A (or One) Skeptic

With Elon Musk’s recent departure from DOGE and his status as a special government employee, I don’t think any sane person is sad to see him go. Musk will, of course, be forever remembered as the person who completely ruined his reputation in two easy steps. Twitter and DOGE; that’s all it took. From Boy Genius to proto-fascist in less time than it has ever taken anyone else.

Now in the duration of its existence there has been a lot of conflicting information about what DOGE actually accomplished. DOGE, about which Musk claimed that he would identify $2 trillion in savings, didn’t get anywhere close. Beginning with the boy geniuses at DOGE not understanding how COBOL works — and thereby misidentifying everyone who did not have a birth date in the Social Security system as being 150 years old — on through to the many revisions of their own published data, DOGE has actually been a spectacular failure. Musk claims to have identified $175 billion in savings — which would be 8.75% of what he promised to find — but people don’t even believe that number. 

I could do better than that myself in a single day. Don’t believe me? I can prove it to you right now.

How would we get from here to there?

• You could double the staffing at the IRS and have them go specifically after high income earners (including corporations) who are suspected of cheating on their taxes. 

That would still leave us $812 million short of closing the deficit this year.

Eliminating debt, however, is not the kind of thing one can achieve in a single year. It would take years and years and years of consistent and persistent effort. We’d at least be moving in the right direction.

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is my proof that I could have done a better job in a single day than Musk’s entire team of incels was able to accomplish in the 4½ months they’d been at it.

I’ll take my paycheck now, please.

The incessant news cycle about the Trump administration was interrupted oh so briefly by the news about President Biden. First we had the publication of the book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson entitled “Original Sin” and arguing that Biden’s cognitive decline in the 2nd half of his term was subject to a cover up. And, that his decision to run for a 2nd term was disastrous. And then, eight days later, there was the announcement of Biden’s prostate cancer, and that it had metastasized to his bones.

So, first of all, I have been saying since Biden’s election that he should serve as a one-term president. That would have rid him of the need to direct his policies to ensure his re-election, and it would have given the Democratic party four years to find a successor. But nobody listened to me (or all the rest of us who were saying the same thing).  No surprise there.

Secondly, it’s not surprising that Biden wanted to run for re-election given how badly Biden wanted to be President in the first place.  For those who have forgotten:

• Biden ran in 1988 (the Bush v. Dukakis election), and his campaign came to an end when Biden was accused of using parts of a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock without proper attribution. (A plagiarism scandal. How quaint!)
• Biden ran again in 2008, the same year that Barack and Hillary fought it out for the nomination. But Biden impressed Barack during the campaign enough so that he chose him for his Vice-President.
• And in 2020, of course, he won the election with the largest popular vote count in history (despite what Trump and his acolytes have insisted for all these years).

He clearly enjoyed being President, and was quite good at it.

But I’ve also been saying for quite some time that we should have elected Biden when we elected Obama, and we should have elected Obama when we elected Biden. That’s on us. That’s our mistake.

And finally, when it became clear that Biden had lost his fastball in the first debate, he did the agonizing thing — even though it took a while to get him there — and dropped out in favor of Kamala Harris, who turned out to be a very good candidate. 

Yes, a full four-year process might have led to a different candidate. Gavin Newsome? Maybe. Joshua Shapiro? Maybe. Gretchen Whitmer? Maybe. But there is no reason to believe that any of these candidates would have done better than Kamala Harris did. This country — for whatever reasons (and we will continue to discuss this) — was absolutely hell-bent on electing Trump. Again.

And now we will have to let Trump practically destroy the country before the fever may break — at least for those who are not hard-core MAGA — and the country can return back to some form of sanity, if not exactly prosperity.

I have been thinking a lot about why Republicans are so enraged at us, so enraged that they would inflict Donald Trump on us twice. I mean, I clearly got in 2016 that Trump was the FU candidate and that this was an FU election. But I thought they would have gotten it out of their system in 2016. Not so, of course.

So I asked ChatGPT to summarize what Republicans are so angry at us for. (ChatGPT, btw, is quite good at this kind of inquiry.) The list that ChatGPT came up with is set forth below. But before we even get to that, I have to acknowledge a few general grievances that I’m sure Republicans have.

