The Pentagon on Tuesday ordered a couple thousand paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to deploy to the Middle East, U.S. officials said, as President Donald Trump weighs a significant escalation in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and declines to rule out putting U.S. troops on Iranian soil.
Army paratroopers assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, prepare to board an aircraft in 2020. (Hubert Delany III AP)
U.S. officials approved written orders for soldiers from the division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team and the 82nd’s headquarters at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, said two U.S. officials and a third person familiar with the move, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Verbal orders previously had been approved, two people said. It is not yet clear whether they will deploy to Iran itself, officials said.
Many of the soldiers are with the division’s Immediate Response Force, a unit that is trained to deploy on 18 hours’ notice for missions as varied as seizing airfields and other critical infrastructure, reinforcing U.S. embassies and enabling emergency evacuations. Immediate Response Force duties rotate among infantry units in the 82nd Airborne Division.
The orders follow weeks of speculation about whether the 82nd Airborne, commanded by Maj. Gen. Brandon Tegtmeier, would join the war, after its headquarters unit abruptly pulled out of a training exercise early this month at Fort Polk in Louisiana as Trump approved a sustained bombing campaign against Iran.
Last week, U.S. officials said the Pentagon was making plans to send soldiers from the 82nd Airborne to key areas in Iran, but it was not yet clear if the administration would approve the deployment to the region or, more specifically, onto Iranian soil.
The Army deployment comes as three warships carrying about 4,500 troops from the Tripoli Amphibious Ready Group neared the Middle East. The group includes the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Okinawa, Japan — a specialized Marine Corps unit that includes about 2,200 personnel, including an infantry battalion of about 800.
A similar unit, the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, recently deployed early from San Diego but is weeks away from arriving in the Middle East. The unit, embarked on warships that include the USS Boxer, could eventually replace or supplement the 31st MEU in the region, officials said.
Wednesday Reads: Trump’s War in Iran and Other News
Posted: March 25, 2026 Filed under: just because | Tags: 82nd Airborne, Donald Trump, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Iran military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaghari, Iran War, Iran war negotiations, Jack Smith, Jared Kushner, JD Vance, Pakistan, Paul Krugman, Steve Witkoff, Strait of Hormuz, TREASON 7 CommentsGood Day!!
I’ve been scanning the headlines for awhile now, trying to make sense of what’s happening in Trump’s war with Iran. I’m still confused.
Trump keeps saying that he’s already won the war, but he’s sending thousands of troops to the region. He apparently sent a peace plan to Iran that they have already rejected, offering an alternative proposal.
CNN has a summary of the latest moves in the war: What to know on Day 26 of the Iran war: Tehran taunts Trump, US troop deployment.
Iran’s military has mocked the Trump administration’s efforts to strike a deal to end the war, saying the United States is only “negotiating with yourselves.”
Despite President Donald Trump’s optimism that a deal with Tehran is in sight, sources have told CNN that around 1,000 US soldiers with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division are expected to deploy to the Middle East in the coming days, suggesting the president is keeping his options open.
Ebrahim Zolfaghari
The latest on the talks:
- Iran taunts Trump: Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesman for Iran’s military, taunted the US leadership in a message broadcast Wednesday on state television. “Has the level of your internal conflicts reached the point where you are negotiating with yourselves?” he asked. Zolfaghari said the US’ “strategic power” had turned into a “strategic defeat.”
- Trump touts talks: That mocking message came after Trump expressed optimism over a deal to end the war, saying that Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others were leading negotiations.
- 15-point plan: The US has shared a 15-point list of expectations with Iran via Pakistan, with talks between the warring countries floated in Islamabad later this week, two regional sources told CNN. Those points include limits on Tehran’s defense capabilities, a cessation of support for proxies and an acknowledgement of Israel’s right to exist, the sources said.
- Iran shuns Witkoff: Iranian representatives have let the Trump administration know that Tehran does not want to reenter negotiations with the US president’s favored diplomatic duo of Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, according to two regional sources, who said Tehran would rather deal with Vance.
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Iran willing to listen: An Iranian source told CNN on Tuesday that Washington had initiated “outreach” in recent days, “but nothing that has reached the level of full-on negotiations.” The source stressed that Iran “is not asking for a meeting or direct talks with the United States but is willing to listen if a plan for a sustainable deal comes within reach” that would preserve the regime’s interests. Initially, Tehran had denied any contact with Washington, saying that Trump’s claim of talks was a ruse to lower energy prices and buy time.
There’s much more on what’s happening at the CNN link.
More details from BBC News: Pakistan officials say Iran receives 15-point US plan – AP.
The Associated Press news agency reports that Iran has received a 15-point plan from the US for reaching a ceasefire in the US-Israel war with Iran, citing two Pakistani officials.
The Pakistani officials reportedly said the proposal broadly covers the following:
- Sanctions relief
- Civilian nuclear co-operation
- A rollback of Iran’s nuclear programme
- Monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency
- Missile limits, and access for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said earlier that the country was “ready” to host talks for a settlement of the conflict.
Israel’s Channel 12 has also reported on the plan. You can read a full breakdown of the reports in our earlier post.
There’s been no confirmation of the details from the White House. Iranian military has denied it’s negotiating with the US.
The Strait of Hormuz
Iran has rejected the U.S. plan and offered an alternative. AP: Iran rejects US ceasefire plan, issues its own demands as strikes land across the Mideast.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran on Wednesday dismissed an American plan to pause the war in the Middle East and launched more attacks on Israel and Gulf Arab countries, including an assault that sparked a huge fire at Kuwait International Airport.
Iran’s defiance came as Israel launched airstrikes on Tehran and as the United States deployed paratroopers and more Marines to the region.
Iranian state television’s English-language broadcaster quoted an anonymous official as saying Iran rejected America’s ceasefire proposal and has its own demands for an end to the fighting. “Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met,” the hardliner-controlled Press TV quoted the official as saying.
Earlier, two officials from Pakistan, which transmitted the U.S. plan to Iran, described the 15-point proposal broadly, saying it addressed sanctions relief, a rollback of Iran’s nuclear program, limits on missiles and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped.
An Egyptian official involved in the mediation efforts said the proposal also includes restrictions on Iran’s support for armed groups. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet released.
Some of those points were nonstarters in negotiations before the war: Iran has insisted it won’t discuss its ballistic missile program or its support of regional militias, which it views as key to its security. And its ability to control passage through the Strait of Hormuz represents one of its biggest strategic advantages….
Press TV cited an Iranian five-point plan for a ceasefire coming from the official who rejected the US proposal. That plan included a halt to killings of its officials, means to make sure no other war is waged against it, reparations for the war, the end of hostilities and Iran’s “exercise of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.”
Those measures, particularly reparations and its continued chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz, likely will be unacceptable to the White House.
According to the above AP article, Trump is still claiming that Iran is negotiating with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, but according the BBC article above, Iran has said it won’t talk to them but would talk to J.D. Vance.
Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo at Axios: Iran suspects Trump’s peace talk push is another trick.
Iranian officials have told the countries trying to mediate peace talks with the U.S. that they have now been tricked twice by President Trump and “we don’t want to be fooled again,” according to a source with direct knowledge of those discussions.
The big picture: The U.S. is pushing for in-person peace talks as soon as Thursday in Islamabad, Pakistan. But during the two previous rounds of U.S.-Iran talks, Trump green lit crippling surprise attacks while still claiming to be seeking a deal.
Flashback: Israel attacked Iran with Trump’s backing last June, days before a planned round of nuclear talks.
- Then three weeks ago, the U.S. and Iran reached a tentative agreement in Geneva to continue talks the following week — two days before the U.S. and Israel attacked.
Behind the scenes: Iranian officials have told the mediators — Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey — that U.S. military movements and Trump’s decision to deploy major troop reinforcements have increased their suspicion that his proposal for peace talks is just a ruse.
- To the Trump administration, the massing of forces is a sign he’s serious about negotiating from gunboats, not that he’s negotiating in bad faith. “Trump has a hand open for a deal and the other is a fist, waiting to punch you in the f***ing face,” said a Trump adviser.
- The White House has sent messages to the Iranians that Trump is serious about the negotiations, and floated Vice President JD Vance’s possible involvement in the talks as proof.
- Two sources said Witkoff recommended Vance because of the stature of his office and because the Iranians don’t see him as a hawk.
Read more at Axios.
Trump is ordering troop movements. The Washington Post (gift link): Army paratroopers ordered to Middle East as U.S. weighs next move in Iran conflict.
Use the gift link to read more.
U.S. allies are confused about what Trump is doing. Victor Jack, Chris Lunday and Esther Webber at Politico: Trump’s ‘absurdly incoherent’ Iran pleas leave allies befuddled.
BRUSSELS — Donald Trump’s messaging on what he wants from American allies in his war against Iran is so confusing that any effort to help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz remains deadlocked, according to four European government officials.
Washington has not made any formal requests for equipment, said the officials, who were granted anonymity to speak freely on the sensitive talks, while allies are also reluctant to send military assets to the region over fears they would be attacked by Iran.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier
More than 30 nations, including a majority of NATO countries, have pledged “appropriate efforts” to restart shipping through the critical trade chokepoint after the U.S. president slammed allies as “COWARDS” for failing to volunteer their assistance.
But so far, discussions remain in their very early stages, according to government officials from seven European countries.
