Tangle - Kash Patel and Dan Bongino to lead FBI.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 13 minutes.

Editor’s note.

Dear readers,

Whenever I sense the tides shifting in U.S. politics, I feel the need to reiterate to our audience what Tangle is, why we are here, and how we intend to act as a resource. Trump returning to the presidency is one of those tide-shifting moments.

Throughout my paternity leave, and now that I’m back in the arena, I’ve noticed two kinds of responses are becoming more common. One, subscribers are telling us they've gained an appreciation for our work in these very divisive times, often paired with thoughtful and constructive feedback that I’m deeply grateful for. 

Two, Tangle readers from across the political spectrum are becoming increasingly incensed with our work. Many positioned left-of-the-middle, or in the “never Trump” conservative bucket, are accusing us of downplaying the purported rise of fascism and authoritarianism by “both sides-ing” an obvious “threat to democracy.” Simultaneously, often in response to the very same pieces, many Trump supporters accuse us of having “Trump derangement syndrome,” being “closet liberals” or “pretending to be neutral” when we’re not.

There’s an old saying in journalism, “when you’re pissing everyone off you’re probably doing something right.” I actually don’t subscribe to this view; if everyone is mad at you, that’s probably because your work is genuinely bad or unhelpful. And to be clear, not everyone is mad at us — Tangle may be taking criticism from all directions, but certainly not from all voices. 

It’s true that I (and the Tangle staff) have opinions we express in “my take.” It’s true that those opinions sometimes align with the left. It’s true that they sometimes align with the right. It’s true that this opens us up to a lot of avenues for criticism, and that these comments are not new. I’ve been doing this for almost six years, and I’ve come to believe that accusations of personal agenda or bias fundamentally miss the point of our work — and fundamentally misunderstand both my personal views and the Tangle team’s writ large.

This Friday, I was planning to write about my experience as a new father and the way it’s starting to shape some of my politics and worldview. But instead, I’m going to push that piece back a week and try to take some time to re-define Tangle and explain how we are going to cover this administration. So, for now, this is my reminder to embrace the experiment, even (and especially) when you disagree with the opinions you encounter. That is, after all, the point.

Best,
Isaac Saul, Executive Editor

Quick hits.

1. The United States and Ukraine agreed to terms on a deal to develop Ukraine’s critical mineral resources. The draft of the agreement reportedly does not include U.S. security guarantees. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is reportedly planning to visit the White House on Friday to formalize the deal. (The agreement)
2. The House of Representatives voted 217-215 to adopt the GOP’s budget resolution, which provides a framework for the party’s spending priorities. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was the lone Republican to vote against the resolution, which now heads to the Senate. (The vote)
3. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 98.3 in February, the lowest reading since June 2024 and the largest monthly drop since August 2021. (The index)
4. A federal judge ordered the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to unfreeze foreign aid funding within two days. (The ruling)
5. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) announced his 2026 candidacy for governor of Florida. Current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is ineligible to seek another term after eight years in office. (The announcement)

Today's topic.

Kash Patel’s confirmation and deputy appointment. On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Kashyap “Kash” Patel as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Patel was a former federal prosecutor who served in the White House during President Donald Trump’s first term and is viewed by many as a Trump loyalist. On Sunday, Trump announced that Patel had named Dan Bongino as deputy FBI director. Bongino is a popular conservative podcaster who served in the New York Police Department and the Secret Service.

Back up: Then-President-elect Trump nominated Patel as FBI director in November, praising Patel for his resistance to the investigation into Trump for alleged collusion with Russia and his service in Trump’s first administration. In January, Patel faced a contentious five-hour hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was later confirmed 51-49, with Republican Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK) joining every Democrat in voting against his nomination. Patel is the first person of color to lead the FBI.

You can read our coverage of Patel’s nomination here and of his confirmation hearing here.