First of all, on the left we have, over the years, been a little bit too smug. You can see this in particular during award shows or through the late night comedians. If you watch those shows you would think that everyone is with us, when clearly they are not. This is why Republicans hate “Hollywood” so much. We’ve got to watch our attitude.

Second, we have gone a little bit overboard with political correctness and the vocabulary one can and cannot use. For example, insisting that we all declare the gender pronouns we want to be known by. I’m all for people who are sincerely gender-fluid or transitioning getting to choose their pronouns — although the available options are often awkward, as pronouns like “they” and “them” really denote plurality — but asking some farmer in Kansas to declare what pronoun he wants be known through is a little bit silly.

So what are the issues that Republicans are so mad at us over. Let’s take a look.

Immigration Policy 

Many Republicans seem to think that Democrats are promoting open borders and that immigrants are taking their jobs. Of course, immigrants can’t simultaneously be blamed for jobs being shipped to China and taking jobs that most regular Americans don’t want to do. Most people with their eyes open know that farm work is dominated by Mexicans and elder care is dominated by Africans and almost all the available house cleaners are Brazilian, and these are all jobs that “domestic” American generally do not want to do. Otherwise, these would be Schrödinger’s immigrants. But no immigrant here has caused jobs to be shipped to China. That would be CEOs who need to take the blame for that.

The Size of Government

Ever since Ronald Reagan Republicans have basically seen the government as the enemy of the people and that it should be smaller and more “efficient.” Well, like any very large employer, the government is not always efficient. Not every program brings good results, and in fact, I’m actually on board with one conservative idea, and that is that most programs should have a seven year sunset, and unless its supporters can demonstrate at the end of seven years that the program is effective and should be renewed, then it should expire at that time. 

But other large organizations are also not super efficient. For example, Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, United Parcel Service and Home Depot — the largest employers in the United States — do some things well and some things not so well. And by definition, not everyone can be above average. Some people are better off in jobs that don’t require too much initiative.

Finally, the federal government contributes some amazing things, especially in areas like scientific research, without which many of the advances we’ve had in science would not have happened. Most of that stuff flies under the radar. Most of those things are done in partnership with other actors, like research hospitals, but these are very important things.

Just about every President who has ever been elected wants to make government more efficient, but that, it turns out, is a sisyphean task.

Social & Cultural Issues

Republicans are very worked up about “hot button” social issues like gay rights and abortion, and this has been true for a long time. With the Dobbs decision, they bought themselves a great victory.  Ironically, it turns out that even in conservative states, when the question of abortion rights is put directly to the voters, the voters approve of abortion rights.

Go figure.

Gay rights, on the other hand, is an issue that has changed with the generations. Most of the older generation is uncomfortable with gay rights, whereas much of the younger generation could care less. Remember that Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which legalized gay marriage, was only decided in 2003. It arguably tanked the presidential aspirations of John Kerry in 2004, even though he had nothing to do with it. Twelve years later we had Obergefell v. Hodges at the Supreme Court, and not even Donald Trump is currently advocating to reverse that decision.

But when it comes to the transgendered, we’re not there yet. We’ll most likely be there in another generation, but we’re not there yet today. We probably need to let that issue “marinate” until some of the controversy is bled out of it. In any case, it clearly has a lot of conservatives fired up.

Gun Rights

I’m not really sure why conservatives are still fired up about this, since you cannot even get any more pro-gun than the United States currently is. There are virtually no restrictions on gun purchases at the current time, and many conservatives are more concerned about the 2nd Amendment than they are about voting rights. Remember the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theories? Those worked out exactly like all the times that someone claimed that Second Coming was happening on a specific day. In any case, no one is “coming to take their guns.” That is now a settled issue. 

Climate Policy & Energy

Conservatives tend to be critical of climate and energy policies that promote sustainable energy and limit global warming, because they think there is a simple trade-off between progressive policies and harm to the economy. And to be fair, trade-offs can exist. But in the long run, sustainable energy is much better for the economy and creates many new local jobs here in America — something that the Trump administration is allegedly wanting to have happen — than committing to outdated industries. That’s not how capitalism works. 

Back in the day, we switched from steam locomotives to diesel because they were a much better technology; we switched from whale oil to shale oil because these were a much better technology (and whales were being hunted to extinction). We had to make the leap from horse and buggies to cars. 

Is there pain involved in these kinds of transitions? Sure.

Does the pain often hit the working class disproportionately? Yes.

