Alarming Signals

 

I don't know how long Pete Hegseth is planning on sticking around at Defense but maybe he shouldn't make it long?

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.

Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Really. It's like there is some kind of huge problem in the Trump Administration where people have no sense whatsoever regarding how business should even be conducted. Starting right at the top, of course.

Why Yes, It Does Look Like a Lot of Crimes

 

Now that we have the messages, please go compare what it's in it to the CENTCOM classification guide provisions below. This all very clearly classified at at least the SECRET level.

There was quite a bit of perjury yesterday. https://t.co/ohpct4dDRV pic.twitter.com/HAAB6RtIlV

— Secrets and Laws (@secretsandlaws) March 26, 2025

Jeffrey Goldberg followed up on yesterday's bombshell with more receipts, and well, yes, The chat itself is sketchy, Mike Waltz added Goldberg to the chat himself, the information Pete Hegseth shared with the group is what you might call "born classified" secret or top secret-level intelligence because it includes what weapons and what times, and yes, they were probably avoiding presidential record-keeping by having the chat set to disappear after a week and yes, cabinet member lied under oath about what happened, and while we are at it, a whole apartment building seems to have been leveled to get to one guy, which feel very war-crime-y. 

White House officials want to play semantic games but this is just what we're looking at--what they actually said, what statues and policy actually say. And who the journalist was or his political affiliation does not change those bare facts. 

Pobody's Nerfect!

 

Salazar: Remember, they're just starting in the job… Let's see how they do the next two years. And then we can judge them. But not because of one mistake that they put a reporter. Maybe they made a mistake and they put that. I mean, listen, those who do not have any sins, they… pic.twitter.com/aZrldiTswL

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 25, 2025

I think there's nothing more off-putting for me than the idea that you can actually brush off a national security breach with "But they're new!"   Like, this is an argument for if the waitress gives you a burger with pickles and you definitely said, "Hold the pickles," but it is not an argument for cabinet-level officials who have an insecure chat on their personal phones (because those work phones shouldn't even have Signal on them) and have others on the line who have no business accessing that information.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard literally evaded questions today in a way that implied she was not familiar with classification as a process or policy regarding secure comms. You'd think, wouldn't you, that sort of thing would be part of the basic job requirements, wouldn't you? Cabinet positions aren't entry-level--some competency is required. 

Every Picture Tells A Story

 

https://t.co/4WcVZ6oW4w pic.twitter.com/RvHmjuyWIN

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) March 22, 2025

I am trying not to see Steve Witkoff's interview with Tucker Carlson in the worst possible way and there is not actually a not-bad way to view it. First of all, Tucker Carlson? Second if all--we are just going to pass on with a straight face that the former KGB agent prayed after the Butler incident as if that is not serious applications of narcissist lube?

And of course we are, because Witkoff is another fucking significance-junky looking to get high off ego strokes. This is a personality the Kremlin is totally aware of. But what sends me is the idea of a portrait.

Trump's "charity" slush funds was all about Trump portraits.  All Trump ever wanted to know about himself was that he oughta be in pictures. (Can someone help me with a thing where I wonder why Trump sees himself as Norma Desmond, Grizabella and Evita?) He's a just a diva. And Witlesskopf is playing very stupid and credulous, too.

And it doesn't appear to be an act. 

Not for the first time, I find myself wondering if anybody knows how to play this game? Look, stupid rich fuckboys, I THOUGHT, at least were sent out in the world with some idea that the world was going to try to blow smoke up their skirts and to be careful of being rolled. Ane here these putzes sit, heaven's own bocce balls. Innocent as little fawns in a sunlight-gilded bower in the eye of a sniper rifle. 

What is Intelligence, Anyway?

 

 

Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed for Director of National Intelligence and sworn in and we're just going to see about that, aren't we? 

Does it sound like I have issues with this? Well, yeah. I was a little surprised that Sen. McConnell was the only Republican who voted against her, but it seems that the Senate GOP have decided that they aren't picking these fights with Trump and are just going to let him have what he wants. I do not think they are being honest with themselves about what he wants or what the results will be of giving it to him. 

The position of DNI was created in response to intelligence failures leading up to 9/11. The point of the office was to coordinate our various intelligence agencies and correlate the information into more cohesive overviews. But intelligence is only as useful as the people looking at the products. 

And I simply don't have faith in Tulsi Gabbard's judgment. 

TrumpWorld Kakistocracy 2: Trolling?

