This screw up by Michael Waltz is a hydra headed monster. It says a lot about Waltz, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and the state of the intelligence community. But there are repercussions which go way beyond one chat about one military exercise. If it could end there, it would be bad enough. But it won’t end there. Now the issue is raised as to how secure our intelligence operatives abroad are. And our allies were already feeling skittish about sharing intelligence with us. This debacle this month pretty much seals the coffin. And you can’t blame our allies. Put yourself in their shoes and ask what you would do?
Some U.S. allies are considering scaling back the intelligence they share with Washington in response to the Trump administration’s conciliatory approach to Russia, five sources with direct knowledge of the discussions told NBC News.
The allies are weighing the move because of concerns about safeguarding foreign assets whose identities could inadvertently be revealed, said the sources, who included two foreign officials.
Every intelligence agency treats its commitments to foreign agents as sacrosanct, pledging to keep agents safe and shield their identities. Anything that jeopardized that obligation would violate that trust, former officials said, and that could lead some spy services to hold back on some information sharing with Washington.
The allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and members of the so-called Five Eyes spy alliance of English-speaking democracies, are examining how to possibly revise current protocols for sharing intelligence to take the Trump administration’s warming relations with Russia into account, the sources said.
“Those discussions are already happening,” said a source with direct knowledge of the discussions.
The NBC News story quoted from was published March 8. You think that those discussions haven’t tripled or quintupled by now? The handwriting is on the wall that America is no longer an ally like it used to be and our allies are going to take the hint. And then J.D. Vance’s hostility towards Europe has been obvious and has only become more pronounced with SignalGate.
On the thread, Cabinet and other top-level officials discussed plans to launch military attacks on the Iran-backed Houthi paramilitary group in Yemen, which had been disrupting commercial and military routes in the Red Sea. Vance expressed his disagreement that the strikes (which began on March 15) would benefit America instead of Europe.
“3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” Vance messaged the chat group. After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz made the case for having America use its power to clear the shipping lanes, Vance appeared to relent, but not without a kiss off: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (Hegseth responded to Vance to assure him “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”)
And Europe fully shares sane America’s (the half that didn’t have that necessary 1.5% of the vote) view of what an utter fool and incompetent both Hegseth and Vance are. They are both so wildly out of their league and over their head that it is stupifying. But, that said, they are calling the shots because Trump is indifferent and out playing golf.
In just a few leaked texts, we have a sharper understanding of just how Vance views Europe: an ungrateful and parasitic beneficiary of American largesse. It’s an outlook he’s revealed fairly consistently throughout his relatively brief political career, but rarely in such unguarded terms and in ways that put him at odds with President Donald Trump. And as an obvious frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president in 2028, Vance has a chance to continue reorienting American foreign policy toward an almost antagonistic relationship with Europe.
Criticism of Europe, particularly from the American right, is hardly a new phenomenon. There are countless areas where American interests are at odds with some of our largest European allies—their overreliance on Russian oil, for instance, or their opposition to American withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. And there are legitimate debates to be had about some of the Trump-Vance bugaboos involving Europe, such as the need for other NATO member countries to spend more on national defense or limiting expansion of membership to NATO or the EU.
But needling our European allies has been one of Vance’s signature moves during his vice presidency, and he does so in ways that seem designed more to win plaudits from his base of support at home rather than achieve diplomatic ends in Europe.
His address at the Munich Security Conference in February upbraided leaders in Europe for their lack of commitment to free speech. He name-checked numerous laws across several European countries limiting speech they deemed hateful or offensive to certain people or groups. He reiterated the administration’s belief that Europe needs to “step up” and contribute more for its own security. And he criticized Romania for canceling its presidential election in December over concerns that Russian-backed propaganda was improperly skewing the outcome.
“But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with,” Vance said.
And of course there was the disgrace with Zelensky in the Oval Office that Vance instigated and now there’s the idiocy with Denmark and Greenland. Now Vance wants to accompany Usha to Greenland. Great. The Greenlanders and Danes can hate both of them now.