But that doesn’t mean that we can stay committed to antiquated technologies forever.

The destruction that would  come with continued global warming would be a disaster not only for the United States but the entire planet. It’s time for us to “take our heads out of the sand.”

Crime and Policing

Republicans often claim that Democrats are “too soft” on crime and that our cities are overrun with criminals. Well, we’re not “soft” on crime, but more to the point, being too “hard” on crime is completely counterproductive. 

Years and years of experience with criminal justice has proven that rehabilitation and reintegration are the two things that statistically are most likely to keep people from reoffending. Policies like bail reform also lead to less recidivism. You can look it up.

Now, back during the George Floyd protests, the chants to “defund the police” were a huge mistake. I (and many others like me) knew that from day one. That was a rhetorical disaster. But often, it’s Democrats who are much more supportive of the police in actual practice, such as when Jon Stewart had to go to the wall to ensure the enactment of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund Act over the objection of Republicans. Support for the police by Republicans is often merely performative, as it was on January 6th in the Capitol.

Election Integrity

This one is based on pure fantasy, and comes primarily from one man’s inability to accept defeat under any circumstances. The 2020 election was examined from every angle, and there was never any persuasive evidence that the election was rigged against Donald Trump. No, Trump lost in court 63 times, with just one small procedural victory which everyone conceded could not have affected the outcome. Still, there are Republicans to this day, who cannot accept the obvious.

A much more serious concern is that of voter suppression, which arguably made the difference in the outcome of the 2024 election, especially in the “swing” states. It is a false equivalence between “election integrity” and “voter suppression.” Almost all the evidence suggests that voter suppression is a much more serious concern than election integrity. 

Detachment from Reality

By now there is plenty of evidence that Republicans have essentially become detached from reality. Consider, for example, Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent assertion that the DEA under Trump intercepted 71 million Fentanyl pills, and in the process saved “258 million” lives. Consider the absurdity of this post. First of all, how does 72 million pills translate to 258 million lives? That would mean that each pill intercepted — and who knows how many there actually were — would have saved 3.5 American lives. Now consider that 258 million lives is approximately 74.29% of the American population, babies, children and the elderly included. That would mean that you, and me, and my brother, and my sister, and my mother — well, maybe not my mother, maybe she is part of the quarter of the population that was not saved by Donald Trump — but that all of the rest of us were dying (pun intended) to get our hands on Fentanyl. Trump has repeatedly made assertions virtually every day that have no basis in fact whatsoever. I guess it’s not surprising that conservatives are so angry at us when they literally live in a fact free zone.

Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that “you’re entitled to your own opinion but not to your own set of facts.” Continuing to live in a fact free zone would eventually lead to the implosion of the Republican party. You can only live in a fantasy world for so long. Unless we can get to the point where we can at least agree on what the facts are, never mind what they imply, we are going to be a very sorry country indeed.

For the first time ever in my life I’m kind of hoping that Jesus does come back at Easter this year, just so he could tell all the MAGA “christians” that there is no way they’re getting into the Kingdom of Heaven. I hope he can call them all in individually to deliver the same message.

I mean, if Santa Clause can visit over one billion homes on Christmas Eve, I’m sure Jesus can talk to the 25-30 million evangelical Christians on one day.

Let Jesus tell them that it doesn’t actually matter what you believe or proclaim, it only matters how you behave. And that repeatedly demonstrating your cruelty is no way to get into any kind of beautiful afterlife.

Oh, and then I hope he tells them that there is no Heaven, that it’s a child’s fantasy, and it only matters what you do here in this life. Boy, I would love to see some of their faces after that conversation.

As President Trump drives the economy off of a cliff and continues to go on his all-out revenge tour, it’s interesting to watch Americans’ reaction to Trump’s agenda. In general Americans don’t seem to care about the revenge tour or the wholesale trampling of civil rights, but they will care about the demise of the economy.

If Trump weren’t driving the economy off a cliff, the rest of his agenda might still find relatively broad support. And Trump is also totally obsessed about the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

In case you have somehow missed the story, Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national residing in Maryland with a wife and family, was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March 2025 by the Trump administration, despite a 2019 court order protecting him from removal due to credible threats from gangs in his home country. Although he had no criminal record, authorities alleged gang affiliation based on unverified claims. His deportation was later acknowledged by the administration as an “administrative error.” 