“One would wish for more predictability, more clarity and more strategic foresight — not only in this case,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told POLITICO on Tuesday, adding: “Let’s wait and see.”
The slow-moving talks reflect Trump’s conflicting messaging more than three weeks into his war against Iran — where he has threatened allies for failing to back his campaign, then said they weren’t needed, all while providing scant detail on how they could support the U.S.
The lack of enthusiasm about getting involved also underscores Europe’s growing self-confidence in dealing with Washington, as the continent increasingly shifts its approach from placating Trump to confronting him over a war allies were not consulted on.
“This war violates international law,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Tuesday. “There is little doubt that, in any case, the justification of an imminent attack on the U.S. does not hold water.”
Let’s face it: despite journalists’ efforts to make sense of what Trump is up to, it’s highly unlikely that he himself has any clue about what he is doing.
, and Inside Trump’s daily video montage briefing on the Iran war.
Each day since the start of the war in Iran, U.S. military officials compile a video update for President Donald Trump that shows video of the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours, three current U.S. officials and a former U.S. official said.
The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes, sometimes longer, the officials said. One described each daily video as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up.”
The highlight reel of U.S. Central Command bombing Iranian equipment and military sites isn’t the only briefing Trump gets about the war. He’s also updated through conversations with top military and intelligence advisers, foreign leaders and news reports, the officials said.
But the video briefing is fueling concerns among some of Trump’s allies that he may not be receiving — or absorbing — the complete picture of the war, now in its fourth week, two of the current officials and the former official said.
They said the videos are also driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing, one of the current U.S. officials and the former U.S. official said.
That sounds about right for Trump’s childish comprehension level.
In non-war news, Trump’s theft of government documents after his first term is back in the headlines.
Carol LeonnigJacqueline Alemany at MSNOW: Trump appeared to have business motive for keeping classified documents, Jack Smith finds.
Special counsel Jack Smith gathered evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump took many top secret documents that related to his worldwide business interests, and investigators considered this a likely motive for Trump concealing them at his Florida club after he left the White House, according to newly released case records.
The special prosecutor also had evidence indicating that after leaving office Trump had shown a classified map to passengers on a private plane, including his future chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and took at least one document that was so secret that only six people had authority to review it, according to a memo reviewed by MS NOW and cited by the House Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
Trump’s stash of documents in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom
Trump’s reason for taking hundreds of pages of classified documents when he left office in January 2021 — and then concealing them when the Justice Department subpoenaed him for their return in May 2022 — has been one of the larger mysteries of the case. FBI agents conducting an unannounced search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022 discovered hundreds more pages of top secret records that Trump and his lawyers had failed to return to the government after claiming they had fully returned all classified materials.
In a January 2023 “progress memo” reviewed by MS NOW, Smith’s office discussed the possible motive after the FBI discovered that Trump held on to many documents related to his businesses.
“Trump possessed classified documents pertinent to his business interests — establishing a motive for retaining them,” according to the memo, which tracked progress in the documents and election-interference investigations. “We must have those documents.”
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, Raskin insisted that Trump’s Justice Department has sought to cover up the details of Trump’s “hoarding” of classified government secrets and storing them in his Mar-a-Lago club’s showers and closets — which put national security at risk — as well as the clues to Trump’s motives for doing so.
“These new disclosures suggest that Donald Trump stole documents so sensitive that only six people in the entire U.S. government had access to them, that the documents President Trump stole pertained to his business interests,” Raskin wrote to Bondi.
“This glimpse into the trove of evidence behind the coverup reveals a President of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself.”
More from Jeremy Roebuck and Maegan Vazquez at The Washington Post: Trump showed classified map to passengers on his plane in 2022, memo says.
President Donald Trump showed a classified map he retained from his first term in office to passengers on a 2022 private plane flight and retained another record so sensitive that only six high-ranking government officials had access to it, according to a prosecution memo released to Congress this week.
The memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post, was penned as investigators moved toward indicting Trump on charges of illegally retaining sensitive government material after he left the White House. It offers a snapshot of an early moment in Smith’s investigation and adds new shading to the public understanding of Smith’s probes, even as a final report on his findings remains under court seal.
The memo, for instance, reveals that Smith’s team gathered at least some evidence to suggest that Trump had retained classified material pertinent to his personal business interests and that prosecutors were investigating whether his decision to hold on to those records was motivated by financial gain.
The eventual indictment — filed against Trump five months after the memo was written — did not mention Trump’s business interests as a possible motive. That could suggest prosecutors ultimately concluded they did not have sufficient evidence to prove that theory at trial. It is also not uncommon for prosecutors to leave some allegations out of their initial charging documents, even if they intend to prove them later at trial.
Jack Smith
The memo recounts an alleged incident in which Trump, on a June 2022 flight to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, allegedly shared a classified map with passengers. Among them, according to the memo, was Susie Wiles, then the CEO of Trump’s super PAC, who has since become Trump’s White House chief of staff. The memo did not detail what the map showed.
Smith’s 2023 indictment of Trump included a similar claim that Trump in 2021 had shown others a classified map tied to a military operation and boasted that he had access to a “plan of attack” that the Pentagon had prepared for him.
The Justice Department shared those findings, detailed in a January 2023 briefing document written by then-special counsel Jack Smith’s team, with lawmakers as they conduct a review of Smith’s now-abandoned efforts to prosecute Trump.
Has Trump shared these documents with Putin and his other world leader pals? I’d be surprised if he hasn’t. Remember, those documents were returned to Trump after the charges were dropped.
One more story before I wrap this up. Paul Krugman says that whoever is cashing in on Trump’s war announcements is committing treason.
From Heather Cox Richardson today: Letters from an American.
This morning, economist Paul Krugman came right out and said it: “People close to Trump are trading based on national secrets.” Another word for that, he said, is “treason.” The evidence for such a claim is the sudden and isolated jump in trading volume in S&P 500 and oil futures about 15 minutes before Trump suddenly announced that the U.S. and Iran were in negotiations to end the war—an announcement that turned out to be false.
The oil futures trade alone was worth about $580 million, the Financial Times estimated. As Krugman notes, exploiting confidential information for financial gain, otherwise known as “insider trading,” is illegal. But exploiting confidential information about national security for private financial gain is something else again. It puts profit-making above Americans’ safety.
“I’d very much like to know exactly who was making those trades yesterday morning,” Krugman wrote. “Were they people directly in the know, or billionaires/traders who paid people in the know for tips?”
That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?
Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump’s “Personal Vietnam?”
Posted: March 14, 2026 Filed under: just because | Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu, corruption, Donald Trump, dubai, Gaza, Iran War, israel, Jared Kushner, Karg Island, Lebanon, Mohammed bin Salman, Pete Hegseth, Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Embassy Bagdad, UAE 4 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
I’m sick and tired of wars. I’m even more sick and tired of Trump and his cabinet full of stupid idiots. I came of age during the Vietnam war. After that disaster finally ended, I really thought our leaders would stay out of unnecessary wars. But it didn’t happen. These men (goddess forbid we elect a woman president!) just have to prove their “manhood” by attacking other countries. I’m just plain sick of it.
Trump’s war could turn out to be worse than the ones George W. Bush got us into. It appears he was talked into attacking Iran by his pal Bibi Netanyahu and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is very close to Netanyahu as well the crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman. Trump was also looking for a powerful distraction from the Epstein scandal. Now Netanyahu appears to be trying to turn Lebanon into another Gaza, and Kushner is soliciting more money for his private businesses.
It also appears that Trump and his gang of idiots didn’t plan for the obvious results of their war–rising prices and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. In addition, Trump’s “Secretary of War” is advocating for war crimes. That’s where things stand so far.
Here’s the latest:
William Christou at The Guardian: Entire families wiped out and towns emptied as Israel’s war on Lebanon intensifies.
For Batoul Hamdan and her two children, seven-month-old Fatima and Jihad, three, Monday’s iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, was special.
For a week, they had eaten to the sounds of bombs in their home in Arab Salim. Hamdan eventually decided to leave for Al-Nimiriya, the sleepy town where she had grown up. Surrounded by her parents and siblings in the family home, she hoped they could finally enjoy the festive mood of Ramadan.
They had just finished their meal when the bomb fell. The Israeli airstrike collapsed the two-storey building instantly, killing all eight members of the Hamdan family: grandparents Ahmad and Najib, their children, including Batoul, and grandchildren Fatima and Jihad – three generations wiped out in a moment.
On Thursday, only snarled rebar and broken concrete remained of the Hamdan family home. The fragments of their lives – a certificate of achievement from the children’s schooldays, cutlery from their cabinet, frayed purses – had been ejected by the force of the blast and now littered the ground.
“There was no warning before the strike. My own two kids started to cry, I picked them up and started to run away from the explosion when it happened,” said Qassem Ayoub, a neighbour and town police officer, as he stared at the wreckage. “Why were they targeted? I don’t know, ask the Israelis.”
Batoul and her loved ones were among the 773 Lebanese people – including more than 100 children – killed by Israel’s campaign in Lebanon since 2 March. They join a growing list of families completely wiped out by Israeli bombings, in a conflict whose death toll is rising faster than in any previous war in Lebanon.
