Brodie Rollins runs the United States Department of Agriculture. Sid Miller runs—ran—the Texas Department of Agriculture into the ground for three terms until voters fired him in March. Rollins called Miller "unserious" this week while dealing with a screwworm outbreak. Screwworms. Flesh-eating maggots that burrow into livestock and kill them from the inside out. The kind of thing that requires an agriculture commissioner to, you know, commission some agriculture.
Miller had Trump's endorsement.
Lost anyway.
That takes effort. You have to campaign against yourself harder than your opponent campaigns against you. You have to convince Republican primary voters in Texas—people who would vote for a ham sandwich if it promised to build a wall—that you are too incompetent to manage crops and cows. Miller pulled it off. Then stuck around long enough to get publicly dunked on by his federal counterpart during an active parasite crisis.
The screwworms are probably wondering why Miller didn't take the hint. They eat cattle alive and even they know when to move on to fresher meat. But Miller kept showing up to work after losing, kept offering his expert guidance, kept doing whatever it is he was doing that made Rollins use the word "unserious" in an official capacity. That is not a word you deploy lightly. That is the professional equivalent of calling someone a f*cking moron while wearing a suit.
Imagine losing your job in March and still logging in for Zoom calls in June. Imagine your replacement at the federal level having to publicly tell you to sit the f*ck down while bugs devour Texas livestock. Imagine needing Trump's endorsement to keep a state ag job and losing anyway.
Miller managed all three. The screwworms are taking notes for their next campaign.
Photo by Felipe Vieira on Unsplash
Leave a Comment