Kash Is Crashing Out
FBI Director Patel’s character is his destiny.
In memory of The Punisher co-creator Gerry Conway (1952–2026).
I have resisted the urge, outside of epithets insinuating intoxication, to comment on the googly eyes of FBI Director Kash Patel (or as I like to call him, “Kush” Patel, because that fool has got to be smoking something). I assumed they were an immutable physical trait, a circumstance of his birth, not his character. Now, I wonder if they indicate stimulant abuse, which would vindicate his haters’ assessment of his paranoia, recklessness, mania, and evident self-destruction.
Looking at it now, I think my attacks on Mr. Patel have been restrained by pity. He is so obviously ill at ease in his skin, flailing and desperate to fit a role for which he is unqualified and unsuitable. We have all felt like such impostors, but he has so little time left to grow into the job that it feels like bullying to call him insufficient. He knows. I never had to think about him when he was a podcaster—he seemed annoying but unimportant. He should have stayed that way.
I realized just how weird and flamboyant Mr. Patel was when I first saw his red Cybertruck parading around DC with the license plate KASH 009. An ugly thing made worse by his desire to be distinctive. Call me old-fashioned, but in my day, “government gangsters,” as Mr. Patel has called everyone else with his job, drove town cars, or BMWs that blended in with corporate and rental car fleets. They did not beg the world for recognition. This shit is unbecoming.
Mr. Patel was once an ordinary fed, but after that and before he was the FBI director, he was, like me, an edgy merchandiser. His cringe K$H brand included the company Based Apparel’s K$H hoodies, beanies, scarves, and caps, the “Fight with Kash” line of tees and Gadsden-flag hoodies, K$H wine, K$H supplements marketed without evidence to “detoxify” the supposed harmful effects of COVID-19 vaccines, K$H playing cards, K$H cigars, and even K$H sneakers. Public service is not enough for this man—he must also be a lifestyle brand. Per The Atlantic, Mr. Patel has recently complained that the FBI’s official merchandise is “not intimidating enough.” If only he had majored in marketing or art instead of law, he could be happily designing his t-shirts instead of whatever the fuck he is doing now.
Mr. Patel’s book Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, which reads like an extended podcast rant, included an appendix that is plainly an enemies list. The Plot Against the King children’s trilogy stars him as a wizard called “Kash the Distinguished Discoverer” helping the noble “King Donald” vanquish “Hillary Queenton” while the FBI appears as “slug stables in a shadowy corner of the castle” run by “Keeper Komey.”
As a t-shirt salesman myself, please be assured that you can purchase from the Partisan Hex merch shop here, home of the DONALD IS A BITCH t-shirt, without any worry that I will take a great position of power. If I am ever elevated to such a position, something has gone horribly wrong.
Iranian hackers boasted that they had penetrated Mr. Patel’s e-mail. I will defend Mr. Patel this once. They accessed a personal e-mail account primarily active between 2011 and 2018. Hardly an elite cyberattack. I reviewed the leak and found nothing of special interest. His e-mails contained photos of Mr. Patel in Cuba, sniffing and smoking cigars and waving a bottle of rum in a mirror. Who cares? They also revealed his Hilton Honors rewards account number, which is not going to hurt anyone, and that he goes by the name “spiderkash” on XVideos, a pornographic website.
Breaking into a man’s computer system and extracting private correspondence is low. Most Americans generate trails of embarrassing private correspondences as they bumble through life. How many botched love letters are in your e-mail history? If a message from Mr. Patel said he knew President Donald Trump was an ignorant slut but would endorse him anyway to get closer to the reins of power, that would have political salience, but the FBI director’s cigar-and-porn parties ought to be left alone unless he is spending taxpayer funds on them. The problem for Mr. Patel, then, is that his current indulgences are at the expense of the American people.
Mr. Patel has been critical critical of former FBI Director Christopher Wray, writing in Government Gangsters that Mr. Wray for “use[d] a government-funded jet to fly to his summer lake house in upstate New York.” Mr. Patel now regularly uses his government jet to visit his long-distance girlfriend (“LDR GF”), amateur country “sensation” and MAGA influencer Alexis Wilkins. He equipped Ms. Wilkins with her own FBI detail for protection and enlisted FBI agents to drive her drunk friend’s ass home.