Forty-one people were killed by Israeli airstrikes in Nabi Chit in the Bekaa valley in only five hours last Saturday, and 18 people died in a single night in the town of Sir el-Gharbiyeh on 8 March. The pace of death has stunned Lebanese people and left them struggling to keep up.
Do you think Netanyahu will stop these attacks on Lebanon if Trump calls off his war in Iran. I don’t.
By Avalon Atelier
Kareem Chehayeb and Malak Harb at AP: War has already displaced nearly a million Lebanese, and aid groups warn of a humanitarian crisis.
BEIRUT (AP) — Fatima Nazha slept on the street for two days after she and her family fled their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs following an Israeli mass evacuation order.
All of the schools the government turned into shelters were full, and the family couldn’t afford a hotel or an apartment, so she and her husband eventually moved into a tent in the country’s biggest stadium while their kids and grandchildren found shelter near the southern coastal city of Sidon.
In just 10 days, more than 800,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced by war, just over a year since the last conflict uprooted over a million Lebanese from their homes. That’s one in every seven people in the tiny country, according to humanitarian organization the Norwegian Refugee Council. Many don’t have a place to stay, and the cash-strapped government has only been able to accommodate roughly 120,000 people as it scrambles to open shelters and bring in more supplies.
Nazha, who uses a wheelchair, said being forced from her home has been far more difficult this time than when Israel and Hezbollah were last at war more than a year ago. The strikes targeting the Iran-backed militant group have been more intense and unpredictable, and Israel’s evacuation order came abruptly, leaving her unable to gather all her belongings.
“The strikes used to target a specific area, but now they’re hitting all the areas,” she said, taking a drag off her cigarette. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Friday that more than 700 people, including 103 children, have died in the war.
Read more at the AP link.
But Netanyahu isn’t satisfied yet. Barak Ravid at Axios: Israel planning massive ground invasion of Lebanon, officials say.
Israel is planning to significantly expand its ground operation in Lebanon, aiming to seize the entire area south of the Litani River and dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, Israeli and U.S. officials say.
Why it matters: This could be the largest Israeli ground invasion of its northern neighbor since 2006, dragging Lebanon to the epicenter of the escalating war with Iran.
- “We are going to do what we did in Gaza,” a senior Israeli official said, referring to the flattening of buildings Israel says Hezbollah uses to store weapons and launch attacks.
The big picture: An operation of this size and scale could lead to a prolonged Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
- Lebanon’s government is deeply alarmed that the renewed war — triggered by Hezbollah’s decision to launch rockets at Israel — will devastate the country.
- The Trump administration backs a major Israeli operation to disarm Hezbollah, but is also pressing to limit the damage to the Lebanese state and pushing for direct Israel-Lebanon talks on a postwar agreement.
Driving the news: Until days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was still trying to contain the Lebanon escalation in order to stay focused on Iran, according to Israeli officials.
- That calculus changed Wednesday when Hezbollah launched more than 200 missiles in a massive coordinated attack with Iran, which fired dozens of its own.
- “Before this attack we were ready for a ceasefire in Lebanon, but after it there is no way back from a massive operation,” a senior Israeli official said.
State of play: The IDF has had three armored and infantry divisions on the Lebanese border since the start of the Iran war, with some ground forces conducting limited incursions over the past two weeks.
By Kim Haskins
And what is Jared Kushner up to now that he got Trump to help Netanyahu with his bloodthirsty plans?
Rob Copeland and Maureen Farrell at The New York Times (gift link): Jared Kushner Solicits Funds for His Firm While Working as Mideast Envoy.
Jared Kushner, one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East, is trying to raise more money for his private equity firm from governments in the region.
Mr. Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm, according to five people with knowledge of the talks who were not permitted to speak publicly about the discussions.
As part of the fund-raising effort, Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the proceeds of the kingdom’s vast oil reserves, two of the people briefed on the discussions said. PIF is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has formed close ties with Mr. Kushner and the Trump administration.
PIF, which is already the largest and earliest investor in Affinity, invested $2 billion soon after the first Trump administration ended.
As part of that deal, the Saudis must be given the first chance to invest during any subsequent attempts by Affinity to raise funds, the two people said. Other Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds that invested earlier in Affinity, including those in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are also expected to be asked for more, the people said.
Mr. Kushner’s fund-raising is expected to stretch on for the better part of this year.
The efforts show the blurring of the lines between public service and private profit-seeking during Mr. Trump’s second term. Only a few weeks ago, in his role as Mr. Trump’s “peace envoy,” Mr. Kushner met in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister. The U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign in Iran began shortly after those meetings concluded without a deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
Meanwhile, Kushner is not actually an employee of the Federal government. The corruption is breathtaking.
And what’s happening in in Iran these days? Well, it appears that the Trump gang didn’t plan for what to do if Iran cut off shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz–something they were warned about.
Rebecca F. Elliott and Vivian Nereim at The New York Times (gift link): Why Little Was Done to Head Off Oil’s Strait of Hormuz Problem.
Of all the risks the global energy system has long faced, none was bigger or better known than the potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The narrow passageway out of the Persian Gulf is both vital — serving as the only gateway to the rest of the world for huge amounts of oil and natural gas — and extremely vulnerable to attacks.
But despite being widely recognized as a potential choke point, the strait remains the only way to export most of the energy produced in the region. That has come into sharp relief in the second week of the war in the Middle East, as the near-closure of the waterway sent oil prices soaring above $100 a barrel for the first time in almost four years.
The reason there is no true alternative comes down to a combination of geography, political tensions and economic competition among the region’s oil powers. There have been efforts to circumvent the strait, notably by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But the pipelines through those countries can carry only a small fraction of the energy produced in the Persian Gulf.
By Mathias Hauser
For many other energy-producing countries in the region, the only way to avoid the strait would be to lay a pipeline across a neighboring country — an expensive and politically fraught endeavor. Take Qatar, one of the world’s biggest natural gas exporters. Its only land border is with Saudi Arabia — a country that cut off diplomatic ties and closed that border during a regional spat resolved five years ago. Plus, any pipeline would itself be vulnerable to Iranian attacks.
“There’s nothing which is totally secure here,” said John Browne, a former chief executive of the London-based oil giant BP, once known as the Anglo-Iranian oil company. “In the end, someone with bad intention can do all sorts of things to oil and gas infrastructure.”
Some oil analysts also assumed that, if the time came, the United States, which has a keen interest in keeping energy markets stable, would use its military might to keep the strait passable.
Oh really? I guess these “analysts” didn’t consider the fact that Donald Trump is a psychopath who couldn’t care less about anyone but himself and his childish needs. Use the gift link if you want to read more.
Now that the shit has hit the fan, and prices on gas and just about everything else are rising rapidly, Trump has decided to send in some more troops.
Eric Schmitt at The New York Times: More Marines and Warships Being Sent to Middle East, U.S. Officials Say.
About 2,500 Marines aboard as many as three warships are heading to the Middle East from the Indo-Pacific region, as Iran increases its attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, two U.S. officials said.
The shift, earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes as Iran’s response to nearly two weeks of aerial bombardment and long-range artillery strikes has proved more resilient than Trump administration officials anticipated.
The Marines will join more than 50,000 American troops in the region. The new deployment comes as Iran’s attacks on and near the strait have choked maritime traffic through the essential waterway, rocking the global economy. It was unclear how the new deployment would be used….
Last week, President Trump said he might order Navy warships to escort merchant ships through the crucial oil supply route, which U.S. forces did for a period of time in the late 1980s during similar tensions with Iran.
More recent developments:
U.S. forces have carried out “large-scale” strikes on Kharg Island, a critical hub of Iran’s Gulf oil operations, with the country responding by threatening to strike U.S. allies’ oil facilities if any of its infrastructure is damaged.
U.S. Central Command said Saturday that naval mine storage facilities and missile storage bunkers were among targets destroyed in the “precision strike” on the island, hitting “90 Iranian military targets” while “preserving the oil infrastructure.”
Kharg Island, a tiny but strategic island 15 miles off the coast of Iran in the Persian Gulf, is home to an oil terminal that ships 90% of the country’s oil exports. There are also military capabilities there, including air defenses and mines buried underground.
Announcing the strike in a post on Truth Social late Friday, President Donald Trump said that U.S. forces had “totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.”
Trump just loves that word “obliterated.”
The island’s oil terminal has so far been unscathed in the war, according to oil market research firm Energy Intelligence, and the president said the island’s oil infrastructure was spared in Friday’s attack, but could be struck down the road.
“Should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision,” Trump said, as Iran has actively interfered with shipping in the strait for several days.
Iran is retaliating.
Reuters: US embassy in Iraq’s Baghdad hit in missiles attack, security sources say.
The U.S. Embassy in the Iraqi capital Baghdad was hit in a missiles attack, Iraqi security sources told Reuters on Saturday.
The attack caused smoke to rise from the embassy’s building, the sources said, without providing details on the damage.
Another update from AP: Missile strikes helipad inside US Embassy compound in Baghdad.
A missile struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, two security officials said.
The projectile landed within the embassy’s boundaries after the Green Zone, the heavily fortified district in central Baghdad that houses Iraqi government institutions and foreign embassies, added the security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak with the press.
Video obtained by The Associated Press showed smoke billowing from inside the compound.
