Donald John Trump loves the word “best.”

The president plans to negotiate the best trade deals, create the best job growth programs, surround himself with the best people.

It’s the “best people” boast that caught my attention when I saw this column from my home boy Nicholas Kristof in the Sunday New York Times. (By the way, Kristof grew up in the Willamette Valley, just south of my hometown of Portland, Ore.)

Kristof’s column talks about the president’s “triumph of incompetence” in the wake of the Affordable Health Care  repeal/replace debacle.

The columnist noted: “… Trump’s record of appointments over all suggests a lack of interest in expertise. I’m not sure that this is ‘the worst cabinet in American history,’ as a Washington Post opinion writer put it, but it might be a contender. The last two energy secretaries were renowned scientists, one with a Nobel prize, while Trump appointed (former Texas Gov.) Rick Perry — who once couldn’t remember the department’s name.

“Trump appointed his bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, to be ambassador to Israel. He chose Jason Greenblatt, another of his lawyers, to negotiate Mideast peace. He picked Omarosa Manigault, who starred with him on ‘The Apprentice’ and has a record of inflating her résumé, to be assistant to the president.

“The director of Oval Office operations is Keith Schiller, a former Trump bodyguard best known for whacking a protester. And the Trump team installed as a minder in the Labor Department a former campaign worker who graduated from high school in 2015, according to ProPublica.”

Here’s the rest of Kristof’s column

This is how Trump defines “the best people”?

Kristof does note that some of the president’s appointments have been top-shelf picks: James Mattis at Defense, Steve Mnuchin at Treasury and Neil Gorsuch for the U.S. Supreme Court, for example.

But he has populated many of his key staff posts with rubes and rascals. Oh, yes, and the “populist” champion who said he would fight for the little guy has surrounded himself with billionaires and multimillionaires associated with Goldman Sachs, the outfit he demonized throughout his presidential campaign.

I don’t mean to sound too familiar with someone I do not know, but … you go, Nick!