The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “quisling” as a traitor. The Britannica dictionary offers a somewhat more specific definition: “a person who helps an enemy that has taken control of his or her country.” You’d have to be pretty heinous to have a word like that named after you, but Vidkun Quisling, the Nazi collaborator who led Norway during Hitler’s occupation, deserved it. Tried in Oslo for treason and a shitload of other crimes, he was executed in 1945.

Norwegians might hate me for saying this, but I think it’s time to give “quisling” an update — because, right here in the United States of America, we have an embarrassment of traitors crying out for such enshrinement.

Today, I’m introducing a new TBR Sunday Read feature: Traitor of the Week. In addition to finding a replacement for “quisling” in the dictionary, I hope to provide an important public service.

When the current fascist regime ruling the US comes to an end—as all things do—there will be tribunals in which the worst traitors will be held to account, much as Vidkun Quisling was in Oslo. Winnowing the list of Trump’s many enablers will be arduous, time-consuming work. By shining a light on the most egregious of the lot, I hope to assist whoever is ultimately assigned that daunting task.

Bessent’s nomination as Treasury Secretary drew praise from many in the business community, who found his decades-long career in mainstream finance reassuring. At any rate, he wasn’t plucked off the couch at “Fox & Friends.”

And he wasn’t a raving MAGA ideologue, either—he’d even had a stint working for the GOP’s most-despised liberal supervillain, George Soros. While running Soros’s London office in 1992, he made a shrewd bet against the British pound which wound up costing the UK billions and helped put a fork in the Conservative government.

After Trump tapped Bessent, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, president of the Yale Chief Executive Institute, called the nomination “a huge relief,” adding, "Bessent is reasonable and pragmatic.” He easily won Senate confirmation, by a vote of 68 to 29, with the support of 16 Democrats.

Bessent sure didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d then turn around and give Elon Musk’s computer-science dropouts unprecedented access to the US Treasury’s computers.

That development sufficiently alarmed five former Treasury Secretaries—Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew, and Janet Yellen—to impel them to write a New York Times opinion piece entitled, “Our Democracy Is Under Siege.”