AP: Tehran threatens Middle East’s busiest port as Iran war enters its third week.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran openly threatened a neighboring country’s non-U.S. assets for the first time Saturday, warning people to immediately evacuate the busiest port in the Middle East and two others in the United Arab Emirates as the U.S.-Israel war with Iran entered its third week.
By Rudi Hurzlmeier
A missile struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, and debris from an intercepted Iranian drone hit an oil facility in the UAE, further increasing global anxiety about oil supplies.
Iran threatened to attack cities in the UAE, home to Dubai and one of the world’s busiest airports, saying the U.S. used “ports, docks and hideouts” there to launch strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island, without providing evidence. It urged people to evacuate areas where it said U.S. forces were sheltering, naming Dubai’s Jebel Ali port — the Mideast’s busiest — as well as Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa port and Fujairah port.
Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Arab Gulf neighbors during the war, but it said it was targeting U.S. assets, even as hits or attempts were reported on civilian ones such as airports and oil fields.
Back here at home, Pete Hegseth is in favor of committing war crimes. He’s already committed war crimes with his fishing boat strikes. His troops also committed a war crime when they sank Iranian ships and failed to attempt to rescue survivors. Then yesterday he said advocated for another war crime.
Raw Story:
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth offhandedly made a remark about the Trump administration’s attack on Iran during his speech on Friday that experts warned, if he’s serious, could be a war crime — even just for him to say out loud.
“No quarter, no mercy for our enemies,” said Hegseth. “Yet some in the press just can’t stop. More fake news from CNN reports that the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz. The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
The phrase “no quarter” is often used colloquially in a political setting, but in a military context, it means any enemy combatants will be killed with no allowance for surrender — something that, as experts on X and Bluesky were swift to point out, is a violation of both international law and the U.S. military code.
“Went largely unnoticed but Hegseth on Iran said the U.S. would provide ‘no quarter, no mercy for our enemies’ during his press conference today,” wrote Wall Street Journal national security reporter Alex Ward. “‘No quarter’ is a violation of international humanitarian law.” He provided a link to the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention.
I’ll end with this piece Sidney Blumenthal at The Guardian: Trump faces a ‘personal Vietnam’ in Iran.
Donald Trump is lost in his fog of war. He compounds confusion with improvised fabrications as his naive expectation of a lightning victory has been sunk in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, he felt certain, would easily follow the “perfect scenario” of Venezuela, accede to naming a leader who would instantly do his bidding, and there would be no disruption of the oil markets – “a strong game plan”, stated Karoline Leavitt, his White House press secretary, who defends each of his changeable excuses with equal ferocity.
By Kim Haskins
There may be few if any facts underlying the delusions upon which Trump constructs his vapid explanations and evanescent strategies. The belief that coherent sense can be made out of Trump’s shuffling words is a weakness of the rational mind that refuses to accept the impulses of the inveterate demagogue for what they are. Searching for reason in the jungle of Trump’s tales may compel hopelessly sensible people to superimpose logic where there is none in order to satisfy the need for some semblance of soundness.
Trump’s erratic efforts to reframe his rationale further expose his incompetence and unintelligibility, utterly predictable but now lethal on a global scale. His stream of sputtering remarks has, however, clearly established the ground that should be explored by congressional inquiries into the war’s origins, planning and conduct.
Trump is also at war with the English language. His war is not a war, he insists, but a “short-term excursion”, a semantic dodge to skirt congressional and international accountability. Then, when asked whether it’s an excursion or a war, he replied: “Well, it’s both. It’s an excursion that will keep us out of a war.” His rhetorical legerdemain is the equivalent of René Magritte’s painting of a pipe with the caption, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” – “This is not a pipe.” The title Magritte gave to his painting was The Treachery of Images. Orwell or Magritte? Propaganda or surrealism?
Trump has declared he will force “regime change” or negotiate with some unnamed personage in the regime who happens to have been recently killed. “Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” he said. Trump demands “unconditional surrender” or he declares the war “very complete” after an hour-long conversation with Vladimir Putin, after Putin pledged “unwavering support” to the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khomeini, the 56-year-old son of the assassinated 86-year-old supreme leader, about whose ascension Trump said he was “not happy” and called him a “lightweight”.
I hope you’ll go read the rest. Blumenthal is good.
That’s all I have for today. I hope you’re enjoying your weekend, despite the ugly war news.
Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Mental and Physical Health and Other News
Posted: December 3, 2025 Filed under: just because | Tags: Alejandro Carranza Medina, Colombia, Donald Trump, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, Gaza, Ilhan Omar, Jared Kushner, Minnesota, Pete Hegseth, Saudi Arabia, Signalgate, Somali immigrants, Trump MRI, Trump's health, Ukraine 9 CommentsGood Day!!
Trump sleeps during yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Nothing is normal in the U.S. anymore. The government is run by incompetent and corrupt people. Most concerning of all is that the “president is not only ignorant and incompetent, but also physically and mentally unstable. In addition, he lacks any sense of morality or empathy for other people.
Yesterday, historian Garrett Graff wrote about this for the second time at his Substack Doomsday Scenario: It’s time to talk about Donald Trump’s health (again).
Back in September, after Donald Trump disappeared from view for days and the internet went wild with rumors he was dead or hospitalized, I wrote about how the press needed to be leading a more serious conversation about Trump’s health and fitness for the presidency than it was having.
In the months since, the evidence has only grown that something serious is afflicting Trump.
And then last night happened.
Overnight, the President of the United States went on what can only be described as an unhinged social media fever dream. He posted on his social media site Truth Social hundreds of times in a short span — somewhere north of 150 times overnight, a wild mix of conspiracy theories, videos, and memes. It was extreme even for him.
During that end-of-August episode, the major questions were about the president’s physical health — his bruised hands and his swollen ankles — and in the months since, there have been more reasons and evidence that some part of the president is not well:
- He is stumbling, physically, through more of his events. Since August, he appears to be regularly dragging the right side of his body and struggles to walk in a straight line. Just watch this recent video of Trump boarding Marine One, where he appears to be leaning heavily on Melania Trump to stand. And then there was Trump’s Asia trip, where he seemed so lost, wandering aimlessly through a Japanese press event, that the late night shows set it to music.
- He appears to have fallen asleep in meetings on multiple recent occasions, including at an Oval Office meeting.
- And then there’s the MRI. In October, he went to Walter Reed for his “annual medical exam,” even though it was barely six months after his last “annual medical exam” at Walter Reed, and had a wide range of tests done, including an MRI. In recent days, Trump has gotten into a high-profile tiff with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who pressed him to release the results of that MRI. When asked, Trump couldn’t explain why he had the test. Finally, yesterday the White House released information saying it was a chest MRI for his cardiovascular and abdominal systems and that, as the White House always says he is, the tests showed everything was “perfectly normal” and in “excellent health.” (Gavin Newsom mocked Trump about the results.)
But that’s not the reason worth having a conversation about Trump’s health today.
Today, we should be having a conversation about Trump’s increasingly clear diminished mental capacity. This is a man, after all, with the sole launch authority for the nation’s nuclear weapons who, on a daily basis, seems increasingly more disconnected from reality, beholden to conspiracy thinking, and — most simply — absent-minded. It is not a recipe for global stability — and deserves more serious conversation than its getting.
Please go read Graff’s specific arguments in support of his claims. It’s not long.
Yesterday Trump held a cabinet meeting on video. He could barely stay awake most of the time. Of course, he had been up most of the night posting insane garbage on Truth Social, but still…
Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times: Trump Appears to Fight Sleep During Cabinet Meeting.
President Trump appeared to be fighting sleep on Tuesday during a cabinet meeting at the White House, closing his eyes and at times seeming to nod off, after he criticized media coverage about him facing the realities of aging in office.
Over the course of two hours and 18 minutes, the president, who is 79, sometimes appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open as cabinet officials went around the room describing their work and heaping praise on him….
Mr. Trump does appear frequently before the news media, and he takes questions far more often than his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., did. He is a regular, outsize presence in public life.
But Mr. Trump also appeared to have had a late night. He shared or posted dozens of times on social media on Monday night until nearly midnight.
Early in the meeting, Mr. Trump had complained that he was getting unfair scrutiny compared to Mr. Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race last year amid concerns in his own party about his age, mental acuity and ability to beat Mr. Trump.
“I’ll let you know when there’s something wrong. There will be someday,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s going to happen to all of us. But right now I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago. But who the hell knows?”
A bit more:
Mr. Trump then claimed he got “all A’s” on his physical.
But as Tuesday’s meeting went on, Mr. Trump seemed to grow tired.
About 50 minutes in, as Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, spoke, Mr. Trump struggled to keep his eyes open before he leaned back and forth in his chair. More than an hour and a half into the meeting, while Linda McMahon, the education secretary, spoke, he closed his eyes for five seconds before leaning back and looking at the ceiling. Roughly 20 minutes later, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke, the president leaned forward and appeared to close his eyes again.
It was the second time in less than a month that Mr. Trump appeared to doze off in public. During an Oval Office event on Nov. 6, the president’s eyes grew heavy and closed for several seconds.
Trump recently announced that he had had an MRI scan at his latest physical exam, but claimed he had no idea what it was for. Experts have questioned that, and finally his doctor released some confusing details.
Gina Kolata at The New York Times: Memo From Trump’s Doctor Cites ‘Excellent’ Scan but Offers Little Clarity.
