Is there ANYTHING they're doing right?

 

Astonishing

 It's been obvious Trump is selling off America, but this is truly astonishing.

The email, sent by Never Surrender, Inc., promotes what it calls a “National Security Briefing Membership” and urges recipients to “claim your spot” with multiple links to donate, in what it describes as an exclusive group receiving updates about national security threats.

It promises that members will “receive my private national security briefings, unfiltered updates on the threats facing America. The straight truth on border invasions, foreign adversaries, deep state sabotage, and every danger the fake news hides.”

  CNN

Not that he reads his national security briefings, but WTF? Surely he will stop getting them altogether.

AI defense system?

 Is AI why Trump wants to bomb Iran?

Also, could AI be any worse than letting Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump have access to classified defense systems?

What in the world?

 

WSJ article

So, let the whistleblower testify to a Congressional committee (that includes Democrats, needless to say).

So, is it related to the tag of "Russian Asset" she's been getting for at least a couple years, coming up again after being seen sneaking around the raid of the Fulton County, Georgia, election office?  

Allison Gill and Andy McCabe speculate in their most recent podcast on the Gabbard in Georgia incident:  In 2020, Trump wanted to use the military to seize voting machines but was told the only way he could legitimately do that is if there was foreign interference in the election - something various investigations and accounts verified didn't happen.  Now, recently, he kidnapped Nicolas Maduro and has him over a barrel so Maduro could be induced with threats and/or offers to "admit" Venezuela was indeed interfering in the 2020 election, as some Trump lackeys were claiming back then.  Gabbard's appearance in the raid on Georgia election offices puts the smell of national security on it.  Seems complex, but not out of the realm of possibility.  

A simpler explanation for her appearance there is she knows she's falling out of favor with Trump and has been sidelined in the administration, and showing Trump she's on board with the 2020 stolen election might put her back in his good graces.

Still, the Gill-McCabe scenario can't be easily dismissed.

UPDATE 03:10 pm:

Take over voting in at least 15 places.  How are you going to "nationalize voting" in anything fewer than 50 states?

Nothing to see here.

UPDATE 07:45 pm:  This makes Gill and McCabe's speculations seem even more likely...

UPDATE 02/03/2026:  Further evidence to give credence to Gill and McCabe's speculation.  The Maduro kidnapping wasn't about Venezuela's governance.

UPDATE 02/05/2026:  Allison Gill has written up her speculations in an article she published today.

UPDATE 02/12/2026:  Apparently, the secretive whistleblower complaint has something to do with Jared Kushner.

UPDATE 02/13/2026:

The whistle-blower report was based on a telephone intercept provided to the N.S.A. from a foreign intelligence service.

[...]

Because the intelligence report mentioned Mr. Kushner, Ms. Gabbard provided the information to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, according to people briefed on the events.

[...]

The whistle-blower report was drafted last May, while the Trump administration was deliberating about a strike on Iran. At the end of June, the military bombed Iranian nuclear sites on Mr. Trump’s orders.

Mr. Kushner has subsequently helped lead negotiations between the administration and Iran over Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its sponsorship of terrorism across the Middle East. He also has business interests in the Middle East and in other parts of the world.

The episode has led to clashes over how to interpret the mention of Mr. Kushner in the discussion and whether Ms. Gabbard was improperly seeking to keep the intelligence from being distributed within the intelligence community.

[...]

The names of Americans, particularly senior U.S. officials, are usually redacted from accounts of intelligence intercepts, a process called masking.

The foreign nationals were discussing Mr. Kushner, but some officials who have read the underlying intelligence or been briefed on its contents downplayed the significance of the references to him.

  NYT

They would, wouldn't they?

The foreign nationals, they said, were commenting on Mr. Kushner’s influence with the Trump administration.

I have no doubt they were.

