What did Donald Trump do today? 

He tapped a patent grifter to be the U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

Today, Trump announced that he would nominate Matthew Whitaker as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Whitaker served briefly as Acting Attorney General in Trump's first term, after Trump fired Jeff Sessions for refusing to kill an investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf.

But Whitaker is better known as a board member of World Patent Marketing, a firm that the Federal Trade Commission called an "invention promotion scam." In 2017, the FTC found that WPM had falsely promised to promote clients' inventions, then threatened them with costly legal actions if they complained.

The company, which at one point tried to get clients to invest in a cryptocurrency it described as "a theoretical time travel commodity," is now defunct. The FTC wrote that its victims had paid

World Patent Marketing Inc. thousands of dollars to patent and market their inventions based on bogus 'success stories' and testimonials promoted by the defendants. But after they strung consumers along for months or even years, the defendants did not deliver what they promised. Instead, many customers ended up in debt or lost their life savings with nothing to show for it.

Whitaker has no military or diplomatic experience.

As NATO Ambassador, Whitaker would be the representative of a president who has repeatedly threatened to withdraw the United States from NATO, which would effectively destroy it. Curtailing NATO's influence has been the primary military goal of the Putin regime in Russia.

Why does this matter?

• Jobs relating to the military defense of the United States and its allies are too important to give out to political cronies.