 

In a timeline where Fox News personality Pete Hegseth could be SecDef, sure, why not float former Democratic Rep. Tulsi "Russia's Girlfriend" Gabbard for DNI and now-former GOP Rep. Matt "Hookers'n'blow" Gaetz to be Attorney General.

Senator John Fetterman suggests that the choice of Gaetz as "god-tier kind of trolling" on Trump's part, and while this is not wrong, I regretfully have to confess that I think just because it's trolling doesn't mean that he can't get in. I mean, my first thought was "stalking horse". That's the art of the deal, right? You throw out a name like Matt Gaetz, and then when he's cast aside, literally every other choice seems more sane. 

But that's assuming Trump is playing by regular rules, and I don't. I think the idea that he's considering wild stuff like adjourning congress and recess-appointing people is not really out of the question if he really does see Trump 2.0 as his revenge tour. 

This Looks Interesting

 

It has taken everything I have to NOT write another bitchy little post about the people who seem to have voted for Trump with all the intentionality and forethought of someone getting lotto scratchers at the gas stations, and while something deeply petty in me would love to go over the hapless folks whose web searches looked like "what is the ACA?"; "student loan forgiveness reversed?"; or "how to change my vote"--I can't. 

Sometimes things will just have to play out for people to really see what is happening. 

But in line with long-standing "Strangely Blogged" TrumpWorld traditions--this looks interesting. It seems like RU comms has gone to "everyone knows what we did and everyone knows what is expected of him."  Dmitry Medvedev has suggested that maybe Trump could wind up like JFK. Nothing threatening there, right?

Anyway, US intelligence was pretty quick this year letting us know about the podcaster payoffs and Russian-based bomb threats to voting sites. It feels like this year they were a little more--I dunno--in our face about it?  So are they just doing a little "friendly "propaganda? Or are they really implying that the incoming president is well and truly held by the short and curlies? 

I know a lot of intelligence professionals before the election thought for sure Trump was a unique national security threat.  But, like newspaper endorsements--things like that only sink through to an electorate that even reads. (Oh--I looped back to that again, didn't I?)

TWGB: The Failing Man

 

Trump's having a weird week--yesterday, he gave an answer to the question of how to make childcare more affordable that made JD Vance sound like Mr. Policy King by giving us nothing and landing on we're a "failing country". He was applauded when he finished his rambling response which did not go into policy details (sorry to Chris Sununu) and didn't even contain a complete sentence (sorry to Bobo Kennedy) but because he finished talking, which was all anyone wanted him to do at that point. 

Then, earlier today, he decided that the best way to handle his appeal of the first civil case judgment of defamation for his sexual assault victim would be to give a press conference where he defamed her(again!) and mentioned other (alleged) sexual assault victims of his. And he referred one of the women as not "the chosen one" as if to indicate sometimes he does pick out potential assault victims, but in his long career of doing this, she does not meet his exacting standards. 

He followed this up with another rally thing where he forgot he wasn't running against Joe Biden and also made a weird non-joke about Nancy Pelosi's house having walls that did not stop the man who attacked her husband and gravely injured him. (Which says something about walls not working. An odd thing to note about a crucial gimmick of his political career.) 

This is why Joe Biden nailed Trump today, calling him "a failing man." 

Biden: My predecessor believes America is a failing nation. He is a failing president and a failing man pic.twitter.com/ZTnez17ImR

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 6, 2024

And that sums it up--Trump projects: nothing is his fault, his blame, his fuckup.  But the more he casts his insulting, perverse, negative view of the world, the more you can understand the sickness in him. 

TWGB: All the Bad Guys

 

Convicted Felon Trump bragging about colluding with Russia in front of all our faces because his supporters are rubes that will support him no matter how treasonous. pic.twitter.com/TKaQfkcZpG

— Tim Hannan (@TimHannan) June 4, 2024

It is fitting that convicted felon Trump chose to once again advise us that he was colluding with Russia just as we hear President Biden make a very clear statement regarding Trump: "All the bad guys are rooting for Trump, man." Putin is a bad guy who has taken a prisoner--effectively a hostage. He's a terrorist. And Trump says, basically, that his terrorist friend will release the hostage if he wins the election. 

Imagine that kind of friendship. "My hostage is your hostage." It sounds like...Trump is a goddamn terrorist too. A hostage taker. 

This is something people need to understand about Trump--in fact, it's something that our foreign allies already do. David Rothkopf, writing for The New Republic, describes the fear of a Trump presidency folks in the former eastern bloc countries experience, knowing he's willing to bargain away their freedom. McKay Coppins in the Atlantic reports in a similar vein: allies are worried that we do not appreciate the threat of a transactional and authoritarian leader inimical to the concept of democracy. 