The intercept also included what officials described as “gossip” or speculation about Mr. Kushner that was not supported by other intelligence. Some senior officials said the information was demonstrably false. While the whistle-blower believed that information should be circulated, the N.S.A.’s general counsel, Ms. Gabbard and the intelligence community’s inspectors general disagreed.

Officials declined to describe the gossip, saying that revealing it would expose the source of the information.

The complaint, the investigation of the complaint and the underlying intelligence all remain classified.

[...]

Some officials who either read or were briefed on the intelligence report said that had Ms. Gabbard not moved to restrict access to the report, it would have been quickly forgotten as one of many that recount foreign officials trying to figure out who has influence with Mr. Trump.

Probably true, but that could depend on what was reported.

A heavily redacted copy of the inspector general’s report was provided to Congress. Ms. Gabbard’s office redacted Mr. Kushner’s name, citing executive privilege.

[...]

Ms. Gabbard had previously pulled back and then restricted access to another N.S.A. intercept. That intelligence report involved an intercept of a call between Nicolás Maduro, then the Venezuelan president, and Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s envoy. Names of U.S. officials recorded in intelligence intercepts are supposed to be masked, and Ms. Gabbard argued the N.S.A. had failed to properly conceal Mr. Grenell’s identity. Mr. Grenell was negotiating with Mr. Maduro on Mr. Trump’s orders.

"I'd like you to claim Venezuela interfered with the 2020 election and is planning to interfere in 2026 and 2028."

Is the head Nazi running this country?

 

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has played a leading role in directing US strikes against suspected Venezuelan drug boats, according to three people familiar with the situation. At times, his role has superseded that of Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser.

The strikes on the Venezuelan boats allegedly carrying narcotics, which the administration has claimed were necessary because interdiction did not work, have been orchestrated through the homeland security council (HSC), which Miller leads as the homeland security adviser.

Miller empowered the HSC earlier this year to become its own entity in Donald Trump’s second term, a notable departure from previous administrations where it was considered part of the national security council and ultimately reported to the national security adviser.

[...]

The administration claimed that Tren de Aragua had infiltrated the regime of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro – and so the presence of the cartel’s members in the US amounted to a “predatory incursion” by a foreign nation, allowing for the deportation of any Venezuelan national.

“It is a drug cartel that is running Venezuela,” Miller told reporters at the White House earlier this month as he characterized Maduro as the head of the cartel. “It is not a government, it is a drug cartel, a narco-trafficking organization that is running Venezuela.”

But the administration has yet to provide concrete evidence that Tren de Aragua has become an instrument of the Venezuelan government, and legal experts contacted for this story said the White House could only justify the strikes if it could make that showing.

  Guardian

Not to mention, we haven't seen any proof of who was in the four different boats the US bombed.

UPDATE 09/30/2025:  As I was saying...

I don't think they care.

The United States says it has blown up at least three drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, including at least two from Venezuela, in a significant escalation of the kind of pressure that Mr. Trump has put on Mexico to crack down on fentanyl.

But while some drugs do come from Venezuela, fentanyl does not, and the cocaine that does is a very small percentage of the trade, far less than what comes from Colombia and exits from Colombia and Ecuador, according to the U.S. government’s accounting.

[...]

Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio have argued that significant amounts of cocaine are trafficked through Venezuela and that they are seeking to stop U.S. overdoses. A 2020 report from the U.S. State Department said just 10 percent to 13 percent of the global cocaine supply goes through Venezuela.

Fentanyl, which causes far more overdoses than cocaine, is almost entirely produced in Mexico with chemicals imported from China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

[...]

That has led many observers to say that the Trump administration’s real goal is to go after Mr. Maduro.

  NYT

I don't believe Trump knows much of anything about Maduro or Venezuela. I think he's being led by the nose by someone with an agenda ever since they failed to install Maduro's opponent in 2019, Juan Guaidó. And lately, attempting to install Edmundo Gonazlez.