Following his deportation, Abrego Garcia was detained in El Salvador’s high-security prison, CECOT. His wife filed a lawsuit in Maryland District Court, leading to a series of legal proceedings. On April 4, a Maryland judge ruled his detention illegal and ordered his return to the U.S. The Department of Justice appealed, but the Fourth Circuit denied the appeal. Subsequently, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 against the administration, stating that his removal was illegal.

That’s a 9-0 ruling.

Despite the Supreme Court’s directive to “facilitate” his return, the administration has resisted efforts to repatriate him. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has also declined to intervene, complicating the situation further.

Trump claims he doesn’t have the “authority” to get Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador. Are you effing kidding me? Trump,  who believes he has the authority to do whatever the fuck he wants suddenly lacks authority to get this guy back?

This case is rapidly accelerating us towards the Constitutional crisis that all sane people want to avoid. 

The Judge overseeing the case (Paula Xinis) is becoming less and less amused by the Trump administration’s DOJ antics and is considering a contempt investigation. That’s where it gets serious.

Some additional observations from Trump’s tariff announcements on “Liberation Day” on Tuesday. For this information I am going to quote extensively from Heather Cox Richardson’s wonderful substack newsletter, which was completely on point yesterday in several of its observations. First, with respect to the calculation of the “reciprocal” tariffs:

Trump claims he is imposing “reciprocal tariffs” and says they are about half of what other countries levy on U.S. goods. In fact, the numbers he is using for his claim that other countries are imposing high tariffs on U.S. goods are bonkers. Economist Paul Krugman points out that the European Union places tariffs of less than 3% on average on U.S. goods, while Trump maintained its tariffs are 39%. Krugman said he had no idea where that number had come from, but financial journalist James Surowiecki figured out that the White House “just took our trade deficit with [each] country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.” He called it “extraordinary nonsense.” Washington Post economic writer Catherine Rampell posted that she was reluctant to amplify Surowiecki’s theory that the tariff rates were based on such a “dumb calculation,” but then the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative confirmed it.

Second, with respect to the tariff’s use as potential political tool:

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted tonight that the tariffs make no economic sense because “[t]hey aren’t designed as economic policy. The tariffs are simply a new, super dangerous political tool.” Murphy suggests they are a way to make private industry dependent on the president the same way he has tried to make law firms and universities dependent on him. Industries and companies “will need to pledge loyalty to Trump in order to get sanctions relief.” Murphy warns that “[t]he tariffs are designed to create economic hardship…[s]o that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears.”

Third, Trump’s fascination with the 1913 Revenue Act, trying to return us to the days before the broad use of the income tax:

There is also Trump’s apparent fascination with President William McKinley, who held office from 1897 to 1901, at a time when high tariffs concentrated wealth in the hands of industrialists while workers and farmers, as well as their families, faced injury, hunger, and homelessness from dangerous working conditions, low wages and commodity prices, and seasonal factory closings. Trump has frequently claimed those years were the nation’s wealthiest, and today he helped to explain his focus on that era when he referred to the 1913 Revenue Act, a law that has angered the right wing for decades. That act began the process of replacing the high tariffs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with an income tax, thus shifting the burden of funding the treasury from ordinary Americans through tariffs to wealthier Americans through the income tax. At least some of Trump’s tariff plans seem tied to his enthusiasm for tax cuts on wealthy individuals and corporations.

And finally, the acquiescence of our spineless Congress in failing to curtail the President’s power on tariffs, which they absolutely have the authority to do:

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo makes the important point that “Presidents have no inherent power over tariffs whatsoever.” The Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to impose tariffs. But the International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to impose tariffs if he declares a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, which Trump did today, declaring a “national emergency to increase our competitive edge, protect our sovereignty, and strengthen our national and economic security.” That same law allows Congress to end such a declaration of emergency, but so far, Republicans have declined to do so. Today the Senate rebuked Trump by passing a resolution to block his tariffs on Canadian products, with four Republicans—Susan Collins (ME), Mitch McConnell (KY), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Rand Paul (KY)—joining Democrats to pass the resolution. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is unlikely to take the measure up.

I guess we really are going to have to wait for Trump to create the next great recession (if not depression) before the Kool Aid wears off and people (in the middle and on the right) begin to see Trump for who he is. On the left, we’re already there.

