The phrase “The worse the better” is often attributed to Vladimir Lenin and captures a kind of messianic nihilism – the dream that growing misery will hasten the downfall of a corrupt order. I usually find this ethos despicable; in my experience, suffering only begets more suffering. I make an exception, however, for Donald Trump’s nomination of former congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, a blatant challenge that is, like a B-movie, so bad it’s good.

While Trump’s choice of Gaetz to lead the Justice Department is a clear sign that his second administration will be catastrophically chaotic, vindictive and corrupt, that should never have been in doubt. Trump made no secret during his campaign of wanting to persecute his political enemies. Whoever chose him as attorney general would share his interest in turning the justice system into the enforcement arm of the MAGA movement. Gaetz’s selection just rips off the mask. With it, Trump drags not only his defeated opponents, but also many of his avid supporters. It’s like Caligula trying to make his horse consul.

Of all the people Trump has considered for AG, Gaetz is unique mainly because of how much he is hated by other Republicans, and not just moderates. In the final months of the last Trump administration, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Gaetz had a relationship with an underage girl that violated federal sex-trafficking laws. Although that investigation was closed without charges, the House opened an ethics investigation into him. He was reportedly scheduled to vote on releasing a damning report on Friday, which Gaetz reportedly tried to forestall by resigning, though it could become public.

When Gaetz was accused of sleeping with the girl, “there’s a reason no one in the conference came to his defense,” Markwayne Mullin, a conservative Republican senator from Oklahoma, told CNN last year. His colleagues, Mullins said, saw videos “of the girls he slept with,” which Gaetz allegedly showed on the House floor. After Gaetz forced Kevin McCarthy out as Speaker of the House, throwing his party into disarray, Mike Rogers, a Republican congressman from Alabama, appeared ready to physically attack him and had to be restrained by colleagues.

It goes without saying that Gaetz is not, by normal standards, even remotely qualified to be attorney general. He practiced law for only about two years before running for office, handling small civil matters such as suing an elderly woman for money she owed his father’s care company.

His main credential is not his mastery of the law, but his contempt for it. “We’re proud of the work we did on January 6 to make legitimate arguments about election integrity,” he told Steve Bannon in 2022. He called for the abolition of both the FBI and the Department of Justice, if they don’t “get their act together”. If confirmed, he will be resolute in his devotion to carrying out Trump’s will, unconcerned with legal niceties.

Gaetz is not the only Trump nominee who appears to have been chosen precisely for his hostility to the values ​​of the organization he is supposed to lead. On Thursday, Trump announced his intention to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s leading anti-vaxxer, as secretary of Health and Human Services. Pete Hegseth, the Fox News weekend host whom Trump wants to put at the top of the Pentagon — an institution that is supposed to be scrupulously apolitical — has written a book describing “social justice saboteurs” as more dangerous to America than any foreign enemy. During his first administration, when Trump tried to turn the military on left-wing protesters, his defense officials thwarted him. Hegseth, who accused “progressive stormtroopers” of turning our cities into “little Samaras,” a reference to an Iraqi city besieged by the Islamic State group, would almost certainly have fewer reservations.

“It’s the enemy within,” Trump said of his opponents at a rally last month. “All the mess we’re dealing with hate our country. This is a bigger enemy than China and Russia.” Some of his supporters were delighted by this language, but others were convinced that he did not really mean it. By selecting Gaetz as the nation’s top law enforcement official, Trump has done us the favor of abandoning any remaining plausible deniability of his intentions. It’s a show of dominance aimed more at Republicans than Democrats, designed to demean them by accepting a nomination they know is inevitable.

Some social conservatives are horrified: The Christian legal group Liberty Counsel issued a press release describing Gaetz’s election as “shocking and disappointing,” and Ben Domenech, co-founder of the right-wing website The Federalist, called it “absolutely despicable. ”, among other insults that I cannot repeat here. If Gaetz makes it all the way to his confirmation hearings, the proceedings will be a carnival of popcorn, scandal and slander. Having won the presidency and both houses of Congress, Trump could have launched his new administration in an atmosphere of confident Republican unity. Instead, it will begin with the crisis, decay and melodrama that is its natural habitat.

Ultimately, I would expect almost all Republican senators to fall in line and humiliate themselves by voting for Gaetz. “I have complete confidence in President Trump’s decision-making on this,” Mullin said on CNN Wednesday, though he added that Gaetz would have to sell himself to the Senate. Even if a small number of senators find the courage to reject such an absurd nominee, Trump could try to circumvent them by using an unused constitutional provision to force the Senate into recess so he can make appointments without its consent.

And if that doesn’t work, whoever Trump picks over Gaetz will almost certainly be just as destructive, if less extravagant in immorality and attention-seeking. After all, Trump chose Gaetz because he is an excellent representative of the MAGA movement.

Once Trump won, decent results for the country were probably off the table. Institutions are unlikely to hold. Establishment Republicans cannot be counted on to protect us. The best we can hope for is that our new leaders will be hampered by incompetence, infighting and self-sabotage. In that regard, Gaetz may be just the man for the job.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.