Tag Archives: national security

national news, national security

Waltz is out … what about Hegseth?

1 Comment

National security adviser Mike Waltz has been shown the door by Donald J. Trump for his role in the leak of sensitive material via a social media platform.

Hey, I’m good with it. Trump needed to get him the hell out of there.

But … wait a second. What about the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the clown Trump appointed to run the Pentagon and who also, by the way, is involved up to his armpits in the same matter that befell Waltz?

Trump has surrounded himself with ignorant boobs, buffoons and misfits. Chief among must be Hegseth, the former Fox talk show host who got elevated to run the world’s most lethal military operation. Watch him today, and you get the impression he still is pandering to a right-wing TV audience while discussing military policy matters … of which he knows not a damn thing.

Waltz got caught sending material out via a social media platform. It was highly classified material. The same kind of material that Hegseth blabbed about to his wife and other family members.

Trump once boasted in 2016 while forming the executive branch of government that he would hire “the best people.” It didn’t happen then and it hasn’t happened this time around. He hired an education secretery, Linda McMahon, who recently confused AI, shorthand for artificial intelligence, with “A-1,” a brand of steak sauce.

Robert Kennedy Jr., a premier conspiracy theorist and vaccine denier, now runs the Health and Human Services Department, and is threatening to endanger the lives of children and teenagers throughout the world.

Now, Trump has declared he “runs the government and the world.” Huh? Yeah. He said that. Except that he runs only one third of the federal government, the one lined out in the Constitution as the excutive branch.

I’m glad Mike Waltz is no longer providing national security advice to the Numbskull in Chief. He’s only one of many who need to go.

military news, national security

Hegseth: an unqualified disaster!

Manning a post that puts someone in charge of the finest miliatary organization in world history requires an individual with immense talent and knowledge of the intricacies of geopolitics.

What did Donald Trump get when he selected Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense? He got a buffoon who has spilled the beans hither and yon about deeply classified military intelligence. Now we hear that Hegseth, the former Fox talking head, has let his phone number be known around the world.

This clown is a threat to the 1.5 million men and women who wear the uniform of this great country.

Hegseth’s top staff is bailing on him. The Pentagon has turned into a clown show. Think about that for a moment: the Pentagon has become a laughingstock!

And why? Because the president of the United States needed a blind loyalist to lead the world’s most lethal military force. He didin’t look for anyone with any smarts, any organizational skill, any sense of the gravity of the information he possessed.

Instead, he hired a dipshit.

And a dangerous one, too!

I guess we can set aside all the crap about his alleged mistreatment of women, or his alleged heavy drinking on the job. Now we need to worry that this moron is blabbing to anyone who will listen about top-secret military matters.

Get him the hell out of there!

national security

Trump brings chaos back to White House

2 Comments

Jeb Bush perhaps had the most apt description of Donald Trump’s candidacy back when the two men competed against each other for the 2016 Republican Party presidential nomination.

Bush, the former Florida governor, said Trump would be the “chaos president” if elected. Well, he was elected that year and by golly, he brought chaos into the Oval Office with him.

Here’s some cheery news for those who voted for him the second time around: The chaos hasn’t gone away, as there will be plenty more of it when he takes office on Jan. 20.

Spoiler alert … I was not among those who voted for Trump either time, but you knew that already. Allow me to say, “I told you as well that this would happen.” 

An attorney general nominee already has backed out amid a tidal wave of criticism over his (lack of) qualifications for the job. The defense secretary-designate is facing another storm of criticism, as is the proposed health and human services secretary, the next director of the national intelligence and the FBI director-designate.

Chaos, anyone? Anyone?

Trump keeps boasting of his intelligence. How he plans to recruit the “best people” to serve in his administration. He is recruiting nincompoops to key national security posts. I will concede that not all of his picks fall into that category, but damn!

What the hell is this guy thinking when he chooses a sworn anti-vaxxer to serve as HHS head, a guy who wants to destroy the FBI while serving as its director, an accused sexual assailant and a right-wing TV blowhard to run the Pentagon, and someone who sympathizes with an accused war criminal as DNI.

I thought we were better than to elect someone such as this guy. I guess I was mistaken.

crime news

That’s what I call ‘speedy’

You want Donald J. Trump to go through a “speedy trial” in connection with the document pilfering for which he has been indicted?

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon said “OK” to one, setting a tentative trial date of Aug. 14 — that’s this coming Aug. 14! — for Trump to seek to fend off allegations that he put our national security at risk by squirreling away classified documents in his mansion as he left the White House.