The introduction to Government Gangsters say that Mr. Patel’s “family is proud to be American… value[s] hard work[,] cherish[es] fairness[,] believe[s] in personal responsibility, and… [doesn’t] think anyone has a right to special favors or special treatment,” and yet now he takes special favors as an entitlement. If they saw the man he grew into, I wonder if his family would have raised him differently—Mr. Patel and Ms. Wilkins seem too unashamedly indulgent in the perks of his office.
I am no gambler, but I would bet that Mr. Patel never marries Ms. Wilkins. Once he is fired—kicked to the curb like a dog—he will be single, too. If Ms. Wilkins cared for the integrity of their relationship, she would move closer to the District, drive to him for once. She certainly would not make him the subject of ridicule by letting herself be chartered around at taxpayers’ expense. She is supposedly a conservative influencer, but back in my day, conservatives hated taking public funds for private vices—they thought it was a moral failing. The impropriety is not subtle. Between this and former Homeland Security Secretary Puppykiller Kristi Noem’s fuck plane, I am livid. How much taxpayer money has been spent on sleazy love affairs?
Mr. Patel made a special custom challenge coin, which says KASH, but it bears the Punisher skull logo, with spider-eyes for sockets and guns for teeth. Punisher, mind you, is a comic book character who is not a superhero. He is an ex-Marine who murders scores of suspected criminals without trial. The reverse of the coin shows the FBI seal, a Tommy gun, Mr. Patel’s signature, and a blue nine. That shit drives Marvel crazy. The late Gerry Conway, who co-created the Punisher in 1974 and died this past week, told SYFY Wire in 2019:
“The Punisher represents a failure of the Justice system. It goes without saying. In a way, it’s as offensive as putting a Confederate flag on a government building. My point of view is, the Punisher is an anti-hero, someone we might root for while remembering he’s also an outlaw and criminal. If an officer of the law, representing the justice system, puts a criminal’s symbol on his police car, or shares challenge coins honoring a criminal, he or she is making a very ill-advised statement about their understanding of the law.”
“It always struck me as stupid and ironic that members of the police are embracing what is fundamentally an outlaw symbol.”
There have been multiple comic and television storylines in which Frank Castle, the Punisher, rejects the association of his logo with zealous law enforcement. In Punisher #13, Castle tears the skull decal off a police cruiser and tells the officers their role model should be Captain America, not him. In Civil War #6, Captain America punches Castle unconscious. And this is who Mr. Patel chooses to identify with his brand?
My personal favorite, though, is Jason Aaron’s Punisher run, in which Castle’s wife and children, whose murders launched his crusade against crime, were resurrected. Horrified at what Castle had become, his dead wife revealed that he was always unwell, and that she was on her way to divorce him when the inciting incident occurred. This “retconned” the Punisher into the world’s most divorced, “delulu” man (other than former co-President Elon Musk).
Why does Mr. Patel role-play as Spider-Man on pornographic websites and use the Punisher’s personal sigil as his own when he clearly does not read comic books? I am sorry. I hate to “gatekeep.” But it is a stupid man who wears symbols he does not understand, and Mr. Patel does not understand the meaning of Spider-Man or the Punisher, or the moral precepts their stories are meant to impart. With power comes responsibility, not impunity, perks, or merchandising opportunities.
The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick reported in the April 2026 article “The FBI Director Is MIA” that Mr. Patel is, allegedly, often drunk at Ned’s Club in DC, and the Poodle Room in Las Vegas, a no-phones, no-photos members-only club at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, lined with illuminated poodle statues. I assume the theming makes more sense when drugs and alcohol are involved. He is described as getting so “lit” on these weekday nights out that his meetings are pushed to the afternoon. And sure enough, the majority of Mr. Patel’s public appearances happen after noon.
Mr. Patel’s hangovers are so great, in fact, that the FBI allegedly requisitioned breaching equipment to get access to his apartment and wake his ass up. Every time I am hungover but crawl out of bed without the help of a SWAT team, I am stunting on Mr. Patel. In another life, I would go shot for shot with him and win.
