Mark Fisher

Well, this came amid a whole bunch of such confrontations between Patel and both House and Senate members.

And it was pretty wild.

It was one of the classic ways in which Kash Patel, very much like Donald Trump, values the show above almost all else.

And this is one of the reasons Patel is one of Trump's favorites.

One of the reasons Patel is in this job is his ability to commandeer the moment, to put on a big show, to present himself as a grieved person.

and to present himself as an advocate for all those Americans who feel aggrieved.

No, we've never seen any FBI director like Kash Patel before.

We've never seen someone who looks like Kash Patel.

The previous FBI directors were all sort of clean-cut, conservatively dressed, very proper.

White men.

White men, all of them.

And Kash Patel is not any of those things.

So we haven't seen this kind of approach before.

We haven't seen this kind of antagonism before.

We haven't seen this lack of experience before, lack of familiarity with what the FBI does.

There is in Kash Patel's background every reason to see why Donald Trump wanted him in that job.

and every reason to understand why so many people within the Bureau believe he is ill-suited for the position and that he's doing significant and enduring damage to the Bureau.

Right.

So that conversation with Benny Johnson took place a couple of years ago at a point when Kash Patel was on the outside and was agitating for the administration, then the Biden administration, to release this reported client list that Jeffrey Epstein is supposed to have kept.

Now the