To be sure, Cannon’s trial date is sure to get pushed back, as both sides likely will want more time to prepare for trial.

But … holy fast-track, Batman! This is what I call speedy in the truest sense of the term.

What makes it so remarkable is that Judge Cannon is seen as a Trump ally, given that the ex-POTUS nominated her to the federal bench. She also had been rebuked sternly by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals over some rulings she handed down in the handling of those documents right after the FBI seized them.

I have to hand it to Cannon, though, for placing this matter on the fastest track … ever!

I just hope the expected delays won’t keep us from reaching a verdict fairly soon in what looks for all the world like a slam-dunk case compiled by the special counsel and his team.

[email protected]

crime news, national news, national security, political news

‘Trump is done’

Brian Karem, a writer for Salon, is preaching to the proverbial choir when he declares the storm that’s a brewin’ might be the one that takes out Donald Trump, sends him home to … wherever.

And then he’ll be gone from our consciousness. Presumably for the rest of his time walking this good Earth.

That’s my hope. That’s the hope, apparently, of a growing number of Americans who have grown sick, tired and bored out of their skulls at Trump’s one-note samba that kicks out the lyrics to The Big Lie.

Read Karem’s latest essay here:  A storm is coming: It might sweep Trump and the GOP into history’s dustbin (msn.com)

I have been struck by the stone-cold silence from the Trumpkin cabal of cultists over the documents the FBI seized at Trump’s posh estate. Not even the likes of Jim Jordan, or Rand Paul, or Lindsey Graham, or any other of the Trump cult followers can come up with an explanation on how top-secret documents found their way from the White House to Trump’s South Florida pad.

Then we hear from Trump himself, saying in a totally insane social media rant that the FBI grabbed the documents from his desk and scattered them on the floor for the world to see.

What the hell? That is a defense of what Trump did? Good grief, he just admitted to breaking federal law!

As Karem said in his essay:

So, yes — there is a storm coming. It’s not a civil war. It’s a reckoning — and I reckon the GOP would rather not face it. All the Democrats have to do is show up and vote, and the Republicans’ beloved Supreme Court gave them an excellent reason to do so.

The FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was merely an affirmation that those eager to flee the GOP needed, to let them know their instincts were right. When the facts are understood, Donald, it turns out that nobody likes a traitor.

[email protected]

crime news, national news, national security, political news

All eyes on DOJ, but wait …

Millions of Americans — such as me — are fixated at the moment on the U.S. Department of Justice seizure of those “highly classified” documents from Donald J. Trump’s glitzy home in Florida.

I keep hearing an endless string of legal analyses that suggest an indictment of someone — perhaps the ex-president — is inevitable.

Let’s be clear, though, about something that is getting buried under all the rhetoric about the DOJ probe: It is just one of several investigations underway concerning the criminal behavior many of us believe occurred during the entirety of Trump’s single term as POTUS.

What’s brewing? Let’s see:

  • A Fulton County (Ga.) grand jury is looking into whether Trump tampered with election results by demanding that the Georgia secretary of state “find” enough votes to turn the election result there from pro-Joe Biden to pro-Trump.
  • The New York attorney general is examining whether the Trump Organization falsified its assets to (a) obtain favorable loans or (b) avoid paying debts it owes.
  • The House 1/6 select committee is probing whether Trump committed an act of sedition against the U.S. government by inciting the attack on the Capitol and then was derelict in his duty as POTUS by refusing to call off the attack once it commenced, resulting in injury and death to police officers and at least one attacker.

That’s several full plates, don’t you think?

Of all those probes, the one that needs to be finished soon is the congressional investigation. The midterm election well could result in Republicans taking control of the House and we all know what’ll happen then: the GOP leadership will shut it all down and will pretend there is nothing to see.

There happens to be plenty to see and do, which makes the House panel’s work all the more urgent.

It’s almost enough to make me wonder how in the name of sanity does the former president or those closest to him avoid being charged with some criminal act. I cannot assess which of the potential charges are forthcoming, or which of them will emerge as the most serious.

I do have this nagging gut grumble that’s telling me that when the legal eagles finish their work, we’re about to see history made in a way that will make the 45th POTUS a mighty unhappy man.

Shall we all just stay tuned?

[email protected]

crime news, legal news

Keep it secret, feds

Now comes word that Donald J. Trump and his dwindling ranks of allies want the federal government to unseal the affidavit that prompted the judge to approve a request by the FBI to search Trump’s south Florida home for criminal evidence.