Red Flag Warning--Who Are They Working For?

 

You know, if there are GOP congresscritters who are spouting Russian propaganda (and OMG--there sure are!) maybe we should pay attention to what legislative activity they also seem to be doing on behalf of Russia. 

When Marjorie Taylor Greene talks about Ukraine like NATO invaded it and they are Nazi or anti-Christian, she is directly aping Putin, and what she is saying is pure lies-shouldn't we be very interested in where this fool, who has yakked about Jewish space lasers and spread Q nonsense, gets her information? 

Maybe we should be more curious about why Scott Perry believes Ukraine shouldn't be supported because they can't win. I truly want to know where Tommy Taterhead is getting his extreme nonsense POV from. He seems to have Ukrainian public servants confused with Russian oligarchs. 

Would You Believe---Russia?

 

For the first time, 60 Minutes is reporting that multiple sources say a senior official of the Department of Defense, was struck by the mysterious symptoms, coined Havana Syndrome, and sought medical treatment at last year's NATO Summit. https://t.co/RNG5twMYLn pic.twitter.com/CGUOoOewUG

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 1, 2024

This is the most believable and also weird story happening recently. It's probably too easy to dismiss vague symptoms of some unknown origin as being anything but a kind of mass hysteria, but because of the nature of who was experiencing the "syndrome" and so on, it being a Russian op feels both too on the nose and a little like: "Who else?" 

But it is also absurd--we aren't living in Cold War times anymore, right? Except that we never stopped being in one. We (the US, apparently) thought when the Soviet Union failed, our relationship had radically changed. But that isn't exactly what happened. 

TWGB: The Only Winning Move

 

The disqualification trial of Fulton County DA Fani Willis saw a decision that enabled the case to continue, as Willis stays on while her top prosecutor, Nathan Wade, leaves the case--but we also learn that the judge in the Trial, Scott McAfee, faced threats and was concerned about getting security for his family. This is appalling, but not an unusual feature of TrumpWorld. McAfee, a conservative, will be treated by MAGA as having been somehow biased (I checked Twitter--they are GRUMBLING) when it is hard to objectively state what was uncovered in the trial more than a mere appearance of impropriety. 

He made as fair a decision as he could. He chided Willis for her conduct. It's not enough. 

From what I can tell, the lesson of TrumpWorld is similar to the lesson of playing "tic-tac-toe" in the 1983 movie WarGames--the only winning move is not to play. It means a little something different here though--it's the choice of game. You don't win at appeasing MAGA. You win only by doing your job. In other words--how about a nice came of chess?

Mike Pence knows this one. He just recently explained why he could not endorse Donald Trump, his old running mate, for president. Trump required him to do something illegal and unconstitutional to show his loyalty and he could not. In return, his life was threatened, and Trump to this day considers Pence "disloyal". It seems clear that to Trump's mind, you cannot serve two masters: the Constitution and Trump.  It also stands as a stark warning to other would-be GOP VP nominees--he will not be someone you serve with, just someone you serve. I can only ask what the conscience of a conservative has to say about that.

Biden's Memory and Hur's

 

Memory is a motherfucker. That's something I picked up from Death and Other Details. But also from reality. Grief doesn't fix things into stone, like when you lost someone. You still have them, as a part of you, like a phantom limb, wearing their conversations in your mind. It can be a comfort and not a comfort all at once. You might know facts intellectually, but they don't exist in your lived reality. It's like two things, overlapping--what did happen, and what it feels like. 

Being human, being mortal, is weird. It just is. But the funny old thing is, Joe Biden is actually tracking quite well with reality. He has a lot of life experience. He can tell you about it in great detail. Damn near photographically. He also has had access to classified information and knows very well what to do and not to do with it. And his situation was not one damn thing like former President Trump's. There is no way to determine intentionality with what was retained by Biden, and some of what Hur looked at was diaries that were not a part of the PRA. Hur's characterization of Biden's memory was gratuitous and biased. 

TWGB: Bust Out?

 

BREAKING - Trump moved docs from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster in 2022, according to another Trump employee who confirms what has long been reported - including this video from spring 2022:

pic.twitter.com/eUxW1sESVV

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) March 12, 2024

The savvy among you know perfectly well this blog title isn't about how the classy ladies of Mar-a-Lago are wearing their cleavage this year but is actually a term of art. The above reference in the embedded Tweet to Bedminster reminds of that quintessentially New Jersey show--The Sopranos.

