"One of my teachers at Columbia was Joseph Brodsky...and he said 'look,' he said, 'you Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.'"

Of course there’s a strategy. He’s testing to see which senators will side with him, and how far he can push things unilaterally. That is, how soon he can neuter the senate and consolidate his power. Freakish noms like Gaetz and Patel normalize all the ones that will go through.