I’ll join those who suggest that releasing that document would be a mistake, that it could compromise the probe and that Attorney General Merrick Garland acted in good faith when he sought permission to send in the agents.

The FBI has collected a substantial amount of paperwork that Trump took from the White House when he left office in January 2021. Some of it appears to be, um, highly classified. That’s a no-no. There could be violations of the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act that the Justice Department will consider as it ponders whether to indict the former POTUS.

The affidavit, though, is another matter. I am all in favor of transparency. However, if it compromises a criminal investigation, then there ought to be limits on how much we see.

As I have noted before, I trust the AG implicitly to be a man of high honor and integrity. He said he will “follow the law” wherever it leads. I believe he is doing that. He also is arguing that the affidavit need not be revealed for all the world to see.

Let the man and our Justice Department do their job.

[email protected]

crime news, national news, national security

Hard to grasp consequence of probe

I hereby acknowledge the difficulty I am having in trying to wrap my noodle around the events of this week involving Donald J. Trump and the search that revealed what the world has learned he had squirreled away at his luxurious South Florida digs.

A major part of me wants the Justice Department to proceed with all deliberate speed in determining whether the ex-president committed crimes in taking highly sensitive documents out of the White House. My ol’ trick knee, which I acknowledge has been unreliable at times, is telling me that Attorney General Merrick Garland has the goods on The Donald.

His public statement, brief as it was, this week explaining what he approved and then his stout defense of the FBI and DOJ suggested to me that Garland is riled up.

I will offer an admittedly half-hearted salute to Trump for agreeing to allow the search warrant to be unsealed. He is going to play the victim card and his base is going to scarf it up. The rest of us should be prepared for what might be coming … and possibly sooner than we anticipate.

That would be a criminal indictment against a former president of the U.S.A. The charge? I don’t know. Violation of the Espionage Act is one possibility. So is a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

What perhaps is the most glaring mystery to me is trying to determine what in the world Trump expected to do with what the FBI agents recovered. It’s been reported widely that Trump doesn’t read documents. He was infamously impatient with daily national security briefings and never looked — or so we have been told — at the reams of papers his national security staff delivered to him each day.

And did those documents fetched from Mar-a-Lago contain nuclear secrets? If so, then … holy crap!

We know already that some of the documents were of the highest security levels imaginable. And a president cannot just de-classify them because he gives the word.

I maintain my implicit faith in the attorney general’s integrity. What remains to be determined is whether he has the courage to withstand what will be a torrent of rage if he delivers on what I now believe he must … which is a criminal indictment against a former president of the United States.

[email protected]

crime news, national security

It wasn’t a ‘raid’

One man’s “raid” is another man’s “search,” which of course depends on which side of the great divide you stand.

As I listen to the commentary after the FBI search of Donald Trump’s South Florida digs earlier this week, I am left to presume that the right-wing media have bought wholly and fully into The Donald’s description of the event as a “raid.”

It was nothing of the sort.

The Justice Department sought a search warrant from a federal judge. DOJ officials cited “probable cause” to believe a crime might have been committed. The judge agreed. The FBI entered the glitzy palace … in the presence of one of Trump’s legal advisers.

They left Mar-a-Lago with about a dozen boxes of documents.

It wasn’t a “raid.” Trump’s home was not “under siege,” as the former POTUS said initially. It was all done legally in accordance with federal law and, oh yeah, the U.S. Constitution.

Therefore, I will not refer to the event as a “raid.”

I now will wait — along with the rest of the nation — to learn what the FBI found. That ol’ trick knee of mine tells me they recovered even more evidence that is going to put Donald John Trump into more trouble.

[email protected]

national news

Lock him up?

Donald J. Trump used to relish hearing crowds chant “Lock her up!” when the issue turned to how Hillary Clinton handled her email operation during her time as secretary of state.

You’ve seen the video of the Republican presidential candidate just letting the cultists go on and on. Right? Sure you have!

Well, what do we have now? We have reports that as a lame-duck POTUS, the White House hauled 15 boxes of classified information out of the presidential residence and sent them to Mar-a-Lago, Fla.

The Justice Department is now in the midst of an investigation into whether someone broke the law when The Donald exited Washington for his glitzy resort. Hmm, do ya think?

Donald Trump was the most ignorant imbecile ever elected to the nation’s highest office. He had no respect for the law or the secrets he took a solemn and sacred oath to protect.

I am left to simply shake my head and to wonder whether I should lead a chant of my own to “Lock him up!”

[email protected]