And to be clear, Mr. Patel’s job performance sucks and is erratic enough to suspect that he is in fact working drunk, high, or hungover. Hours after Charlie Kirk was shot in Utah, Mr. Patel tweeted that the FBI had “the subject” in custody—except the actual shooter, Tyler Robinson, had not yet turned himself in. The Atlantic reports FBI officials have privately wondered whether alcohol played a role in Mr. Patel’s habit of broadcasting inaccurate information about active investigations. Mr. Patel also declared he would see Mr. Kirk in Valhalla, the Norse god Odin’s bar for warriors slain in battle. An odd promise from a Hindu to an evangelical Christian unless we assume the spiritual elements of these words have no meaning. Mr. Patel did the same shit again after the Brown University mass shooting, too, announcing the detention of a “person of interest” who had to be released within hours.
The article opens with Mr. Patel unable to log into his government computer system, concluding that he had been locked out, and then calling aides and allies to announce that the White House had fired him. “It was all ultimately bullshit,” one FBI official told The Atlantic. A technical glitch, quickly resolved. Had I embarrassed myself so, I would never come to work again. America would be safer if Mr. Patel had my self-consciousness.
In the wake of The Atlantic’s article, it was reported that Mr. Patel had alcohol-related encounters with the police in undergrad, including a February 2001 public intoxication charge for “cheering too loudly,” he says, at a University of Richmond basketball game, which seems doubtful, and another arrest for public urination. That, at least, is more relatable than unconscionable or obnoxious. But if character is destiny, I doubt Mr. Patel has changed his character much since then; if he had, I doubt the FBI director would be caught on footage chugging beers in the locker room of the United States men’s Olympic ice hockey team. I hope he had fun, but I am irritated watching such an annoying, reprehensible man rack up perk after perk.
Mr. Patel was expected to be fired on April 2 alongside the notoriously corrupt former Attorney General Pam Bondi, but somehow survived. The White House is reportedly already discussing his replacement, and a former official described Mr. Patel as “rightly paranoid.” According to The Atlantic, Mr. Trump called Mr. Patel personally to complain about the Olympic locker-room footage, which I think would make any bureaucrat of character nervous. So, Mr. Patel is in the doghouse, in an administration notorious for kicking dogs to the curb.
Paranoid is all too apt, unfortunately—over the last year, there have been multiple reports that FBI agents are subject to polygraphs where they are questioned about Mr. Patel’s enemies and whether or not they were talking shit about Mr. Patel.
Mr. Patel has sued The Atlantic and Ms. Fitzpatrick for $250 million in defamation over its story. Heh. I am excited for discovery—the magazine gleefully counted its sources per assertion like a flex. The opening anecdote alone, Mr. Patel’s April IT-lockout meltdown, is attributed to nine sources. The article drew on “more than two dozen” sources, including current and former FBI officials, law-enforcement and intelligence staff, hospitality-industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives, lobbyists, and former advisers.
There is nothing more under Mr. Patel’s surface than he shows. He might be good for a beer, but he is a sycophant, and a liar, and thinks we cannot see him. No wonder he debases himself, showering Ms. Wilkins in gifts like a simp. It cannot be easy or pleasant to listen to his bullshit and excuse-making, unless he is paying for the tolerance.
Long before the FBI jet, Mr. Patel was “Coach Kash” to a Northwest DC youth hockey team, a man who showed up to practice in his suit. By the testimony of his former players, he was intense, no-nonsense, seemed to care, and was not the freak who now shows up on their televisions. Mr. Patel made himself so unlovable. He would have been happier had he stayed in the ordinary world, returned to coaching youth hockey, and found meaning in service to his community instead of robbing the taxpayer for his extravagances.
Mr. Patel brought Ms. Wilkins to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 25, 2026. He ought to have been ashamed to show his face there—it was recently reported he attempted to open a criminal investigation against a New York Times reporter for covering his relationship and hurting his girlfriend’s feelings. The WHCA ought to have disinvited his ass.