Well, now we’re going to find out. After threatening to do so for quite some time, Trump has reached his “Liberation Day” where he is going to “liberate” the United States from all of the so-called “bad deals” that Trump believes that the United States has suffered at the hands of other countries.

These tariffs are no joke. 

Here, according to the New York Times, are the tariffs that Trump is imposing at midnight on April 3rd. (It would certainly have been more poetic if he had imposed them on April Fool’s Day.)

New tariffs for select countries

Country	New tariff	Share ofU.S. imports	Trade balance
China	+34%	13.4%	–$292 bil.
E.U.	+20%	18.5%	–$241 bil.
Vietnam	+46%	4.2%	–$123 bil.
Taiwan	+32%	3.6%	–$74 bil.
Japan	+24%	4.5%	–$69 bil.
India	+26%	2.7%	–$46 bil.
South Korea	+25%	4.0%	–$66 bil.
Thailand	+36%	1.9%	–$46 bil.
Switzerland	+31%	1.9%	–$39 bil.
Indonesia	+32%	0.9%	–$18 bil.

Trump keeps repeating that it will be “short-term pain for long-term gain.” But there is no reason to believe that the pain will be short-term, unless Trump loses his nerve, which wouldn’t be the first time for him and tariffs.

This would be the highest tariffs that we’ve had in a century. And yeah, what was going on a century ago. Oh yes: the Great Depression!

Trump’s supporters and acolytes are all parroting his assurances that the pain will be short term. But wasn’t this election all about the “price of eggs?”

If Trump thinks that his tariffs are going to force companies to bring manufacturing back to the United States, he really is a bigger idiot than we all feared. First of all, the threat to manufacturing (and other) jobs is not their being outsourced to China or Mexico; no, it’s the jobs being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence.  Trump’s tariffs will (of course) do exactly nothing about that problem.

It’s not like manufacturers could even bring back manufacturing in time for it to make a difference for Trump. To relocate manufacturing plants takes years. And Trump —  notwithstanding his fantasies about a 3rd term — will only be in office for four years. After that, who knows?

To use an analogy, in a world of diesel trains, where the next evolution is towards electric trains, Trump is insisting on trying to bring us back to steam locomotives. It’s just not going to happen.

Well, Trump supporters, this is what you wanted. Let’s see whether the reality is as pleasant as the promise of tariffs.

Over the weekend Donald Trump said that he “wasn’t joking” about running for a 3rd term. But he should be joking, because that is never going to happen. 

When Trump first became President, I thought it a real possibility that Trump would never last through his first term, not because of impeachment or the 25th amendment, but just because this lazy shit would never want to do the amount of work that it takes to be president. But, as on many other occasions, he proved me wrong. He proved that one could be president while spending the majority of your time watching TV. He just enjoyed the unlimited power and the unending attention way too much, and could leave most of the work for other people. So I believe that he is serious about wanting a third term.

There is, of course, a practical problem: the 22nd Amendment (and also a portion of the 12th Amendment).

The 22nd Amendment, ratified after FDR’s four terms, says this in relevant part:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

This would have allowed LBJ to run for a second term in 1968, because he had only served one year and two months. If JFK had been assassinated a year later, LBJ would have been out of luck.

The 12th Amendment, which improved the process for electing the President and Vice President through the electoral college, says this in relevant part:

No person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

Although the 12th Amendment was enacted well before the 22nd, together they function to keep anyone from being elected more than twice as President.

The Vice Presidential Strategy

One theory is that Trump could be elected as Vice President on a ticket with, say, J.D. Vance, and Vance would then resign, handing Trump a third term. This, the theory goes, would get around the problem that no one can be “elected” more than twice.

Here are the problems with this theory:

1. The 22nd Amendment clearly anticipates that a Vice President (like LBJ) becomes President the first time because of the incapacity of the President on the ticket they were elected on. But they wouldn’t get to serve out a full term this way. That’s why it cannot be for more than two years.
2. Under the 12th Amendment, Trump could not be elected to Vice President in the first place, because he is “constitutionally ineligible” to be President a third time.
3. If J.D. Vance were to be elected President, there would be nothing to compel him to resign and hand the presidency back to Trump.
4. If that theory were true, then the Obamas could run as a ticket, with Michelle at the top — Michelle, btw, is still the most popular “politician” in America — and she could then resign and hand the presidency right back to Barack. (Unlike J.D. Vance, Michelle really does not want to be President.)

