Where is Arthur Conan Doyle when we need him? Or for that matter, Sigmund Freud? We are in desperate need of somebody with a knowledge of the human psyche and the ability to do deductive reasoning, preferably both. Because Trump is elementary, my dear fellow, in everything he does. He’s an idiot. But he is a predictable idiot. There is some method in his madness. Tuesday afternoon Trump (who didn’t work at all today, beyond playing golf) took to Truth Social and did one of his manic binge posts. Here we go again.
“Other than the Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, the Biggest Scandal in American History is the “AUTOPEN!” Whoever used it was usurping the power of the Presidency, and it should be very easy to find out who that person (or persons) is,” Trump wrote Tuesday.
He went on to accuse Biden – whom he suggested is not of “sound mind,” of approving policies he would never have otherwise supported, including “Open Borders, Transgender for everyone, men in women’s sports, and far more.”
“Fear not, however, we will bring America BACK, BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!” the MAGA leader added.
Moments earlier, Trump praised himself for his actions in Alaska while blaming the Biden-Harris administration for dismantling “job-producing” initiatives there.
“Nobody has done more for Alaska than your Favorite President, DONALD J. TRUMP. However, the Biden/Harris Administration terminated MUCH of our good, JOB producing product,” he said on Truth Social.
In yet another post in quick succession, Trump turned his attention to Maine, where he claimed credit for restoring fishing rights “viciously taken away” by the Obama-Biden administration. He blamed Biden’s “autopen” for rejecting a deal he said he had previously made and declared, “as the World knows, I ended up winning the Election of 2024 in a LANDSLIDE.”
I love the allegation that Joe Biden was not of sound mind, when these are the ravings of a lunatic.
So now you’ve got the lay of the land. WHAT is Trump’s problem today? He didn’t work but maybe he talked to one or more of his aides and clearly something set him off — and put him on the defensive. So what could that be? I think that Trump is trying to distract because he’s gotten wind of some problem in the air. And I think it may have to do with Pete Hegseth — who will do something explosive. He already has with the SignalGate scandal. I think Hegseth’s illegal wiretap is the next conflagration in the White House and that’s what Trump is reacting to.
The White House has lost confidence in a Pentagon leak investigation that Pete Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides last month, after advisers were told that the aides had supposedly been outed by an illegal warrantless National Security Agency (NSA) wiretap.
The extraordinary explanation alarmed the advisers, who also raised it with people close to JD Vance, because such a wiretap would almost certainly be unconstitutional and an even bigger scandal than a number of leaks.
But the advisers found the claim to be untrue and complained that they were being fed dubious information by Hegseth’s personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who had been tasked with overseeing the investigation.
The episode, as recounted by four people familiar with the matter, marked the most extraordinary twist in the investigation examining the leak of an allegedly top secret document that outlined options for the US military to reclaim the Panama canal to a reporter.
The advisers were stunned again when Parlatore denied having told anyone about an illegal NSA wiretap himself and maintained that any information he had was passed on to him by others at the Pentagon.
The leak was first attributed internally to Hegseth’s senior adviser, Dan Caldwell, who was escorted out of the Pentagon and fired last month alongside two other aides, Hegseth’s former deputy chief of staff, Darin Selnick, and the deputy defense secretary’s chief of staff, Colin Carroll.
But the illegal wiretap claim and Caldwell’s denials fueled a breakdown in trust between the Pentagon and the White House, where the Trump advisers tracking the investigation have privately suggested they no longer have any idea about who or what to believe.
In particular, one Trump adviser recently told Hegseth that he did not think Caldwell – or any of the fired aides – had leaked anything, and that he suspected the investigation had been used to get rid of aides involved in the infighting with his first chief of staff, Joe Kasper.
The fraught situation is sure to increase pressure on Hegseth ahead of a Senate hearing next month, and more broadly for his office, which has been roiled by the leak investigation that has now continued for nearly a month with no new evidence or referral to the FBI.
We have said here many times in the past, and I stand by my prediction, that when a major debacle happens, it will be in Pete Hegseth’s department and his screw up. Hegseth is way in over his head. He is going to self immolate at some point. The only issue is: what will be the collateral damage? What will happen to the Pentagon, national security, and issues of that grave a nature?
Nobody has any confidence in Hegseth, most probably not even Trump. I think it’s safe to say that Trump would ax Hegseth himself if it wouldn’t make him lose face. Hegseth got confirmed only because Trump was willing to play dirty and coerce Joni Ernst and a number of other senators. Even with all that going on, Hegseth still had to get confirmed by a tie-breaking vote by J.D. Vance. When Mitch McConnell said go screw and voted Hegseth down, that was a bellwether.
Hegseth is the worst. And this newest debacle with the illegal wire taps and the firings are either going to be what brings him down or they will be the preamble to what finally brings him down. He has no allies of consequence. He leads a huge government department and the vast majority of the men and women serving under him think he’s a fool. And they’re right.
Plus, Hegseth is paranoid as hell. That’s what made him do the illegal wiretaps to begin with. A paranoid practicing alcoholic in the chain of command is the stuff of black comedy, but alas, this isn’t Dr. Strangelove and we could have some monumental catastrophe ready to break.
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Zoomers, if you are able to support the blog, we would appreciate it. I’m coming off of a spate of illness (another doctor’s appointment tomorrow) and I just haven’t been in the trenches with the rest of the troops. So we are hurting. But we all intend to rally and build the site back up. Thank you for any help you can give. Ursula
His Big, Beautiful bill squeaked through the House in the dead of night, but looks to be headed into much stronger headwinds in the Senate. It will be interesting to see how McConnell votes if it does actually make it that far. Maybe it will just get scuttled in committee and that could be what sent the mentally disturbed man-child into his thumb tantrum.
The auto pen is the new bleach bit. He has no idea how it works.
On your point that the only reason Trump doesn’t just fire Hegseth is that Trump doesn’t want to lose face. Yes, I would have said that too, even after the original Signal scandal. But what I find most extraordinary at this point is that Hegseth has provided so many really good reasons for being fired that I think Trump’s “face” in originally picking him would not be especially noticed — yet he’s still terrified to fire him.
The fact is, Trump lost face as soon as he hired these bozos, because everyone — including the Senators who confirmed them — knew they were disasters in the making. I’m sure some of them even rationalized their vote with the thought that most of them wouldn’t last long. After all, Trump his first time round was constantly firing people. Remember Anthony Scaramucci? His firing was so famous it even gave rise to a new unit of measure, the Scaramucci or “Mooch,” a period of 11 days, which is how long he lasted.
OK, the Mooch was not a cabinet member. But Trump fired at least six of his cabinet:Tom Price from Health and Human Services; Rex Tillerson from the State Department; Scott Pruitt from the EPA; Jim Mattis from the Pentagon; John Kelly from Homeland Security; and Jeff Sessions, from Justice.
So what’s the big deal? The only thing I can think of is that none of those first-term cabinet members were really his own idea — he actually had a lot of advice — whereas those for his second “King Donald” reign really are his own picks. Considering how extraordinarily bad they are, they almost had to be. And that’s the reason Trump can’t bring himself to fire them. He’s such a total narcissist that his biggest concern is losing face in his own eyes.
Everybody else would be relieved, seeing it as a glimmer og=f good judgment — at least until he picked their replacements. But it may be that Trump is worried he wouldn’t be able tp find any replacements, thy are so perfectly awful the only he would find would have to be better, a thought which must cause him great distress.