Trump has released the names of his nominees for Cabinet and other leadership positions in waves. He started with some relatively conventional decisions and then dropped one bombshell after another, perhaps in an attempt to paralyze the Senate opposition with a flood of bad candidates or to overwhelm the public’s already limited political attention span. He has appointed a Fox News host with a sordid personal past as head of the Pentagon, an apologist for the dictators in Russia and Syria as director of national intelligence, and an anti-vaxxer and anti-science activist as the country’s top health official.

Trump has now added another dangerous nomination to that list. In a post Saturday night on his social media page Truth Social, he announced he was naming Kash Patel as director of the FBI. A Patel nomination for some A law enforcement or intelligence position has always been a possibility, and Trump may have held off announcing it until he felt he had caused enough outrage (and exhaustion) with his other nominations.

Patel’s nomination is shocking on many levels, not least because the FBI already has a director, Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed to a 10-year term just seven years ago and whom he had to fire almost immediately to make room for Patel. Worse, Patel is a conspiracy theorist even by the standards of the MAGA world. Like other high-profile Trump candidates, his main qualification for the job appears to be his willingness to do Trump’s bidding without hesitation. Patel will likely face a difficult path to confirmation in the Senate.

For Trump, appointing Patel to the post serves several purposes. First, Trump is using his razor-thin election victory as a mandate to govern as he pleases, and Patel is the perfect candidate to prove he doesn’t care what others think. Knowing what they knew, the Americans chose to put him back in office, and he has taken their decision as carte blanche to do whatever he wants – including giving immense power to someone like Kash Patel.

Second, Trump wants to show that the objections of senior elected Republicans are irrelevant to him and that he can mitigate them politically at will. Some of his nominations seem like a trollish move, a way to demonstrate his power by naming people in posts and daring others to stop him. Trump has always viewed the GOP as his fiefdom and GOP leaders as his vassals — and if the Senate gives in to Patel and others, he could be right on both counts.

That approach backfired when Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general quickly collapsed in the face of likely defeat in the Senate, but Trump seems confident he can get most of his other candidates over the finish line, even nominees who would have had little chance of confirmation in previous governments. And Trump keeps pushing boundaries: Instead of Gaetz, he sent forward the more competent but equally committed MAGA loyalist Pam Bondi, who provoked far less resistance.

Trump has made it clear how much he hates the FBI, and he has convinced his MAGA base that it is a nest of political corruption. In a stunning reversal of political polarity, a significant portion of law-and-order Republicans now view the men and women of federal law enforcement with contempt and paranoia. If Trump’s goal is to break the FBI and undermine its missions, Kash Patel is the perfect candidate. Some senior officials would likely resign rather than serve under Patel, which would likely suit Trump well.

Of course, that means the FBI would have difficulty doing the things it’s supposed to do, including fighting crime and counterintelligence against America’s enemies. But it would be an excellent tool of revenge against anyone whom Trump or Patel identifies as an enemy within – which, in Trump’s world, is anyone who criticizes Donald Trump.

The Russians talk about the “power ministries,” the departments that have significant legal and coercive powers. In the United States, these include the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense, the FBI and the intelligence community. Trump has now appointed sycophants to run each of these institutions, a move that removes key obstacles to his oft-stated desire to use the government’s military, federal law enforcement, intelligence officials and lawyers as he sees fit, without following the law or the laws to be bound by the constitution.

If you want to build the infrastructure of an authoritarian government, here’s how to do it.

Early 20th-century Peruvian leader Óscar R. Benavides once articulated a simple principle that Trump now appears to be following when he said, “For my friends, everything; for my enemies the law.” It is now up to the Republican members of the Senate to decide whether Trump can impose this formula on the United States.