This is essentially a variation of the Putin-Medvedev “power swap” strategy, but in a more limited sense.

The Speaker of the House Strategy

This is an even more far-fetched variant on the Vice Presidential strategy, under which Trump becomes Speaker of the House — as some of you constitutional scholars know, the House Speaker does not technically need to be a member of the House — where he would be third in line under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. In order for this theory to work you would have to have all of the following:

1. The House in Republican hands.
2. A different set of people (maybe J.D. Vance and Nikki Haley) elected as Republican President and Vice-President.
3. The resignation of both that elected President and Vice-President to make way for Trump.
4. A path to overcoming all of the difficulties already part of the Vice Presidential strategy.

The Presidential Qualifications Strategy

Under this theory, the only qualifications needed to be President are the original ones — being a “natural born” citizen, being 35 or older, and having resided in the United States for 14 years — and the 22nd amendment would just be ignored. Republican state party’s could theoretically put Trump on their ballots even though he is ineligible, and if he wins in the primaries, make him their candidate. That still would not make him eligible to be elected as President.

That theory depends on the Supreme Court either ignoring (or never getting to the merits of) a challenge under the 22nd amendment, which — even with this Supreme Court — is highly unlikely. Remember, this Supreme Court decided last year in a 9:0 unanimous decision that the state’s could not keep Trump off the ballots even though he had arguably violated the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment. Under the precedent of that ruling, individual state parties don’t get to make those kinds of decisions.

Other Considerations

In addition, by 2028 Trump will be 82 years old (and 88 by the end of the term). At the current rate of his blowing up the American economy, he is likely to be the least popular President ever. (He’s the only President to never top 49% approval ratings in either of his terms.) 

More than an inspiration, he could be a lead weight for the Republican party by then. But never to be constrained by facts or any other kind of reality, fantasizing about a 3rd term allows Trump to delude himself, and to a certain extent, to delude his base. It keeps him “relevant” even though he is already a lame duck, and will be a much lamer duck by 2026 or 2027.

Well, the cognitive gymnastics are about to kick into overdrive as the “lock her up” crowd try to distinguish what happened with Trump’s national security advisors “Signal” chat from Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server are going to be fun to watch.

So what happened with the Signal chat? 

​A few weeks ago, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, found himself inadvertently added to a Signal group chat involving senior U.S. government officials, which was discussing  a planned attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The attack occurred on March 24, 2025, when U.S. airstrikes targeted sites across the country, in retaliation for Houthi attacks on shipping lanes.

This group included Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. The addition of Goldberg to the chat was apparently an error by Waltz, and it went unnoticed as the officials continued their discussions.

Goldberg initially thought that he was being pranked.

The conversations within the group chat involved detailed plans for the imminent airstrikes, including information on targets, weaponry, and attack sequencing. This breach became public  when Goldberg published an article revealing the incident on the same day that the attacks occurred, after they occurred .

The revelation has understandably raised concerns about the handling of classified information. Legal experts have pointed out potential violations of the U.S. Espionage Act and record retention laws. 

Now I love the Signal App. My family has been using it since WhatsApp was gobbled up by Meta (the company behind Facebook) and some family members decided that WhatsApp could no longer be trusted. We especially use Signal with our relatives in Germany.

Still, I’m not sure I would put family secrets on Signal, never mind national security secrets.

Now all the “lock  her up” Yahoos have to find a good reason why this remarkable breach can be excused when Hillary’s behavior could not.

Let’s remind ourselves what was actually involved with the private email server.

This happened back in the period where Hillary was U.S. Secretary of State under Obama (between 2009 and 2013). Facebook (2004) and YouTube (2005) had just been invented. In other words, the early days of popular Internet use and people were less familiar with how technology worked. Hillary decided to use a private email server (located at her home in Chappaqua, New York) because of convenience (so she could use a single device for both personal and work emails) and maybe also because she didn’t trust the government not to leak her emails. In particular:

• The issue surfaced during a House investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attack, when the State Department realized it did not have records of Clinton’s emails.
• In 2014, the State Department requested work-related emails. Clinton’s team reviewed about 60,000 emails and submitted 30,000 to the government, while deleting the rest, claiming they were personal.
• The FBI launched an investigation, which did not result in a recommendation of criminal charges, but which noted 110 emails (of the 30,000 submitted) contained classified information at the time they were sent or received (or 0.366%).
• There is no confirmed evidence that Hillary Clinton’s private email server was ever successfully hacked or breached, or that any foreign entity was even aware of its existence (a Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer” claimed to have hacked Clinton’s server, but the FBI found no evidence to support his claim).

