In the Trump administration, merit-based hiring really means lying
President Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks brought a raft of high-profile, highly unqualified types like Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. But we already know all about their staggering amount of shortcomings. What about the less well-known nominees, the small-timers hoping to get into the slightly lower rungs of government service despite having no skills to do so?
When it comes to pushing these motley nominees through Congress, the administration has one strategy: inflating their credentials. The fact that they have to do so highlights that the administration that says it is hiring on merit is instead just a dumping ground for grifters and lower-tier influencers.
Over the weekend, we learned that Trump’s pick to run the Federal Aviation Administration, Bryan Bedford, seems to have lied about holding a commercial pilot license. This was no momentary error, as Bedford’s page on the Republic Airways’ website, where he is currently president and CEO, listed him as holding a commercial license back to at least 2010. When Bedford spoke at conservative Liberty University in 2019, he was introduced as holding “commercial, multi-engine and instrument pilot ratings.”
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So what does the administration do with the fact that for at least 15 years, Bedford lied about holding a license in the exact field he would now regulate? First, they tried flat denial, saying Bedford “never misrepresented his credential; it was an administrative error that was immediately corrected.” What administrative error that might be is left to the imagination.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/16/2328346/-In-the-Trump-administration-merit-based-hiring-really-means-lying
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