The White House released a letter from President Trump’s physician on Monday about the results of “advanced imaging tests.” The statement, by Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, said the tests on his cardiovascular system and abdominal region showed the president “remains in excellent overall health.”
Trump in yesterday’s cabinet meeting.
Some medical experts said it was unclear what tests doctors conducted, why they were done or what the results mean. And, they said, a person without symptoms would not have imaging tests as part of a routine medical exam under ordinary medical circumstances.
Mr. Trump, the oldest president ever sworn into his office, had M.R.I. scans in October as part of a semiannual physical exam. His annual physical was done in April.
On Sunday, during an appearance on “Meet the Press” on NBC News, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota called on the president to release the results after Mr. Trump had impugned Mr. Walz’s intelligence. Asked by a reporter on Sunday what part of his body was scanned, Mr. Trump said aboard Air Force One, “I have no idea — it was just an M.R.I.” He then said it was not a scan of his brain.
But Dr. Barbabella’s memo did not specify that Mr. Trump had a M.R.I. scan, which uses a magnetic field to produce images of soft tissues that do not show up on X-rays. Instead, the memo describes “advanced imaging” that it said was carried out “because men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health.”
The imaging was part of Mr. Trump’s “comprehensive executive physical,” Dr. Barbabella explained, referring to a detailed medical exam often offered to executives. Such exams can include tests that are not normally done when people have no symptoms of disease.
The memo said Mr. Trump’s cardiovascular imaging is “perfectly normal” with no signs that his arteries are narrowed. His “cardiovascular system shows excellent health,” the statement said.
It added that, “his abdominal imaging is also perfectly normal,” and said, “this level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age and confirms that he remains in excellent overall health.”
They are obviously hiding something.
Dan Vergano at Scientific American: Trump’s MRI Is Not Standard ‘Preventive’ Care, Say Experts.
Medical experts are questioning the White House’s explanation for President Donald Trump’s MRI tests as “preventive.”
A Monday memo released by presidential physician Sean Barbabella described the results of “a thorough evaluation of cardiovascular and abdominal health” as normal. “This level of detailed assessment is standard for an executive physical at President Trump’s age,” Barbabella said.
Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, Trump’s doctor
But imaging experts who spoke to Scientific American expressed doubts as to Barbabella’s assertion that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening is typical preventive care. American Heart Association guidelines, for example, note that a cardiac MRI is usually requested because of existing heart conditions and often only after other tests.
“No, it is certainly not standard medical practice to perform screening MRIs of the heart and abdomen,” says radiologist and MRI expert Thomas Kwee of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Such imaging is typically only performed in the case of underlying disease, he says, or if there is suspicion of an underlying disease based on the patient’s medical history and physical examination. Barbabella’s memo said the imaging showed Trump was in “excellent health.”
Kwee’s comment echoed those of Medpage Today’s editor in chief, physician Jeremy Faust, who told CNN on Monday that “there’s really no such thing as routine prevention using an MRI.” Faust on Tuesday told Scientific American that the White House memo reference to “advanced imaging” left open questions as to exactly what tests Trump underwent. It could even possibly refer to a CT scan, for example, which is different than MRI. “If we knew exactly what imaging he received, it would give us a better idea of what conditions they are worried about,” Faust says.
More opinions:
“An assessment of a heart MRI and abdominal MRI is not ‘standard for an executive physical,’” says former White House physician Jeffrey Kuhlman, author of the book Transforming Presidential Healthcare. Though it’s not uncommon for physicians who have concierge-type practices to use total or partial body scans on their clients, “this is not evidence-based,” he adds….
Questions around Trump’s health have surfaced repeatedly in recent months. In July the White House reported that the president has chronic venous insufficiency, a blood vessel disease that affects circulation and can cause ankle swelling. And noticeable bruises on the back of Trump’s hands seen in February were attributed to “shaking hands all day” by Leavitt.
There is no solid evidence that executive MRI scans help people, Kwee says, either by diagnosing disease or extending their lifespan. “These scans can also lead to unexpected incidental findings and give false reassurance that there is no underlying disease.”
At least big media is beginning to talk about Trump’s obvious mental and physical health issues. We need them to start focusing on Trump’s age as much as they did Biden’s.
More important stories:
Judd Legum at Popular Information: Kushner’s Moscow mission wasn’t just corrupt. It was unconstitutional.
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has been traveling the world to participate in high-stakes foreign policy negotiations on behalf of the president. On Tuesday, Kushner traveled to Moscow and sat across the table from Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine. The entire United States delegation consisted only of Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kushner and Witkoff were joined at the table by an interpreter.
Kushner’s participation in the Moscow meeting — and the similar role he played in the Gaza negotiations — likely violates the law.
Representing the Trump administration in high-level foreign policy negotiations makes Kushner, at a minimum, a Special Government Employee (SGE). Under the law, an SGE is someone “who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform, with or without compensation, for not to exceed one hundred and thirty days during any period of three hundred and sixty-five consecutive days, temporary duties either on a full-time or intermittent basis.”
Trump has not named Kushner an SGE. But a seminal 1977 opinion by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) found “an identifiable act of appointment may not be absolutely essential for an individual to be regarded as an officer or employee in a particular case where the parties omitted it for the purpose of avoiding the application of the conflict-of-interest laws.” In that opinion, the OLC considered the status of an individual who had not been named to any role by the president but “assumed considerable responsibility for coordinating the Administration’s activities in [a] particular area.” The OLC concluded that since the individual was “quite clearly engaging in a governmental function” and is “working under the direction or supervision of the President,” he should be considered an SGE.
Here, Kushner is engaged in activities that can only be conducted by government officials. The Logan Act bars private citizens from engaging in negotiations with foreign governments without authorization. Kushner is acting in an authorized capacity, under Trump’s direction, and that creates a host of legal issues.
A the same time, Kushner is receiving payments from foreign governments.
Since leaving the White House in 2021, Kushner has raised at least $4.8 billion for Affinity Partners, his private equity firm. Nearly 99% of Affinity Partners’ funding comes from foreign sources. The largest investment, $2 billion, came from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia (PIF).
The Saudi government pays Kushner 1.25% of its investment, or $25 million annually. Other investors, including the governments of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pay annual fees of up to 2%. As of September 2024, Affinity Partners had collected $157 million in fees, mainly from Middle Eastern governments.
Kushner is continuing to collect these fees as he serves in a top foreign policy role for the Trump administration. This is precisely the kind of behavior the Foreign Emoluments Clause was designed to prevent. Kushner was one of two Americans on Tuesday engaged in high-stakes negotiations with Putin. But as the private equity manager for billions of foreign capital, Kushner has a fiduciary duty to advance the financial interests of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other foreign governments.
The Washington Post: Ex-Honduras president, convicted of drug trafficking, freed on Trump pardon.
Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted by a U.S. court last year on charges that he ran the Central American nation as a “narco-state” that helped send South American cocaine to the United States, has been released from federal prison after receiving a “full and unconditional” pardon from President Donald Trump.
Hernández, 57, was released Monday from U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website and a BOP spokesperson.
Hernández, who was president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, was serving 45 years in prison on importation and weapons charges. U.S. prosecutors said he built his political career on millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers in Honduras and Mexico, and as president helped to move at least 400 tons of cocaine to the United States while protecting traffickers from extradition and prosecution.
Juan Orlando Hernández
The Trump administration is waging what it says is a counternarcotics campaign off Venezuela. U.S. forces have destroyed at least 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing more than 80 people, that officials say were carrying drugs to the U.S., and U.S. troops and warships are massing in the region. Trump has accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of sending violent criminals and drugs to the U.S.
But on Friday, Trump said that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” and that he would grant him a “Full and Complete Pardon.”
“CONGRATULATIONS TO JUAN ORLANDO HERNANDEZ ON YOUR UPCOMING PARDON,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”
Trump’s decision to pardon an official who, a federal court found, helped flood the United States with cocaine angered congressional Democrats.
“Hernandez’s conviction last year finally held him accountable for all the Honduran and American blood on his hands and sent an unequivocal message: No drug trafficker is above the law, not even former presidents,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That is precisely why all Americans should be outraged by President Trump’s pardoning of former president Hernandez.”
I wonder how much Trump was paid for this pardon.
NBC News: Pentagon inspector general investigation into ‘Signalgate’ is complete.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday was given a final copy of the completed Defense Department Inspector General report that examined his sharing sensitive military information on a Signal group chat back in March, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
The much-anticipated report is expected to become public as early as this week, these people said.
Pete Hegseth
The report outlines the findings of a more than eight-month investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal, an encrypted but unclassified messaging app, to share details of planned U.S. military strikes in Yemen before they had begun.
Hegseth has maintained that he shared no classified information on the group chat….
The two people familiar with the inspector general investigation would not say what its conclusions are. The report was requested by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., on March 27.
The group chat, which included other top members of President Donald Trump’s national security team, became public after an editor for The Atlantic magazine was inadvertently added.
Let’s hope it’s not a whitewash.
Aram Roston at The Guardian: Family of victim in alleged Trump ‘drug boat’ killings files first formal complaint.
A family in Colombia filed a petition on Tuesday with the Washington DC-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that the Colombian citizen Alejandro Carranza Medina was illegally killed in a US airstrike on 15 September.
The petition marks the first formal complaint over the airstrikes by the Trump administration against suspected drug boats, attacks that the White House says are justified under a novel interpretation of law.