The group supporting the use of force is led by Maria Corina Machado, an opposition leader. Her base says that by removing Mr. Maduro, the United States could defend the result of last year’s presidential vote, which Mr. Maduro is widely believed to have lost. Independent vote monitors and many countries, including the United States, recognized Mr. Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González, a surrogate for Ms. Machado, as the legitimate victor.

One of Ms. Machado’s advisers, Pedro Urruchurtu, said she was coordinating with the Trump administration and had a plan for the first 100 hours after Mr. Maduro’s fall.

[...]

But in interviews, other Venezuelans were far less eager to see the United States get involved. Many, even those who said they wanted to see Mr. Maduro gone, arguing that he has held on only through repression, said that a violent U.S. move was not the solution.

[...]

Other Venezuelans warned that ousting Mr. Maduro would only invite the armed actors left behind — the military, Colombian guerrilla groups, paramilitary gangs — into a battle for the spoils.

And in Venezuela, with its oil, gold and other minerals, there are many spoils.

The boats that U.S. forces have bombed in the Caribbean have killed at least 17 people, according to the Trump administration.

Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians not directly taking part in hostilities, even if they are believed to be smuggling drugs.

"Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians..."

In the state of Sucre, on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, the first boat to have been destroyed, on Sept. 2, is widely believed to have been carrying people from the towns of San Juan de Unare and Güiria, on a spit of land known as the Paria Peninsula.

For years the region has been dominated by cocaine trafficking, according to Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who has conducted field work in the area.

But migrants, trafficking victims and government-subsidized Venezuelan gasoline — which can be sold at a higher price in Trinidad and Tobago, just six miles away — also leave from this area, she said.

[...]

Some in Venezuela said they feared U.S. military action would mean more loss. And they said they didn’t believe that Ms. Machado, who says she is in hiding in Venezuela, and Mr. González, in exile in Spain, could guarantee their security.

“Name one successful case in the last few years of a successful U.S. military intervention,” said Henrique Capriles, an opposition politician who has clashed with Ms. Machado.

Few years? How about few decades?

UPDATE 10/19/2025:  There were survivors.

Intelligence report nixed by Gabbard

Every four years U.S. intelligence officials have published Global Trends, a public document that predicts what challenges the United States — and the world — will face in the coming decades.

With the intelligence community often focused on immediate issues, the Global Trends report has taken a longer-term look. Past editions warned of threats and shifts that came to pass, including climate change challenges, new immigration patterns and the risk of a pandemic.

But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, led by Tulsi Gabbard, is eliminating the group that compiles the report.

  NYT

Perhaps because Trump's name is on that list, too.

Democracy dies in the dark.

Forewarned is forearmed

 Cleta Mitchell:  Trump whisperer

“The president’s authority is limited in his role with regard to elections except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States — as I think that we can establish with the porous system that we have,” said Mitchell, a prominent anti-voting lawyer who played a key role in Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, in an appearance on a podcast hosted by the Christian conservative leader Tony Perkins.

“Then, I think maybe the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward,” Mitchell added.

[...]

Though Mitchell has no official role in the Trump administration, she is well-connected in Trump World. Her anti-voting group, the Election Integrity Network (EIN), received a briefing in June from a senior official in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on how a database run by the department can be used to verify the citizenship status of registered voters, Democracy Docket reported. And she was on the December 2020 phone call in which Trump pressed Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to win the state.

Her comments about taking control of elections come amid increasing concern that Trump could try to use the National Guard or law enforcement agencies to obstruct voting in Democratic strongholds in coming elections.

  Democracy Docket

Dismantling the CIA

 In previous years, I would say that might be a good idea.

“But in a Trump government that demands allegiance to a person rather than the Constitution, even quiet resistance is a signal. And signals matter—now more than ever. [...] The next intelligence failure will not be an accident. It will be a choice.” 

    -- former CIA senior exec Brian O'Neill - What LinkedIn Told Me This Weekend About U.S. National Security

Tesla has another sad week

 

The world is serious about pulling away from us. As they should be.

