepared for the role that he’s playing. Incompetence has a way of unnerving its witnesses. An insecure performer robs an audience of its belief in both the character and the entire enterprise.
Take, for instance, Friday morning’s bizarre and disorienting appearance by Kash Patel, the manifestly unqualified F.B.I. director installed by Donald Trump. He was in Utah, alongside that state’s governor, Spencer Cox, having been given the grave duty to announce the arrest of Tyler Robinson, the young man who, on Wednesday, allegedly shot and killed the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. In its way, this was a high occasion of state, an opportunity for the government to make a display of its brisk, sober ability to act, and to quell the unrest that this horrific and very public murder had aroused.
It was a chance, too, for Patel to paper over some big blunders and rescue his reputation. On Wednesday night, he’d prematurely posted on X that Kirk’s shooter was “in custody,” only to tweet again, a little more than an hour and a half later, that the “subject in custody” had been “released after an interrogation by law enforcement.” There was some speculation that he’d sent the latter tweet while dining at Rao’s, an Italian restaurant in East Harlem famous for its red sauce and louche history. No matter where he was tweeting from, Patel seemed to have forgotten that the aftermath of an assassination might not conform to the rapid incentives—dopamine, constant attention—of live-tweeting.
On Thursday, in a rare move for a law-enforcement official in his position, Patel visited the site of the crime. Former F.B.I. personnel noted that this would only make trouble for the local field office engaged in the real work of investigation. That morning, he had reportedly convened an online meeting of F.B.I. agents and berated them in profane terms for the slow pace of the hunt. Patel, whose readiness for the job came under close, and often scathing, scrutiny when he was first appointed, needed a stage upon which to prove his fitness for the gig.
So when Patel approached the podium on Friday the stakes were obviously high. He had his usual hairdo going, a fratty collage of textures: slick on the sides and spiky up top. He wore a strange houndstooth tie. He was a vision of anti-gravitas. “This is what happens when you let good cops be cops,” he said, by way of introduction—a hollow locution that was nonetheless consonant with the message of the Administration for which he is such an uncannily perfect representative. Cops, now free of the restraints of wokeness and decency, can get back on the prowl where they belong.
What was left unsaid was that, in this case, perhaps the most impressive act of justice was committed by Robinson’s father, who—surely enduring mental tortures I can scarcely comprehend—had helped turn in his son. One of the more bizarre aspects of Patel’s short speech was how he sought to take credit for this father’s tragic choice. A hallmark of Trumpworld’s official rhetoric is the bullet-pointed list of exaggerated accomplishments, making every victory seem total, every soul-scorching occurrence inexorably angled toward the greatness of the Leader. No happening is too solemn, in this world, for a heaping portion of unabashed self-promotion.
“In thirty-three hours, we have made historic progress for Charlie,” Patel said. What could this mean? To what “history” could he possibly be referring? Sometimes people commit crimes and get caught on the spot!
It’s funny, though: Patel is just as heartless an opportunist as his boss, but much less adept at making his comportment match the words exiting his mouth. He spoke too quickly. Listening to him, one got the impression that his heart was beating twice as fast as usual. In his televised appearance, he was trying hard to play the role of the G-man but flailing. His eyes darted around, finding nowhere to rest. He blinked quite a lot—unwitting snippets of Morse code, pleading for help. He took shallow breaths, interrupting his flow of stuttered and slurred syllables. “I even had the ability to walk through that crime scene, and walk through the steps the suspect took to learn more about what was needed,” he said, in a curious boast.
Drowning in the part that he was trying to play, Patel repeated the only metric that his staff had been able to come up with: “In less than thirty-six hours—thirty-three to be precise—thanks to the full weight of the federal government, and leading out with the partners here in the state of Utah, and Governor Cox, the suspect was hap—apprehended in a historic time period.” I assume he stumbled over the first syllable of the word “apprehended” because he couldn’t wait to say “historic” again.
After issuing a few more bromides, Patel closed his speech with what he clearly thought would be its emotional capstone. “Lastly, to my friend Charlie Kirk,” he said, after emitting a dramatic sigh, “rest now, brother. We have the watch. And I’ll see you in Valhalla.” What?
One of Trumpism’s worst characteristics—on livid display in the sad radicalizing of Robinson, and in its senseless expression in the murder of Kirk—is its open warfare on the malleable psyches of young men. It tells them to act big, talk bigger, take out their aggression on anybody who seems softer or more thoughtful than themselves. Trump and his cronies, including Patel, too often pervert obvious moral categories, painting gentleness as weakness, the truth as “fake news,” violence in word and deed as markers of masculinity. I hope some of these kids, passing through those dangerous years of becoming, were watching Patel’s speech and could see it for what it was. Getting the job and playing the part doesn’t mean you’re the man. ♦