And on that basis conservatives basically lost their minds.

Clinton also arguably lost the election when Comey reopened the query days before the 2016 election because of an unrelated investigation involving former Congressman Anthony Weiner, during which agents discovered emails between his wife, Huma Abedin (a close aide to Clinton), and Clinton on Weiner’s laptop. (The Justice Department’s internal watchdog later concluded that Comey made a “serious error of judgment” in making this announcement so close to the election.)

And now, conservatives will be doing cognitive cartwheels to claim that this remarkable breach involving detailed attack plans on a Signal chat that was distributed to a journalist (!) is not a significant breach. 

Boy, their heads must hurt at night.

Last week, Donald Trump went up to the Department of Justice and gave what can best be characterized as a “triumphalist” speech, in which he alternately boasted about his ability to beat the legal cases against him, decried the “weaponization” of DOJ against him under the Biden administration, reiterated unfounded claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and gloated about deceased college basketball coach Bob Knight’s endorsement of him.

“We’re turning the page on four long years of corruption, weaponization and surrender to violent criminals, and we’re restoring fair, equal and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law. Under the Trump administration, the DOJ and the FBI will once again become the premier crime fighting agencies on the face of the earth.”

Since returning to the White House, the Trump administration has moved to demote DOJ attorneys who worked on Jan. 6, 2021, cases, pardoned those who were convicted for their actions related to the insurrection, and fired those who personally investigated the president. On Friday, Trump praised his administration’s actions to strip political opponents of security clearances, including “the Biden crime family and Joe Biden himself.”

“There could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked. That’s what they were doing at a level that’s never been seen before.”

So Trump’s oft-repeated claim that the DOJ was “weaponized” against him is . . . how does one put this politely? . . . a complete crock of shit.

What Trump wants isn’t that the DOJ is impartial. What he wants is total immunity from any criminal liability.

Let me repeat that.

What Trump wants is total immunity from any criminal liability.

That’s what he wants.

Of course, the Supreme Court got him halfways there in Trump v. United States (2024). That decision, which may someday rank up with Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Korematsu v. United States (1944), Bush v. Gore (2000) and Citizens United (2010) as among the worst decisions ever written by the Supreme Court, made Trump mostly immune from criminal prosecution while he is President.

But contrary to his constant assertions, Trump was not “unfairly” prosecuted.

If anything, no one in the history of the United States has ever gotten more breaks from the legal system than Donald Trump.

No matter how many breaks he gets, it will never ever be enough for Donald Trump. 

This man has a hole at the center of his being that will never ever be filled up. It must be so painful being Donald Trump, existing in this constant state of “not enough.”

Like his cousin Elon Musk, who also has a hole at the center of his psyche, and who is also in a constant state of “not enough.”

Trump is clearly perplexed that he cannot go after the people pardoned by Joe Biden, which includes all the member of the January 6th Commission. He is so perplexed that he recently invented the theory that the Biden pardons are “void” because Biden used an autopen (a device that allows officials to have their signature imprinted automatically).

Hey Trump, did you sign each of those 1500 pardons for your January 6th conspirators individually?

I thought not.

Then, Trump went after some of the judges who have thwarted his illegal orders by demanding that they be impeached.

That was too much for even Chief Justice John Roberts, who issued a statement to the following effect:

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

I mean, Chief Justice Roberts only has himself to blame for unleashing this lawless President upon the county, but at least he said something.

But President Trump was not content.

• He was not content to go after the people who prosecuted him for crimes that he actually committed.
• He was not content to ignore Joe Biden’s pardons and try to have them vacated.
• He was not content to call for the impeachment of judges who ruled against his illegal orders.
• No, this putz also started coming after the law-firms who represented his political opponents.

This putz is going to turn law-firms and lawyers into folk heroes, and that is really saying something!

On the campaign trail Trump repeatedly said “I am your vengeance,” and to the degree that this meant “owning the libs” many of his supporters were cheering him on. But as people are slowly finding out, Trump is only his own one-man vengeance parade. If his own supporters get burned along the way, Trump isn’t going to care in the least. He never has. He never will.