Alejandro Carranza Medina and his son. Photograph Courtesy of Carranza family
The IACHR, part of the Organization of American States, is designed to “promote and protect human rights in the Western Hemisphere”. The US is a member, and in March the Trump administration’s state department wrote: “The United States is pleased to be a strong supporter of the IACHR and is committed to continuing support for the Commission’s work and its independence. Preserving the IACHR’s autonomy is a pillar of our human rights policy in the region.”
The complaint was filed by Pittsburgh-based human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik. “On September 15, 2025, the United States military bombed the boat of Alejandro Andres Carranza Medina,” the filing says, “which Mr Carranza was sailing in the Caribbean off the coast of Colombia. Mr Carranza was killed in the process of this bombing.”
Kovalik identified Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, as the perpetrator, based on Hegseth’s own statements. “From numerous news reports, we know that Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense, was responsible for ordering the bombing of boats like those of Alejandro Carranza Medina and the murder of all those on such boats. Secretary Hegseth has admitted that he gave such orders despite the fact that he did not know the identity of those being targeted for these bombings and extra-judicial killings,” the filing goes on.
The complaint adds: “US President Donald Trump has ratified the conduct of Secretary Hegseth described herein.”
NBC News: Trump administration pauses immigration applications from nationals of 19 countries.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: March 16, 2024 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, Cats, caturday, Donald Trump | Tags: "absolute immunity", Alvin Bragg, Benjamin Netanyahu, Chuck Schumer, E. Jean Carroll, Elon Musk, Fani Willis, Gaza, israel, Jared Kushner, Judge Scott McAfee, Letitia James, Mike Pence, SpaceX, Stormy Daniels, Supreme Court, Tommy Tuberville 2 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Walter Chandoha plays with one of his subjects at his home studio in 1955.
Today I’m featuring cat photos by Walter Chandoha. Chandoha was a famous photographer of animals–mostly cats. You can read about him and see more photos in this 2019 New York Times obituary by Richard Sandomir: Walter Chandoha, Photographer Whose Specialty Was Cats, Dies at 98.
Taking pictures of cats soon began to look like a more fulfilling career path than the one in advertising that Mr. Chandoha had planned while attending New York University, after serving in World War II. So, after graduating, he turned to freelance photography for a living — and, by the mid-1950s, he had begun a long period as the dominant commercial cat photographer of his era.
“Walter Chandoha’s cat models, shown on this page, must be alert, graceful and beautiful,” read a newspaper ad in 1956 for a cat food brand that featured his photos. “To keep them that way, Mr. Chandoha feeds them Puss ‘n Boots because Puss ‘n Boots is good nutrition.”
On a winter’s evening in 1949, Walter Chandoha was walking to his three-room apartment in Astoria, Queens, when he spotted an abandoned gray kitten shivering in the snow. He put it in a pocket of his Army coat and brought it home to his wife, Maria.
The kitten’s antics — racing through the apartment each night as if possessed, shadowboxing with his image in a mirror — inspired the couple to name him Loco. Mr. Chandoha (pronounced shan-DOE-uh) was moved to photograph Loco and quickly sold the pictures to newspapers and magazines around the world.
By the time he died, on Jan. 11, Mr. Chandoha had taken some 90,000 cat photos, nearly all before cats had become viral darlings of social media. He was 98.
Now, on to the day’s news:
It’s becoming very clear that the courts are not going to protect us from a possible Trump dictatorship. Thank goodness for E. Jean Carroll and NY AG Letitia James. At least two New York courts have hit Trump where it hurts–his finances. But the two federal cases seem stalled and the Georgia case just took a bit hit. Those three prosecutions of Trump are unlikely to take place before the election now. We are going to have to defeat him at the ballot box.
At The New Republic, Michael Tomasky writes: We Have to Beat Donald Trump. Clearly, the Broken Legal System Won’t.
Judge Scott McAfee has ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on the case against Donald Trump in that jurisdiction, provided that Nathan Wade, the prosecutor on the case with whom she had a relationship, withdraws. I guess we count that a win, although to be honest, Willis has so damaged herself by her colossally terrible judgment that it probably would have been better if she were out of the picture.
Cats play together in 1962.
The other problem with Willis’s scandal is how it slowed the case down, giving Trump’s lawyers a chance to make this not about the defendant but about her—and another chance to delay, delay, delay.
Meanwhile, Thursday, down in Florida, we saw Trumpy Judge Aileen Cannon issue yet another ruling in the classified documents case that helps Trump. She didn’t support Trump’s lawyers’ motion to dismiss the case, but she kicked the can down the road in a way that’s very helpful to Trump. MSNBC analyst Andrew Weissmann even called it the “worst possible outcome” for the government. “If the judge had simply said, ‘I agree with Donald Trump, and I find that this is vague, and I’m dismissing it,’ the government could have appealed it to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, as they have done twice before and won twice before,” Weissmann said. “But she also did not want to rule in favor of the government. So what she did is said, ‘Why don’t you bring this up later? I think there’s some real issues here.’”
Also this week, in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case against Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg shocked us all by asking for a 30-day delay in the trial, which was scheduled to start March 25. Trump’s lawyers had requested a 90-day delay. Bragg conceded that some delay was appropriate.
Why? It looks like it’s the fault of federal prosecutors. Bragg’s office requested certain documents a while ago from the Southern District of New York, and it shared them with Trump’s lawyers during the discovery process. Trump’s lawyers suspected there was more, especially relating to Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, so they subpoenaed the SDNY. That happened in January. It was only earlier this month that the Southern District turned over all the documents….
It’s more than fair to ask: Why did the Southern District take so long to produce these documents? And we must also ask this: Did Merrick Garland know his prosecutors were taking so long to hand over documents, and thus playing into Trump’s hands? And if he knew, did he do anything about it?
And then there’s the most significant case of all–the one about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Finally, let’s recall the status of the fourth criminal case against Trump, the biggest one, at least to my mind—the January 6 insurrection case. On that one, we’re basically waiting on the Supreme Court, which announced on February 28 that it would hear arguments in Trump’s claim of complete immunity but set the argument date for April 25. The high court could easily take another month—or even two—to hand down its decision after that, meaning that this crucial trial, about whether a sitting president initiated an insurrection against the government of the United States, may not happen before Election Day.
How in the world did all this happen? A few weeks ago, it looked like the wheels of justice were finally turning, catching up on a man who has flouted and broken laws not only during his presidency but for his entire adult life,
going back to when he and his father wouldn’t rent apartments to Black people in Queens. There was the judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case. And then the whopping penalty in the New York attorney general’s case against the Trump Organization.
But this week, it looks like everything is falling apart.
An American shorthair in 1966.
We can’t count on the courts. They move slowly and they favor the rich and powerful. We can’t count on the media either. They seem to favor another Trump presidency because the bosses believe the insanity and chaos would be good for their bottom line.
CNN on the Fani Willis case:
Another problem comes from MAGA threats. MSBNC’s Kyle Griffin wrote on Twitter that
“Judge Scott McAfee had written his order on Willis and Wade early last week, according to NBC News, but because he had been receiving threats, he waited until today to make it public in order to allow for proper security to be in place for him and his family.”
At NBC, , and Trump hush money trial postponed until mid-April, judge rules.
The trial in the New York hush money case against former President Donald Trump has been delayed until the middle of April, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday.
Merchan said the trial — originally scheduled to begin March 25 — would be pushed back 30 days from Friday.
He also scheduled a hearing for the trial’s initial start date, to discuss a motion filed by Trump’s attorneys regarding document production in the case.
Merchan said he will set a new trial date “if necessary” when he rules on that motion, meaning it’s possible the trial proceedings could be delayed beyond the middle of next month.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had previously said he would support the trial being delayed at least 30 days, into late April. Trump’s legal team requested that it be postponed 90 days.
Bragg said Thursday that Trump’s request to delay the trial was the result of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan providing over 100,000 pages of discovery, which Bragg said were “largely irrelevant to the subject matter of this case.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office provided an additional 15,000 pages of discovery on Friday, which Bragg’s office said were also “likely to be unrelated to the subject matter of this case.”
The documents relate to Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in 2018 to numerous criminal charges, including making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings with Russia and failing to report millions of dollars in income.
Echoing MIchael Tomasky, WTF is going on with the Southern District and the DOJ. Are there MAGA people still in place that are helping Trump delay justice?
This 1955 photo is one of Walter Chandoha’s most famous shots. “My daughter Paula and the kitten both ‘smiled’ for the camera at the same time. … But the cat’s not smiling, he’s meowing.”
Speaking of the rich and powerful, why is Elon Musk still getting federal contracts after his support for Nazis and white supremacists and his support for Russia’s war against Ukraine?
Joey Roulette and Marisa Taylor at Reuters: Exclusive: Musk’s SpaceX is building spy satellite network for US intelligence agency, sources say.
SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.
The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.
The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.
If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.
The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.
The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.
Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits, and that the spy agency that Musk’s company is working with is the NRO.
Will Musk have access to this program, as he does with Starlink? How do we know he won’t share information with Russia? Am I an idiot to ask that?
Chandoha’s backlighting technique dramatizes the defensive posture of a kitten seeing a dog in 1957.
Another tale of the rich and powerful from Eric Lipton, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman at The New York Times: Kushner Developing Deals Overseas Even as His Father-in-Law Runs for President.