There's a great episode that lets us know what Tony Soprano's business is--Bust Out. Davey Scatino, a gambler, thinks he understands who Tony Soprano is and what his business is. He thinks they are friends. But his business is ruined because he's in debt to Tony. Why? Business, and respect. Tony is a mob boss. His business is getting paid back in full. Friendship doesn't get in the way of that. 

When Trump was betrayed by the American people by their not re-electing him, he took a few things from the White House. (He would have taken things anyway.  He takes. He's funny that way.) For all I or you know or The Mahoff of Jabib knows, he still has documents at Bedminster, where one of his Mar-A-Lago employees has broken omerta and told us he knows some of these boxes of documents went there. A lot of water has run under the bridge since then. It would be great if it could be confirmed there is still something there. (I'm guessing a legal pretext for a warrant needs something more substantial than "COOMMMME OOOONNNNNN!")

I just think maybe it's time to see a case opened up in New Jersey. "Loose" Cannon seems to be okay with giving Trump infinite delays. And I am definitely not. 

Anyway, TrumpWorld has officially taken control of the RNC, and changes are being made--big changes. There will be dozens of staffers let go, and believe me, any replacements will be Trump loyalists. You can already foresee what the fundraising goals will look like. And where the money will go. How assets will be used. How "help" will be steered to the Trumpiest candidates for down ticket offices, if at all, and might even be withheld for candidates that just aren't Trumpy enough. All with the strategic know-how of people named Trump or Yunaska or behind the scenes ass-wipers from the set of Celebrity Apprentice. 

TWGB: Trump and the Missing Binder

 

The recent story about a binder of raw intelligence regarding Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election is--

Well, I would say shocking if I a) didn't already not put anything past the Trump Administration, b) didn't assume that was exactly the sort of thing that would disappear. The Obama Administration thought this was exactly the sort of thing Trump would make disappear and made a little list of items that would definitely be missed. 

And of course, Trump was trying to declassify what I've always assumed was some but not all of the Russian interference intelligence because that "Russia, Russia, Rusia" thing sat over the White House during his term no matter what denials he ever made about it. 

(It's very hard to deny something on Twitter, and then turn around and be like "Hey kids, let's do a joint cycbersecurity with Putin!" and not sound like your head was up Vova's ass. Or giving Israeli intelligence to Russia.  Or halting aid to Ukraine. Or any of the other "deliverables" Trump seemed to want to give Putin since oh, Day One of his first term, He'll be doing the same Day One of a second term as well, while also being a dictator.) 

Two-Tiered Justice System Stuff

 

They are different people. They did different things. Of course they aren't being treated the same. You could explain it to a five year old. https://t.co/MZDuZgNbaq

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) June 20, 2023

Josh Hawley, who is a US Senator and not some dumb guy on a barstool in Shithouse Falls, MO (does he even live in Missouri?) is going to pretend that Hunter Biden is being treated with the softest of kid gloves while poor, poor, mistreated waif Donald Fucking Trump, a goddamn billionaire who actually was president once (hopefully never again) and was supposed to be Mister Manly Alpha Male personified, is the most persecuted forlorn little disregarded pumpkin in the whole pumpkin patch. 

A pumpkin who apparently did felonies. Not misdemeanors. Felonies. 

Call me slow on the uptake. I wondered at the idea of a two-tiered justice system from the real perspective of the poor and minority persons in this country getting the short end of the stick regarding charging and sentencing alike. It didn't naturally occur to me that what Republicans were getting at is that they thought Democrats were just forever getting off with light sentences or whatever and somehow, SOMEHOW!!!! Republicans were just being charged left and right and for no reason, and especially poor, sad, elderly, possibly addle-pated Mr. Trump. a man bereft of opportunities to defend himself, barely capable of funding a legal team on his own, who has to struggle to fight his multiple felony charges in different venues. 

The justice system's discrimination against blue-eyed blond billionaires is notorious, no? 

No? Isn't there a history of the DOJ just fucking with Republicans until the sun don't shine?

Not especially. 

TWGB: The Notorious Box-Grabber

 

Baier: Why not just hand them over? Trump: Because I had boxes, I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things pic.twitter.com/PwW85wlTzH

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 19, 2023

They are his things! His precious! And he wanted to keep the things!  Trump had them, and didn't want to give them over. He was told they weren't his things, he felt differently. How do we know? He keeps telling us:

He wanted them back in 2022, he wants them back now. 

They are his "Beautiful mind" material.  What the whole hell:

During President Donald J. Trump’s years in the White House, his aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the “beautiful mind” material.