Hegseth, mere buttboy

 

The answer is obviously, yes.  "Be careful what you read  [...]  except for the Bible."

Jesus, he's smug.  All of the administration are smug assholes.

He can't give a straight answer.

We'll see.  Is anybody at SCOTUS listening?  Do they care?

All he's doing is parroting what Trump says.

Smirking asshole.

UPDATE 12:43 pm:

  

Trump 2.0 - Truth is the enemy

 

Loyalty is the only qualification necessary

 And it is non-negotiable.

Welcome, Mr. Putin

Putin isn't going to have to conquer Europe with the Russian army.  He's going to get the United States for free.

Seems bad

 Really bad.

These dipshits think it's a game

 I know something important!

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

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

[...]

Mr. Hegseth created the separate Signal group initially as a forum for discussing routine administrative or scheduling information, two of the people familiar with the chat said. The people said Mr. Hegseth typically did not use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations and said it did not include other cabinet-level officials.

[...]

Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included [created by NSA Mike Waltz], the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.

[...]

Jennifer Hegseth has drawn attention for the access her husband has given her. Mr. Hegseth brought her into two meetings with foreign military counterparts in February and early March where sensitive information was discussed.

[...]

One person familiar with the chat said Mr. Hegseth’s aides had warned him a day or two before the Yemen strikes not to discuss such sensitive operational details in his Signal group chat, which, while encrypted, is not considered as secure as government channels typically used for discussing highly sensitive war planning and combat operations.

It was unclear how Mr. Hegseth, a veteran and former Fox New host who before his confirmation in January had never previously served in a high-level government position, responded to those warnings.

  NYT

I'd say it's very clear.

Impeach the motherfucker.

UPDATE 04/21/2025:

I think this usually happens right before somebody gets the axe.

Officially exiled from the movement.  LOL

They DO have to find someone as pliable as Hegseth before they replace him.

UPDATE 04/21/2025:

America is this close to neighbor turning in neighbor

 

UPDATE 04/11/2025:

And so it begins...

Trump 2.0 - Revoke security clearance for Dems

 

And yet, she can be on a group chat discussing national security issues with a journalist who was mistakenly added.

Somebody needs to revoke HER security clearance and that of everyone on that chat.

Unfit and dangerous

 They're unserious.  They don't know how to run a government.

But wait. That's not all.

Hegseth’s mobile number and active email address were sent to Der Spiegel by a commercial provider of personal information for marketing purposes.

A search of the leaked user data revealed that the email address and, in some cases, even the password associated with it, could be found in more than 20 publicly accessible leaks and traced back to a WhatsApp account for the Defense secretary that was recently deleted.

[...]

Waltz’s contact information was obtained by the same unnamed provider and was linked to his Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Signal accounts, in addition to several passwords for the adviser’s email address in leaked databases, Der Spiegel wrote.

[...]

The discovery comes as legislators call on Hegseth and Waltz to resign over mistakenly adding The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat in which plans for U.S. airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen were laid out.

President Trump described the breach as a “glitch” earlier in the week, after admitting Waltz learned a lesson about best practices for virtual communication. However, Trump also suggested the media was embellishing concerns about defense conversations on Signal’s platform, after some reporters accused the administration of brushing over the security breach.

“I don’t know about downplaying. The press up-plays it. I think it’s all a witch hunt,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “The attacks were unbelievably successful, and that’s ultimately what you should be talking about, I think.”

  The Hill

They don't get it. They're unqualified and incapable of running anything, much less the United States.

Despicable

 

Go to any rural American area and take the shirts off 20 men.  You'll be able to take a similar picture.  Hell, take the shirt off Pete Hegseth.

Speaking of Mike Waltz

 Ladies and Gentlemen, your National Security Adviser...

After inviting a journalist to a group chat over non-governmental channels about military attack plans, Waltz should expect every journalist in the world to be digging into his life and revealing what an incompetent idiot he is.

An idiot who should be fired.