Unlike other Senate-confirmed appointments, the FBI head serves a 10-year term, though former FBI Director and Trump appointee Christopher Wray resigned early, clearing the way for Patel’s nomination. Conversely, Bongino’s appointment does not require Senate confirmation. The deputy director serves as the FBI's second-in-command responsible for day-to-day operations and is typically a career agent. However, despite his background in law enforcement, Bongino has not worked for the FBI. He has run for Congress three times and built a prominent media profile, having hosted podcasts as well as talk shows on NRATV and Fox News. 

Both Patel and Bongino have made controversial statements prior to their nominations. Patel has insinuated that the January 6 riot was provoked by agitators and was questioned during his confirmation hearing for not plainly stating that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election and for publishing a list of “enemies” in his book, Government Gangsters. Bongino has stated that the 2020 election was “rigged” and was banned from YouTube in 2022 for comments he made questioning Covid-19 vaccines and mask mandates. 

“He’s a cop’s cop," Patel said of Bongino. "Welcome aboard, Dan. The country needs strong leadership, and I know you will serve with honor and dedication."

Today, we’ll get into what the right and left are saying about Patel’s confirmation and his appointment of Bongino. Then, I’ll give my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right is mostly supportive of Patel and Bongino, arguing they will clean up the FBI’s excesses.
• Some say Bongino has a strong vision for the agency despite his lack of qualifications.
• Others worry that Patel will prioritize Trump’s wishes over reasonable reform. 

In The Federalist, Beth Brelje argued that Patel has “a popular mandate to clean house at [the] corrupt FBI.”

“Patel enters with his eyes wide open and a solid idea of where to look for the bad actors that cost this nation millions in bogus political investigations designed to stop or hobble Trump’s agenda during his last term,” Brelje said. “Patel unraveled Russiagate, debunking the Steele dossier at the core of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI investigation that falsely claimed Trump colluded with Russians during the presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton.”

“Others welcome Patel, who was ‘endorsed by organizations representing more than 680,000 law enforcement officers and by dozens of former and current FBI agents, state attorneys general and U.S. attorneys,’ Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said on the Senate floor the day before Patel was confirmed,” Brelje wrote. “It won’t be surprising when the media that has long partnered with the FBI continues to write negative stories about Patel doing the necessary work of cleaning up corruption within the FBI.”

In Hot Air, Ed Morrissey said “Kash Patel gets a hatchet man at the FBI.”

Bongino’s appointment “sends a very clear message that [Trump] wants to clear the decks at the FBI, and the rank and file had better get ready for it. This is not just a DOGE deadwood-clearing exercise; Trump means to wring all of the political chicanery out of the FBI, and to do it toute suite,” Morrissey wrote. “Bongino has enough qualifications to justify the pick… However, it's still a bit curious. First, I assumed Bongino might be up for Secret Service director, where his experience fits better.”

“The fit at Secret Service would have been self-explaining, but seems a little less apt at the FBI. The benefit of having a rank-and-file agent in that position is that such an appointment will help connect the new Director to the everyday realities at the bureau as well as maintain operational status quo and equilibrium. Clearly 'operational status quo and equilibrium' are not what Trump has in mind, however, and that's why an outsider like Bongino makes sense,” Morrissey said. “The trick will be to get rid of the others without pushing out those who truly contribute, and balancing reform zeal with organizational wisdom. Let's hope both Patel and Bongino are up to that task.”

In Reason, Jacob Sullum asked “will FBI Director Kash Patel be a principled reformer or a Trump hatchet man?”

“Patel's public comments and published works provide plenty of reason to be skeptical of his new persona. In his podcast interviews, he comes across as a reckless partisan whose overriding concern is loyalty to Trump,” Sullum wrote. However, Patel “also highlights the threat to civil liberties posed by surveillance justified in the name of national security. He says applications for warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act should always be vetted by the Justice Department instead of the FBI's general counsel.”