It was a reference to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of John F. Nash Jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by Russell Crowe, who covered his office with newspaper clippings, believing they held a Russian code he needed to crack.

The phrase had a specific connotation. The aides employed it to capture a type of organized chaos that Mr. Trump insisted on, the collection and transportation of a blizzard of newspapers and official documents that he kept close and that seemed to give him a sense of security.

They were his PRECIOUS! And we keeps the preciouses close we does. 

Violence By Other Means

 

The promised indignant rampage of aggrieved MAGAs never did materialize, probably in part chastened by the real world sentences of the leaders of the 1/6 melee and with no clear goal available to them (stop Trump's arraignment today, and it only goes on another day...), so we never saw the American Carnage that marked the end of Trump's brutally stupid one-term reign. 

But what we did see was a brutal violence against truth--as in the above screen cap from Fox News, describing Biden as a "Wannabe Dictator" who had "his political rival arrested". Or, maybe, Biden is a president whose DOJ followed up on leads that Trump took documents that he had no business having, asked nicely to get them back, and then was lied to and had to issue a search warrant because they were after all, the property of the US Government, and not Mr. Trump's. Culminating in the selection of a Special Counsel once Trump announced he was running again for the office for which his one-term, twice impeached ass was manifestly unfit.

It has nothing to do with President Biden. Trump took the docs himself and is responsible for what he did with them--period. Trump choose to pretend he didn't still have docs when he did--he failed to turn over docs that were requested. He can pretend he thought they were his, but the law says no. The Presidential Records Act, which a lot of people think let Trump off, does no such thing--it reiterates that government documents created are the property of the US government and not the President. And Trump stopped being president January of 2021, no matter what fantasies his lil fanclub wants to entertain. This warping of reality is a form of violence. It is intended to create a false impression with the idea that people might act on that. Blame Biden for what, as anyone understanding the rule of law might understand, any AG might have charged Trump for. 

(This wasn't Biden or even his AG--but the result of an investigation by a Special Counsel, yet.)

Where the MAGA Buses Run

 

It looks like Trump wants a MAGA crowd to greet him on Tuesday, and FWIW, I recommend exactly zero counter-protestors show up, because if Trump, Inc. puts out a "Y'all Come!" it isn't for you babies, except as a trap.  Let MAGA folks, Proud Boys, Patriot Front, people who just like dressing up in an American flag, getting on busses, and yellllllliiiing, go do their thing. And let the Florida National Guard handle things if they get out of pocket in some major violent way or whatever. Because no self-respecting governor would let people go wild in his own state, not white supremacists and extreme right-wing militia folks and whatnot. 

Truly, it would be a real leadership crisis for whatever was running the state this trial is being held in!

Luckily...

OMG.  I mean. Wow.

No. Obviously, Ron DeSantis is an intelligent man and will skillfully sort out how to not have MAGAs run riot in his state in a way that doesn't alienate the MAGAs and makes the rest of the country think he knows what end is up. He has a high EQ like that, doesn't he? 

Hmm?

Sorry, I was disassociating. No really. No reason to think this will be a January 6th style shitshow. Except that many of those people are still out here.  And never got the message that Trump lost fair and square, isn't a good politician at all, and probably is guilty of all kinds of crimes. 

What was the phrase? "Will be wild"?  That ethos is coming to Florida.

Trump's main primary opponent better hope not, and also, too....

(I gave my last sympathies at the office.) 

TWGB: It's Really Very Damning

 

Um, the thing with the nuclear secrets and the boxes of stuff just being out where anyone would see them is real. The pictures are like some freaky episode of  Hoarders. Mar-a-Lago staff was calling these boxes "Beautiful Mind Paper" because TFG was obsessed with them. Did I spend the last half-dozen years going around saying "It looks bad because it is bad?" Because shit, look upon the goddamn works of your trunkless idol and despair!

The indictment: Trump had documents about U.S. defense and weapons capabilities and U.S. nuclear programs. pic.twitter.com/vHLwdgWSk0

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 9, 2023

Yes. Nuclear program stuff.   Kept in places as insecure as a bathroom and a ballroom, in a country club where randos, including foreign nationals, just wander in and out all the time.  This was revealed after the absolutely damningest transcript of all time, save one:

The transcript of the audio recording suggests that Trump is showing the document he’s discussing to those in the room. Several sources have told CNN the recording captures the sound of paper rustling, as if Trump was waving the document around, though is not clear if it was the actual Iran document.

“Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump says at one point, according to the transcript. “This was done by the military and given to me.”

This here is classified--please, non-eligible person to receive this data, look.