Vance is drunk with power and does indeed see himself as the inheritor to the MAGA throne. But there may not be a MAGA throne to inherit. Steve Bannon has been pushing the constitutional amendment/third term theme for one reason: He’s smart enough to know that when Trump dies, MAGA dies with him.
MAGA is a charismatic cult. Once the charismatic leader is gone, there will be no more MAGA. That is not to say there won’t be Trumpism. No, Trumpism is the dark devil that has been with us all along, long before Trump and it will be here long after him. The racism and misogyny was merely in remission, but by no means was the disease gone in America. Trump just made it okay to be a racist, misogynist and even he admits that his favorite target, the transgender people, are a tiny percent of the population.
When was the last time in your memory that less than one percent of the population got the same kind of vitriol directed at them? I can’t think of any occasion. It would be equivalent to Trump picking a group of people, let’s say those with heterochromia (one eye a different color from the other) and attacking them. They’re a very small minority as well. In fact, there are fewer of them, about 200,000 in the United States as opposed to the 1.6 million transgender people in a population of 330 million. So hey, maybe Trump can trash the heterochromatic people next. It makes as much sense. The average heterochromatic person has the same effect on your life as the average transgender person which is: zero.
Trumpism will endure, just as Nazism has endured. Hitler and Trump are merely the focal points. They’re the lenses through which the evils of a culture become fine tuned and achieve a laser focus. Their type has come and their type has gone. And will return again.
So for now what we need to do as Americans is focus on the lasting damage that Trump and his cadre of clowns with flamethrowers can do. We cannot control the damage Trump will do in the next 588 days until the 2026 election. But we can take action to win back both chambers of Congress.
And paradoxically, our greatest ally in doing that is Trump himself. Every time Elon Musk does something stupid and illegal and every time the likes of Waltz, Hegseth and the rest flub up, that puts us one step closer to regaining the republic.
The townhalls are the canary in the coal mine. If you don’t believe that, ask the Republican elected officials who are too terrified to hold one. John McCain was fond of cynically saying, It’s always darkest….before it turns pitch black.” He’s right. But at the end of the darkest and longest night, the sun will come out. Trump, too, shall pass. It will be like a national kidney stone and very painful, but Trump, too, will pass.
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Friends, if you can help out with a small donation we would be grateful. We intend to be here for the duration of all this madness. We’re facing an industry-wide downturn as a lot of people step back from politics for their sanity. I don’t blame them. But we’re on the front lines here and we can’t step away. We’re committed to being in the forefront of the fight. In any event, thank you for coming here to read. We’re in this mess together. Ursula
The only way to get our status back in the world is to get rid of them any way possible. Get rid of them. All of them no matter how
Nope, I have to disagree with you. The world will always see 50% of the US population leaning towards that kind of leadership and looking at the stories of all the people arrested and put in FOR-PROFIT jails for weeks on end for no reason whatsoever, or the glaring lack of a high court (who can trust a court where 67% of the judges are quite obviously corruptable politicians and not judges) and know, the USA cannot be fixed. It will, for the foreseeable future, lurch between sane and insane government, and it will be decades AT BEST til the sane world trusts it again. Trump being gone will not fix the lens thru which the world sees the USA.
What Trump and MAGA have done with America’s good name, and trustworthiness is going to take a generation or more to repair. Why would anyone else trust a society and people so poorly educated, and corrupted by money and naked selfishness?
How can you trust a failed democracy until the things that made it fail have been proved to be fully excised?
I agree in part. The US has never before been run by actual madmen. There has always been a thread of rationality even within the racism and misogyny and pettiness. There are those like James Carville and some at The Bulwark who think it has to get worse before it can get better; I tend to agree with them. But I do not see this ending well even though I think it must be ended soon if there is anything left to save.
What people overseas can’t understand is that Trump got elected a SECOND TIME.
How can a whole country be so stupid?