“On the face of it, putting a harsh FBI critic in charge of the agency is a welcome development. But this particular critic also has a history of advocating politically motivated investigations even while condemning them. The question is whether Patel can move beyond his Trump-centric critique of the FBI and apply his avowed principles consistently, which might require resisting the president's repeatedly expressed desire to punish his political opponents under the guise of enforcing the law. Patel's record as an embarrassingly obeisant Trump toady does not inspire much confidence on that score.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is critical of Patel’s confirmation, suggesting he was nominated to target Trump’s enemies.
• Some say Bongino’s appointment is antithetical to the Trump administration’s supposed emphasis on merit.
• Others say Patel and Bongino will transform the FBI into an unrecognizable institution. 

In New York Magazine, Andrew Rice wrote “the FBI is bracing for payback” under Patel.

“Patel will now take control of an institution with the capacity to surveil, interrogate, and arrest. He will sit in a building named for Hoover, the bureau’s complicated patriarch, who put its powers to political (and sometimes illegal) uses for presidents from Coolidge to Nixon,” Rice said. “Since the revelation of Hoover’s abuses in the 1970s, each subsequent director kept a deliberate distance from the presidents he served. But the next FBI director and Trump could not be more closely aligned in their plans.”

“Patel has articulated some substantive proposals for structural reforms. Government Gangsters contains several incongruously wonky chapters that read like they’re coming from a former public defender. He says he wants greater transparency and increased safeguards for civil liberties,” Rice wrote. “But in Patel, Trump picked a director who will take his phone calls and respond to his interests, and it is not hard to guess what he will want next… Patel has theorized that once he clears out the disloyal, cooperators in the government will offer incriminating information about the deep state.”

In The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg said Bongino “has it out for the ‘commie libs.’”

“Bongino’s boss, of course, will be Kash Patel, the Trumpworld enforcer whom the supine Senate confirmed as F.B.I. director last week. During his confirmation hearings, Patel insisted that, despite publishing an actual enemies list of people he considered deep state villains, he had no intention of turning the F.B.I. into an instrument of retribution. It seemed obvious at the time that he was lying; making Bongino his deputy simply rubs it in our faces. If you wanted to turn the F.B.I. into a Trumpist Praetorian Guard, Bongino is exactly the kind of guy you’d hire.”

“This administration professes a devotion to merit-based hiring, blaming diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives for fostering mediocrity. It should go without saying, however, that excellence is of little interest to the Trumpists, who delight in scandalizing a meritocracy that spurned them,” Goldberg wrote. “We’re in an uncanny interregnum where Trump and his coterie are laying the foundation for autocracy but have yet to fully consolidate their power… an F.B.I. run by Patel and Bongino is a sign that the system — which for all its manifold flaws has provided Americans a level of stability uncommon in history — is falling apart.”

In MSNBC, Steve Benen asked if the FBI will “ever be the same.”

“The deputy director position is effectively responsible for running the bureau’s day-to-day operations, as The New York Times reported, it is ‘a complex and grueling job that requires working closely with foreign partners and navigating sensitive investigations.’ For generations, the administrative position has gone to senior agents with extensive FBI experience,” Benen said. “Trump instead chose a podcaster with literally no FBI experience for the job. The fact that Bongino worked as a Secret Service agent and NYPD officer is of interest, but it's also not altogether relevant.”

“The president wants an unqualified conservative media personality to help run the FBI’s operations, and so an unqualified conservative media personality will now help run the FBI’s operations. Even by Trump standards, this is truly bonkers,” Benen wrote. “This is a step a president takes when he wants to tear down the FBI and turn it into something new and twisted… I don’t doubt that there will still be an institution called the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but with Patel and Bongino at the helm, it will not be the FBI.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Patel leading the FBI is the result of a phenomenon unique to Trump.
• Even taking prior criticisms of the FBI and its leadership as valid, both Patel and Bongino are at another level of concerning.
• Patel is an ultra-loyalist, Bongino is even more out there, and I’m not optimistic about the FBI under their leadership.

Let’s play a game.

I’m going to share seven quotes. Some of them are real things Kash Patel and Dan Bongino have said. Some of them are made up. Let’s see if you can spot the fake ones.

