It takes a lot to become a fully-fledged FBI agent. Prospective candidates are chosen from high academic achievers, put through rigorous screening, and then must pass a famously tough training regime at Quantico.
To get that badge, they need to display excellence in firearms, defensive tactics, physical fitness, investigative techniques, legal education, and behavioral science, and demonstrate aptitude in specialized training in intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, criminal, or cybercrime.
As such, every individual FBI agent represents an enormous investment in government time and money, with their selection and training designed to ensure the agency has the best of the best working for them. And Kash Patel is currently discarding these agents like confetti.
BREAKING NEWS
— CHECK OUT THE TAVİSTOCK İNSTİTUTE (@ozcakir03) September 27, 2025Kash Patel fired agents who knelt during the George Floyd riots in 2020 and replaced them with those who were cruel to black people pic.twitter.com/irte37ZocJ
Their ‘crime’? Being photographed taking the knee during the George Floyd protests five years ago. For this ideological insubordination, Patel is giving them the boot from the agency, at a stroke jettisoning tens of thousands of hours of investigative experience.
But then what should we expect from an FBI director whose previous job was being a middling podcaster?
Spectacularly useless even by Trump administration standards
It’s becoming increasingly clear that even among the freaks, ghouls, and morons Trump appointed to run the nation’s key infrastructure, Patel stands out as uniquely incompetent. His recent testimony to the House saw him looking bewildered as he wandered into gotcha after gotcha like Sideshow Bob walking through a field of rakes.
Jamie Raskin shows Kash Patel videos of all the podcasts he's been on for the last several years, where he repeatedly claims Epstein's black book is under the direct control of the FBI Director.
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) September 17, 2025
This is the cover-up you get when you put a podcaster in charge. pic.twitter.com/meQbptlYqY
Then came serious questions about his competency during the investigation into Charlie Kirk’s murder, which saw him wrongly announce he’d caught the killer, realize he’d already removed the local FBI chief Mehtab Syed (a “legendary case agent” whose offence was being a Muslim woman), and generally look like a lost little lamb at the press conferences.
It’s powerfully depressing that Patel – a man with no law enforcement experience, no leadership skills, and little apparent talent – was given the job of FBI director. We shouldn’t be surprised that he’s so bad at his job, but perhaps we can be shocked at how casually he’ll discard people with the exact skills America needs to fight crime.
