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. 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.

The next day brought the confirmation hearing of Pam Bondi, whose main qualification to be attorney general is that she’s not Matt Gaetz. During her ferociously partisan 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 appeared 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.”

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.

“Admittedly, this nomination is unconventional,” the Armed Services Committee chairman, Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) allowed.

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. “What became very evident to us from the beginning: There was a coordinated smear campaign orchestrated in the media against us,” he spoke, using the royal “we.”

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.

Hegseth and his Republican interlocutors spoke endlessly about the supposed “wokeness” in the military.

As an example of this 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.

Days of Thunder? More like days of blunder.

Dana Milbank is a Washington Post columnist.