1. “We’re blessed by God to have Donald Trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena.”
2. “My recommendation is Donald Trump should ignore this [court order]... who is going to arrest him? The marshals? You guys know who the U.S. Marshals work for? The Department of Justice, that is under the — oh yeah, the executive branch. Donald Trump is going to order his own arrest? This is ridiculous.”
3. “The only thing that matters is power. That is all that matters. ‘No it doesn’t, we have a system of checks and balances.’ Ha! That’s a good one. That’s really funny. We do?”
4. “The irony about this for the scumbag commie libs is that the cold civil war they’re pushing for will end really badly for them. Libs are the biggest pussies I’ve ever seen and they use others to do their dirty work. Their mommas are still doing their laundry for them as they celebrate tonight that their long sought goal of the destruction of the Republic has been reached. But they’re not ready for what comes next.”
5. “My entire life now is about owning the libs.”
6. “And you've got to harness that following that Q [of QAnon] has garnered and just sort of tweak it a little bit. That's all I'm saying. He should get credit for all of the things he has accomplished, because it's hard to establish a movement."
7. “We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly. We’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”

Just kidding. They’re all real.

1, 6, and 7 were things Kash Patel said. 2, 3, 4, and 5 are things Dan Bongino said. 

It’s not hard to understand how we got here. During Donald Trump’s first term, he surrounded himself with some of the shadiest and most corrupt people in politics. The Paul Manaforts of the world invited questions about his connections to Russia; those questions turned into a media frenzy; that media frenzy drove FBI investigations; those investigations led to a special counsel; that special counsel nearly cost Trump his presidency. 

I’ve written before about the many things we got wrong about Trump and Russia. I don’t want to relitigate them here, but I think Trump deserved to be investigated and also was not guilty of colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election. As I feared at the time, one of the great consequences of the Trump investigation — the reason I desperately wanted the federal government’s probe to be on the up and up in every manner — was the politicized arms race that it set off. Once you open that Pandora’s box, there is no going back — especially not in the American partisan warfare of the 21st century.

Of all the ways the Trump investigation could have gone, our current reality is one of the worst possible iterations. Our politics have only become more polarized since 2016, and Trump just won reelection on a campaign largely centered on personal grievances and promises of revenge. He has no interest in depoliticizing federal institutions like the FBI; he wants to remake them in his mold. He has no interest in leaving anything in the past; he wants payback. He wants to fire every lawyer that was hired under Biden and fire every prosecutor that was involved not just in the “Russia hoax,” but also in prosecuting January 6, a day full of very real crimes. All of these motivations are evident in putting Kash Patel at the head of the FBI.

When Patel was first tapped by Trump, I wrote about a phenomenon I described as the “Trump circularity” — when Trump does some norm-breaking thing (for better or for worse) that puts all of our political footing onto new ground, which he then gets to mold to his own political advantage. 

Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are part of this circularity. Patel, at least, has some relevant experience, but I’m still not thrilled about him leading the bureau. He has openly promised retribution against Trump's political enemies, he’s made his career a loyalty show to Trump, he’s said the figure at the center of the QAnon cult should "get credit for all the things he has accomplished," he hawks dietary supplements to “reverse the vaxx n get healthy,” and he claims he’s going to crack down on leakers and prosecute journalists. He also still will not admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and we found out during his confirmation hearing he has a massive conflict of interest in China. 

Say what you want about James Comey or Christopher Wray (and there’s plenty to criticize), but neither of them is even close to as politically compromised as Patel. They’re not even in the same galaxy. And if the politicization of the FBI is a thing you are worried about and loathe, if you were mad about Comey undermining Hillary Clinton or investigating Trump, or upset Wray’s FBI raided a president’s home, then this is the wrong direction to go. This leads us deeper down the hole.