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald J. Trump, confirmed on Friday that he was closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, the latest example of the former president’s family doing business abroad even as Mr. Trump seeks to return to the White House.
Mr. Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Mr. Trump was in office. Mr. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with Richard Grenell, who served briefly as acting director of national intelligence under Mr. Trump and also as ambassador to Germany and special envoy to the Balkans.
One of the proposed projects would be the development of an island off the coast of Albania into a luxury tourist destination.
A second — with a planned luxury hotel and 1,500 residential units and a museum — is in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, at the site of the long-vacant former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army destroyed in 1999 by the NATO bombings, according to a member of Parliament in Serbia and Mr. Kushner’s company.
These first two projects both involve land now controlled by the governments, meaning a deal would have to be finalized with foreign governments.
A third project, also in Albania, would be built on the Zvërnec peninsula, a 1,000-acre coastal area in the south of Albania that is part of the resort community known as Vlorë, where several hotels and hundreds of villas would be built, according to the plan.
Mr. Kushner’s participation would be through his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which has $2 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, among other foreign investors. In a statement, an official with Affinity Partners said it had not been determined whether the Saudi funds might be a part of any project Mr. Kushner is considering in the Balkans.
How does Kushner get away with this? Why aren’t Congressional Democrats investigating him, even if the DOJ is too busy or corrupt? I don’t get it.
Commentary from Carl Gibson at Raw Story:
Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (who was also a senior adviser in his White House) has been ramping up his overseas business dealings undeterred by the optics of doing so in the midst of his father-in-law’s presidential campaign.
A Friday report in the New York Times scrutinized Kushner’s real estate deals in Balkan countries of Albania and Serbia, in which he stands to reap significant financial benefits once they’re completed. The Times reported that Kushner has been working with Richard Grenell, who was Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence who also served as German ambassador and a special envoy to the Balkans.
An American shorthair squeezes into a glass in 1960.
Notably, two of the three projects Kushner is aiming to finalize this year involve the transfer of land currently owned by Albania and Serbia, meaning a member of the president’s immediate family (Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka) stands to receive money directly from foreign governments. According to the Times, the first project involves redeveloping an island off the Albanian coast into a high-end luxury resort, and the second would be a 1,500-unit apartment building, museum and luxury hotel in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade. The third — which doesn’t involve a direct land acquisition from a foreign government — is a planned resort development in coastal southern Albania.
Kushner has been capitalizing on his foreign connections since leaving the White House. After Kushner’s departure became official, he launched his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as well as from other foreign business interests in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
The former president’s son-in-law worked closely with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman while he was in the White House, as Trump frequently put him in the driver’s seat in negotiations with Middle Eastern countries. In 2018, bin-Salman was accused of playing a direct role in the dismemberment and murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (President Joe Biden made it clear in 2022 that the Saudi crown prince was immune from any legal action in relation to Khashoggi’s assassination)….
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, for his own foreign business deals even as Kushner plows ahead in the Balkans. House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) both maintain that the president improperly influenced foreign governments in his son’s favor, though their respective investigations have yet to yield any smoking gun evidence.
In Israel-Hamas war news, Senator Chuck Schumer spoke out this week about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Jonathan Weisman at The New York Times: A Watershed Moment for the Politics of Israel, Courtesy of Chuck Schumer.
Over 44 painstakingly scripted minutes on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, spoke of his Jewish identity, his love for the State of Israel, his horror at the wanton slaughter of Israelis on Oct. 7 and his views on the apportionment of blame for the carnage in Gaza, saying that it first and foremost lay with the terrorists of Hamas.
Then Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat and the highest-ranking elected Jew in American history, said Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was an impediment to peace, and called for new elections in the world’s only Jewish state.
The opposition was not nearly so painstaking.
Within minutes, the House Republican leadership demanded an apology. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, declared: “Make no mistake — the Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem. It has an anti-Israel problem.” And the Republican Jewish Coalition proclaimed that “the most powerful Democrat in Congress knifed the Jewish state in the back.”
Walter Chandoha, 1962
The months that have followed the slaughter of Oct. 7 and the ensuing, calamitously deadly war in Gaza have been excruciating for American Jews, caught between a tradition of liberalism that has dominated much of Jewish politics and an anti-Israel response from the political left that has left many feeling isolated and, at times, persecuted.
But Mr. Schumer’s speech was potentially a watershed moment in a much longer political process, pursued initially by Republicans but joined recently by left-wing Democrats — to turn Israel into a partisan issue. Republicans, as they see it, would be the party of Israeli supporters. Democrats, as the rising left would have it, would be the party of Palestine
At the root of that divide is a fundamental question: Is support for the Jewish State separable from the support of Israel’s democratically elected government? For years, Republicans have said no. Increasingly, the Democratic left agrees but from a different perspective: Israel is bad, regardless of who governs it.
“The pressure — electoral, social, cultural — on American Jews right now to declare themselves” on the justice of the war in Gaza and on the legitimacy of the Israeli prime minister has been “unrelenting, unforgiving and sometimes downright vicious,” said David Wolpe, a prominent rabbi in Los Angeles and a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.
Mr. Schumer’s speech and the ensuing partisan response have made that pressure even more intense.
“It’s impossible to understate the seismic event this was,” said Matthew Brooks, the longtime chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who made it clear that the group would use the speech to drive Jewish voters to the G.O.P.
Read more at the NYT.
A couple more stories of note:
This should be shocking news, but the NYT didn’t even run a story on it. CNN: Pence says he ‘cannot in good conscience’ endorse Trump.
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday said he “cannot in good conscience” endorse presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, a stunning repudiation of his former running mate and the president he served with.
“Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years. That’s why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign,” Pence said on Fox News.
A cat cozies up to a dog, 1968
The former vice president, after ending his own presidential bid in October, withheld an endorsement in the 2024 Republican primary, but he previously vowed to back the eventual GOP nominee. Trump had said after Pence dropped out that his former vice president should endorse him, saying, “I chose him, made him vice president. But … people in politics can be very disloyal.”
While he said he is “incredibly proud” of the record of the Trump-Pence administration, Pence argued that the former president has walked away from conservative issues, pointing to Trump’s stance on abortion and US national debt and his reversal on TikTok.
“During my presidential campaign, I made it clear there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues. And not just our difference on my constitutional duties that I exercised January 6th,” Pence said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
“As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt. I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life. And this last week, his reversal on getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s efforts to force a sale of ByteDance’s TikTok,” he added.
Many other former members of Trump’s administration have also said they won’t vote for him. Yesterday Ron Filipkowski posted this list on Twitter:
The Republican 43rd President won’t endorse Trump.
His VP won’t endorse Trump.
The 2012 Republican nominee won’t endorse Trump.
His running mate won’t endorse Trump.
Trump’s own VP won’t endorse him.
His last AG won’t.
His last Sec Defense won’t.
Wake up, America!
One more from Brian Schott at The Salt Lake Tribune: ‘We are losing our kids to a satanic cult,’ Sen. Tommy Tuberville warns during Utah campaign stop.
Alabama Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville had a stark warning for the approximately 100 Utah GOP delegates who crowded into a Bluffdale warehouse to hear him speak on Friday afternoon: Malevolent supernatural forces are working to undermine America.
“I’ve traveled all over the country — all 50 states — I’ve been in good places and bad places. The one thing I saw, we are losing our kids to a satanic cult,” Tuberville, who traveled to Utah to campaign for GOP U.S. Senate candidate Trent Staggs, warned.
The former college football coach and ardent Donald Trump supporter gave his full endorsement to Staggs, one of 11 Republicans vying for the GOP nomination to succeed Sen. Mitt Romney in Washington.
Brandishing an upside-down pocket Constitution, Tuberville said the 2024 election wasn’t Republican vs. Democrat but “anti-American vs. American.”
“We’ve lost our moral values across the country. We’ve got to get back to the Constitution, and we have got to get back to the Bible. We’ve got to get God back in our country,” Tuberville said. “There’s not one Democrat that can tell you they stand up for God.”
What exactly is he talking about? Is he saying the Democratic Party is a satanic cult or is he referring to the Mormon Church? Probably the former, I know.
Republican delegates ate it up as he careened from anti-transgender statements to discussion of immigration and chaos at the border to a prediction left-wing mobs are set to wreak chaos across the country this summer to help Joe Biden win reelection.
Tuberville even went so far as to claim the federal government has been corrupted to go after conservatives instead of criminals, which was seemingly an indirect reference to the hundreds of Trump supporters who were charged after attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We’ve lost our Department of Justice. In most of the country, we don’t have a criminal justice system anymore. Nobody goes to jail, unless you’re an innocent person that really loves this country, then they’ll put you in jail,” Tuberville said. “We have never overcome a cult like we’re dealing with right now.”
The loudest boos from the GOP delegates on hand came when Tuberville and Staggs took swipes at Sen. Mitt Romney, who was the party’s presidential nominee just a dozen years ago.
What a wacko.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all are having a nice weekend!