But as they say, the arc of the universe bends toward justice. During the shooting, Mr. Patel was captured on video crouched on the ballroom floor looking dumbfounded, and Ms. Wilkins was spotted by an NYT reporter in a separate room holding another man’s hand. How lewd! Hopefully, he was a security officer and Mr. Patel did not get publicly “kucked.”
Ms. Wilkins told the Daily Mail: “I was only ever holding Kash’s hand!” But then, what else could she say? She would never admit it. Now that Thirty Mile Zone has opened a DC bureau, I hope they get to the bottom of this, because if I—the American taxpayer—must fund this tawdry affair, I want the tea.
No less than the Doctor of Democracy, Rush Limbaugh, once argued that if the American taxpayer was funding Sandra Fluke’s contraception, the public was owed something in return—“the videos of all this sex posted online so we can see what we are getting for our money.” By that standard, the American taxpayer is owed at least some “hot goss.” It is an unkind insinuation, but I doubt Mr. Patel would have extended any more courtesy to somebody on his enemies list.
Curiously, Mr. Patel was specifically exempted from the WHCD shooter’s manifesto. Cole Tomas Allen’s written statement indicated that “administration officials (not including Mr. Patel)” were considered “targets.” It was unclear why Mr. Patel was spared—perhaps Mr. Allen will elaborate, because Mr. Patel’s old friends on the right now claim the shooting was an inside job and the shooter was his best friend.
This, too, is a fate Mr. Patel earned. He has been a connoisseur of conspiracies himself, and so what he has done to others, he shall receive. I never think that MAGA believe their conspiracy theories to be literal fact; rather, I see them as expressions of their discontent with individuals. If this grumbling has any meaning, he has lost the confidence of the cult ever since he helped participate in the Epstein files cover-up.
The Atlantic’s story suggested that Mr. Patel’s allies in the West Wing are keeping the storylines about the jet, the drinking, and the partying away from Mr. Trump’s attention, because Mr. Patel will surely be fired if the president ever decides to focus on them. Which means our FBI director only has his job because Mr. Trump has not gotten around to hearing about his nonsense.
Since the story was published, Mr. Patel has been making constant public appearances doing right-wing crank shit like charging former FBI Director James Comey for threatening to assassinate Mr. Trump by photographing seashells reading “8467” and absurdly indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center, presumably to clean up his boozehound image and curry favor. He has only proven his paranoia. This is the mania of a man who knows the jig is almost up, but not exactly when the curtain will fall.
The FBI’s response to the story has been to comically overcorrect. No, the FBI says, Mr. Patel is not chronically absent—he is “at FBI headquarters nearly every single day,” and when he isn’t, he is “visiting field offices… more frequently than any of his predecessors.” He must be the LEAST absent director the agency has ever had! This seems unlikely. Under Mr. Patel, the complaint goes on, the FBI has captured “twice as many” of the Ten Most Wanted “in this Administration alone as during the entirety of the prior Administration”; driven “a 20% decrease in homicide rate”; disrupted “more than 2,000 gangs and criminal enterprises”; located “more than 6,300 child victims”; and seized “more than 2,500 kilograms of fentanyl… enough to kill more than 189 million people.” So: Mr. Patel doesn’t drink, doesn’t miss work, doesn’t take vacation, and works harder than every modern predecessor. Surely he has earned a few drinks for that.
Mr. Patel wants to have two lives: one in which he is the smartest, soberest, most hard-working FBI director in history (who happens to dabble in conspiracy), and another where he rocks and rolls all night and parties every day. These cannot be balanced, and in so trying Mr. Patel further exposes what was already deducible: Kash is a fuck-up. Could be a chorus, or a rap hook. Kash is a fuck-up. Kash is a fuck-up.
When I think about the near future, when Mr. Patel will not be the FBI director, the phrase that comes to mind is “#PACKWATCH #RIPBOZO REST IN PISS YOU WON’T BE MISSED 💯💯🤣.” After a year of his exhausting drama, Mr. Patel showed he will not exceed anyone’s low expectations, and besides that, will be happier doing anything else. Perhaps he could get back on his t-shirt hustle, flex his creativity. Then, he could learn to love himself, instead of making the country suffer while he pretended to be a serious person.