As for Bongino, well… he is somehow even more out there. Personal disclosure: Soon after Trump came into office in 2016, before he was a famous podcaster, Bongino was constantly spreading easy-to-debunk nonsense on Twitter, and I used to call him out on it. We tangled on social media pretty regularly, arguing and calling each other not-so-nice names. In response, he blocked me. And then I watched his star rise — slowly at first, and then all at once, and now he’s a major celebrity with the online right. Mostly, his fame was driven by the kind of nonsense I used to call him out for.

In this line of work, I’m always conscious of how my readers might view me, and I’m sometimes wary of being too hard on one side of the aisle for consecutive days. We have a politically diverse audience looking for fair takes and a diversity of viewpoints. But in the “my take” section, my promise is not to seek a centrist position or toe the line. Instead, my promise is to be honest, even if it’s inconvenient for me and risky for my business. And the honest truth is that Kash Patel is an alarming FBI director with a smattering of good ideas that, weighed against everything else he’s said and done, completely fail to reassure us that he will act apolitically and in respect of the law. I’m not naive and sycophantic about the government enough to believe the FBI is some deeply ethical, non-political organization; it isn’t, and never has been. 

But it just got a lot worse. 

Bongino leading these agents is just hard to fathom. He’s so radical (again, just read a few sample quotes above) and so power hungry that I struggle to imagine what he’ll try to do with so much control. My only hope is that there are still enough ethical and law-abiding agents and lawyers among the FBI’s roughly 38,000 employees to check Patel’s and Bongino’s worst desires. But I can’t say I’m enthusiastic about the odds. 

Take the survey: What do you think of Patel and Bongino? Let us know!

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Under the radar.

The Texas Department of State Health Services reported its first death in a measles outbreak that has infected at least 124 people in the state across nine counties, Texas’s largest outbreak in decades. Measles is one of the most contagious viruses in the world, it can be transmitted through the air and on surfaces, and it spreads mostly among people who are not vaccinated against the virus. Texas says almost all of the confirmed cases are in people who are either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status could not be confirmed. Health experts worry that the case count will continue to rise in the coming weeks, noting that the outbreak corresponds with decreasing rates of childhood vaccinations nationwide. The Associated Press has the latest on the story, and The Dallas Morning News has the background on the outbreak.

Numbers.

• 9. The number of confirmed directors in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 
• 5. The number of FBI directors confirmed between 1935 and 2001. 
• 4. The number of FBI directors confirmed between 2001 and 2025.
• 19. The number of confirmed deputy directors in the history of the FBI. 
• 10. The number of FBI deputy directors confirmed between 1930 and 2001.
• 9. The number of FBI deputy directors confirmed between 2002 and 2025.
• #7. The Dan Bongino Show’s rank in Podtrac’s list of top U.S. podcasts in January 2025. 
• 52%. The percentage of U.S. adults who are “extremely” or “somewhat” confident the FBI will act in a fair and nonpartisan manner during Donald Trump's second term, according to a January 2025 AP-NORC poll.
• 44% and 63%. The percentage of Democrats and Republicans, respectively, who are “extremely” or “somewhat” confident the FBI will act in a fair and nonpartisan manner during Donald Trump's second term. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just published a Friday edition discussing the dangers of pornography.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was Secretary of the Department of Transportation Sean Duffy’s X post detailing five things he did last week.
• Nothing to do with politics: The hardships of having a last name that breaks databases.
• Yesterday’s survey: 5,467 readers answered our survey on Elon Musk’s job performance as head of the Department of Government Efficiency with 91% disapproving. “I can’t believe I had to think twice when answering this poll… Elon‘s personal performance sucks, but I still have hope for DOGE results overall,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

In 1960, Ruby Bridges faced the monumental challenge of being the first black student to integrate into an all-white school in the South. Now, Bridges has published a children’s book about the experience that she describes as a “love letter to her first grade teacher,” Barbara Henry. Unlike the teachers who quit their jobs to avoid teaching black children, Henry taught six-year-old Bridges in an empty classroom and became her best friend. “I wouldn’t have gotten through that if it had not been for my teacher,” Bridges said. “Despite all of the hate that was going on outside, inside that room — it was filled with love.” TODAY has the story.

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