Thursday Reads: Trump In Blunderland
Posted: September 10, 2020 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Alice in Wonderland, Bob Woodward, Cheshire cat, Chris Whipple, coronavirus pandemic, Deep State, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Lindsey Graham, Peggy Noonan, Scott Adams, Shallow Throat 21 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
I’m sure we’ve all thought at times that living in Trumpworld was like being down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass. Well, it turns out Jared Kushner thinks that’s a good thing. According to a Washington Post article on Bob Woodward’s soon-to-be released book, Rage:
Kushner advised people that one of the most important guiding texts to understand the Trump presidency was “Alice in Wonderland,” a novel about a young girl who falls through a rabbit hole. He singled out the Cheshire cat, whose strategy was endurance and persistence, not direction.
From CNN: Why Jared Kushner suggests reading ‘Alice in Wonderland’ if you want to understand Trump.
Woodward quotes Kushner paraphrasing the Cheshire Cat as a way of making sense of Trump’s chaotic style of management, saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there.”
Woodward describes Kushner as an “ever-loyal cheerleader and true believer” of the President, but also someone who has intimate knowledge of how and why Trump makes decisions. While former top Cabinet officials describe Trump’s style as chaotic and dangerous, Kushner views his constant reversals as “an asset.”
Woodward writes, “Where others saw fickleness or even lies, Kushner saw Trump’s constant, shifting inconsistency as a challenge to be met with an ever-adapting form of managing up.”
“With the president, there’s a hundred different shades of gray,” Kushner is quoted as saying. “And if people try to get a quick answer out of him, it’s easy. You can get him to decide in your favor by limiting his information. But you better be sure as hell that people with competing views aren’t going to find their way to him. And when that happens, he’s going to undo his decision.”
Again, Kushner thinks this is a positive description of Trump’s blundering (mis)management style. Woodward writes that Kushner recommended.
…four texts people should “absorb” if they want to truly understand the President. Woodward writes the texts do not paint a flattering picture of someone who is both Kushner’s boss and father-in-law.
The first text Kushner recommends is a 2018 opinion piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. Noonan’s assessment of Trump: “He’s crazy… and it’s kind of working.” Noonan also calls Trump a “circus act,” and “a living insult.” [….]
The second text Kushner points to is “Alice in Wonderland.” [….]
Woodward writes, “Did Kushner understand how negative this was? Was it possible the best roadmap for the administration was a novel about a young girl who falls through a rabbit hole, and Kushner was willing to acknowledge that Trump’s presidency was on shaky, directionless ground?”
The third text Kushner suggests is from author Chris Whipple’s book “The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.”Whipple writes, “What seems clear, as of this writing, and almost a year into his presidency, is that Trump will be Trump, no matter his chief of staff.”
The final text Kushner offers is “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter,” by Scott Adams, creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip. According to Adams, Trump employs a technique called “intentional wrongness persuasion,” and “can invent any reality” because “all you will remember is that he provided his reasons, he didn’t apologize, and his opponents called him a liar like they always do.”
It was clear to Woodward that none of this was meant to criticize Trump, just as a way to help understand him. That said, Woodward was surprised and writes, “when combined, Kushner’s four texts painted President Trump as crazy, aimless, stubborn and manipulative.
Is it possible that Kushner was simply trying to explain why he has been so successful in manipulating Trump? I can see Jared trying to show Woodward how clever and savvy he is.
Of course the big “news” from Woodward’s book was that Trump knew all along that the coronavirus was deadly despite his insistence for months that it was no worse than the flu and that it would magically “go away” without the federal government doing anything. We sort of knew that though. We knew that Trump was told about the dangers of a pandemic in March. Yesterday we learned that Trump actually knew plenty in January and February. From The Washington Post:
“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”
Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, agreed. He told the president that after reaching contacts in China, it was evident that the world faced a health emergency on par with the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
Ten days later, Trump called Woodward and revealed that he thought the situation was far more dire than what he had been saying publicly.
“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”
“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis.
Trump also told Woodward early on that he knew children were just as vulnerable to the virus as adults, as he insisted that schools should be fully opened. Is anyone really surprised by this? It’s shocking to hear the Woodward’s recordings, but we already knew Trump didn’t give a shit how many Americans died as long as he could keep bluffing long enough to get himself four more years in the White House. What’s actually kind of surprising is that Trump would be stupid enough to talk to Woodward about all this on tape.
John Harris at Politico: Woodward Interviews Shallow Throat.
For years, President Donald Trump and his allies have warned about his adversaries in the “Deep State.” The phrase evokes images of anonymous officials with hidden motives buried deep in the government.
Recent days have made it clearer than ever that the real hazard to Trump is actually the Shallow State.
The people saying mean things about Trump aren’t lurking in the shadows. They are well-known names whom Trump recruited to work by his side. Their motives aren’t mysterious. They are obvious: A transactional president encourages transactional behavior in his midst. These sources have shocking stories to tell, but no longer any genuinely surprising ones….
The entire notion of the Deep State rests on soil tilled by Hollywood, in decades of movies and television shows in the genre of the paranoid thriller. In these conspiracy dramas, the plot tension flows from a slowly building, creepy realization that Things Are Not What They Seem.
Woodward, based on Wednesday’s barrage of publicity for next week’s official release of “Rage,” has once again delivered the goods with plenty of news-driving revelations. But these scoops are like so many in the Trump years: They reveal that things are pretty much Exactly What They Seem.
It seemed last winter and spring that Trump was prattling on with a lot of happy talk that he couldn’t possibly believe about how the coronavirus wouldn’t be that serious—even as his own government officials were warning that it would be—because he was desperately trying to create reality by proclamation. Months later, Woodward has confirmed that to be true.
What’s more, his source was not a latter-day Deep Throat skulking around garages on behalf of the Deep State. The most damaging source for Woodward is on the record and on tape: Trump himself.
It had previously seemed that Trump, despite his constant attacks on the “Fake News” media, had a compulsive fascination with establishment media figures and the coverage they give him. Now the president has confirmed that to be true, giving 18 (!) interviews to Woodward. Think of him as Shallow Throat.
Read the rest at Politico.
Trump also told Woodward about a top secret weapons system that, thanks to Trump, is no longer secret. Forbes: Trump Claims To Have Built A New, Secret Nuclear Weapons System.
President Donald Trump claimed to journalist Bob Woodward that he had overseen the creation of a new U.S. nuclear weapons system, saying, “We have stuff that you haven’t ever seen or heard about,”as the two discussed tensions between the United States and North Korea.
It’s not clear what Trump was referring to, but Woodward writes in his new book Rage that he later confirmed with sources that the U.S. military indeed had a secret new weapon system, and the sources said they were surprised Trump had disclosed the information, according to The Washington Post.
It’s possible that Trump was referring to the W76-2 warhead, according to the defense publication Task & Purpose.
That weapon was announced in Feb. 2018 as a relatively “low-cost” addition to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and has a smaller explosive yield than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
CNN reports that those around Trump are freaking out: ‘Calls without us knowing:’ Aides point fingers in wake of Woodward’s latest book.
Furious he didn’t speak with Bob Woodward for the first book he wrote on his presidency, President Donald Trump determined full participation with the follow-up would provide the best chance of securing a positive take on his rollicking tenure….
Yet instead of outmaneuvering the journalist famous for exposing Nixon’s Watergate scandal, Trump appears to have become a victim of his own confidence. And instead of a glowing portrait of a successful presidency, Trump is facing another damaging account two months before the election.
The fallout has caused internal strife at the White House as aides assign blame for allowing the taped interviews to proceed. Fingers have been thrust at ex-press secretaries, longtime confidants and old friends.
But people familiar with the situation say it is Trump himself who ultimately determined at the outset he could talk Woodward into writing a positive portrayal of his administration, reckoning the powers of salesmanship that have sustained him his entire adult life would yield another unlikely success.
So confident was Trump he could generate a favorable depiction that he provided Woodward with his personal cellphone number, eager to speak with a man whose long record of interviewing his predecessors has not exactly produced flattering results.
In phone calls late at night from the White House residence, Trump spun his tenure as one of historic successes and unparalleled victory.
The Daily Beast: Trump Was ‘Ecstatic’ About Talking to Woodward—Until He Wasn’t.
President Trump was “ecstatic” about the prospect of sitting for interviews with Woodward, according to a White House official, and relished some of his conversations with the famous Washington Post journalist.
Ultimately, Trump spoke with Woodward 18 times for the book. And at some point along the way, he had a change of heart, becoming convinced that Woodward was using him. Trump then began rage-tweeting the very reporter with whom he was so psyched to go on the record.
“The Bob Woodward book will be a FAKE, as always, just as many of the others have been,” the president tweeted, seemingly out of the blue, last month. Later that month, Trump logged back on to blast the veteran reporter as a “social pretender” who “never has anything good to say.”
It is unclear when, exactly, Trump decided that the Woodward book could prove harmful. According to a person with direct knowledge, Trump privately said before sitting for interviews with Woodward, that one reason he was looking forward to doing so was because of how “fair” the journalist was to him on the issue of “Russian collusion.” However, late last month this source recalled the president complaining unprompted that the then-upcoming Woodward book would be filled with “fake stories,” and that the author was a “big phony.” The source did not recall Trump bringing up any of the stories or quotes he directly gave Woodward.
Apparently, Lindsey Graham pushed Trump to talk to Woodward. I wonder how soon they will be golfing together again. Read all about that and more at the Daily Beast.
What will today bring? Who knows? I’m just going to stay hunkered down and trying to stay healthy and sane. Take care of yourselves today, Sky Dancers!
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