At a forum this week hosted by Politico, former top Trump strategist and current MAGA loudmouth Steve Bannon said insiders have a name for the first days of the incoming Trump administration. “We refer to it right now as ‘Days of Thunder,’” he said. “And I think these Days of Thunder starting next week are going to be incredibly, incredibly intense.”

Why would President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers compare their return to power with a 35-year-old movie about NASCAR? This can only mean they are expecting a series of car wrecks. And, in fact, the pileups have already begun — a familiar mix of incompetence, defiance of the law, infighting and tilting at windmills.

On the same day Bannon spoke about Days of Thunder, I was in a hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, watching the most extravagantly unqualified nominee I have ever seen. Pete Hegseth makes the closest runner-up, Harriet Miers, George W. Bush’s ill-fated Supreme Court nominee, look like Oliver Wendell Holmes. Hegseth has faced widespread and credible allegations of drunkenness on the job, financial mismanagement at the two small charities he ran, and sexual harassment and assault. (He paid a woman who accused him of assault while denying the accusation.) A weekend host for Fox News, Hegseth never ran a large organization and held a junior rank in the military, and he has said women shouldn’t serve in combat and disparaged the Geneva Conventions, which govern the laws of war. He also appears to have no idea what he’s doing.

Meanwhile, there is Pam Bondi, whose main qualification to be attorney general is that she’s not Matt Gaetz. During her ferociously partisan confirmation hearing appearance, she refused to acknowledge that Biden won the 2020 election, left on the table prosecuting Liz Cheney, Jack Smith and Merrick Garland, and delivered frequent taunts about Trump’s “overwhelming” victory in November. (He won by 1.5 percentage points and got less than 50 percent of the vote). “Look at the map of California,” she told California Democrat Adam Schiff. “It’s bright red, the popular vote, for a reason.” Trump lost California by 20 points.

Bondi appears to take pride in how little she knows.

What were her thoughts on Trump calling those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, “hostages” and “patriots”?

“I am not familiar with that statement.”

How about the recording of Trump urging Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” him 11,780 votes?

“I’ve not heard it.”

Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, Kash Patel, saying he would “come after” journalists “who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections”?

“I am not familiar with all those comments.”

Patel’s threats to prosecute political opponents, including some from the five-dozen-name enemies list published in an appendix to his book that labels them members of a “deep state”?

“I don’t believe he has an enemies list. He made a quote on TV, which I have not heard.”

But if Bondi was only playing dumb, Hegseth seemed to come by this trait more earnestly. Even his supporters (which, thanks to Trump’s threats, include virtually every Senate Republican) felt a need to acknowledge his lack of credentials.

Freshman Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Montana) defended Hegseth’s thin résumé by saying “I don’t think any board in the world would’ve hired Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg when they founded their companies either.”

So now, we’re treating the 3-million-person U.S. military like a garage start-up?

Hegseth came armed with two strategies. The first was to say that all of the accusations of alcohol abuse and sexual and financial impropriety were fabricated by left-wing partisans. The second was to say that he has been “redeemed by my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” for all of the bad things he was falsely accused of doing by this left-wing smear campaign.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican condemned Democrats as hypocrites, accusing his fellow senators of cheating on their wives and showing up drunk for votes. “The man’s made a mistake and you want to sit there and say that he’s not qualified? Give me a joke!” Mullin challenged.

Okay, Senator. A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar …

The real joke is going to be on the brave men and women of the military, who will soon be led by a man who has referred to military lawyers as “jagoffs” and who engaged his bros on the GOP side in high-testosterone talk.

Hegseth ignored that defense spending grew nearly 15 percent under Biden from Trump’s final year in office, and the men and women of the military never stopped being the most powerful warriors on the planet.

Instead he focused on supposed military wokeness. Hegseth claimed that he was not allowed to offer protection during Biden’s inauguration in 2021 because he has a Christian tattoo. Pointing to his chest, he said “it’s called the Jerusalem Cross,” or Crusader’s Cross. He did not mention that he also has a tattoo proclaiming “Deus Vult” — “God wills it” — which was displayed during the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

It’s not clear whether the tattoos caused Hegseth to be rejected from security duty. But if they did, that happened before Biden took office, during the woke Trump administration.

Days of Thunder? More like days of blunder.