Category: Donald Trump

Chuck Schumer’s Sombrero Shutdown

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Perhaps you didn’t notice, but the federal government is “shut down” because they ran out of money. It’s all Kabuki theater, of course. Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government going, but it got filibustered by Senate Democrats. Why? Well, six months ago, in a similar situation, Schumer threatened a shutdown before backing down — and then got roasted by his party’s left-wing grassroots nutjobs, who want to FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! against TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! Scorched by this blowback, Schumer decided this time he’d actually go over the cliff to appease the lunatic fringe Democrats, and so after the House passed its CR, Schumer and the Senate Democrats issued a laundry list of “demands.”

Well, guess what? Elections have consequences, and Republicans are in no mood to kowtow to Schumer’s lunatic fringe party. So the response to Chuck and his demands was, “OK, you really want to shut down the government? Do it. Double-dog dare ya, you little sissypants.”

Maybe they didn’t say that in so many words, but considering the nature of the Democrat demands — including funding free healhcare for illegal aliens — Republicans calculated that Schumer’s temper tantrum would hurt Democrats far worse than it might hurt Republicans. Despite polls showing the shutdown was a loser, Chuck did it anyways, so . . .

An AI video with a sombrero and cheesy Mexican music is not exactly my idea of statesmanship, but in its memetic function — making the point about taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegals as the basic Democratic demand, while also inviting mockery — this is excellent online messaging. It also projects the confidence at the White House, knowing that most voters are against the shutdown. In fact, 43% of Democrats don’t want it, so Schumer is losing, and Trump is winning.

Despite any apocalyptic rhetoric you might hear about the shutdown, it’s not like Democrats actually believe it:

We don’t know how long the Schumer Shutdown will last, but we do know that every day — heck, every hour — that it does, the Democrats will be screeching in front of every microphone they can find that it is the apocalypse for the American people.
But, as we all know by now, it is far more important to watch what Democrats do rather than listen to what they say.
And last night, we found out what Democrat leadership is planning for early October. (Hint: it does not involve negotiating with Republicans or fighting to serve the American people.)

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Democrats are completely cynical, using scare-mongering rhetoric to gin up hysteria among their dimwit voters, who aren’t smart enough to understand that they’ve being hoodwinked and bamboozled. It’s truly pathetic.



 

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FBI Raids John Bolton: Why?

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The big news today raises some intriguing questions. While we must assume that there is legal justification for the FBI’s raid on John Bolton — probable cause to suspect him of illegal activity — the same could be said of dozens of others whose names might be on Donald Trump’s enemies list. That is to say, if this is about Trump getting even with enemies (which of course, most people in the news media just automatically assume to be the case), why start the reprisals with Bolton?

Well, let’s get to some of the facts first:

FBI agents raided the Maryland home and Washington, DC office of President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton Friday morning in a high-profile national security probe involving classified documents.
Federal agents went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post.
“NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” Patel said in a cryptic post to X shortly after the raid began.
Bolton has not been arrested and is not currently charged with any crimes, the official added.
“He’s not a smart guy, but he could be a very unpatriotic guy,” President Trump told reporters of Bolton Friday morning. “We’re going to find out.”
The raid came at the behest of Patel, with the president claiming that he had no advance knowledge of the operation.
“I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning … I tell [Attorney General] Pam [Bondi] and I tell the group: ‘I don’t want to know, but you have to do what you have to do. I don’t want to know about it.’”
“I could know about it. I could be the one starting — and I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer — but I feel that it’s better this way.”
An investigation of Bolton was launched in 2020, but the Biden administration shut it down “for political reasons,” according to a senior US official.
Trump’s first Justice Department initiated a criminal inquiry into Bolton’s alleged disclosure of national secrets in his 2020 book, “The Room Where It Happened.”
However, officials tell The Post that the current investigation is not limited to Bolton’s book — but is part of a “larger classified leaking probe that extended into the Biden administration.”

OK, so there are some possible clues there. Is it really fair to assume that the motivation for the raid on Bolton is essentially political in nature, as so many people seem to be doing? If we stipulate this, for the sake of argument, we must still ask why Bolton? Why not James Comey, John Brennan, Susan Rice, et al.? Consider a couple of possible explanations:

  • A. Bolton’s activities were so egregious as to warrant this action. In other words, Bolton has done something so bad that Kash Patel believed the FBI needed to conduct this raid to prevent further damage to national security.
  • B. There is so much evidence of Bolton’s wrongdoing, and so much reason to believe more evidence would be found in this raid, that Patel saw it as an “open-and-shut” case, a slam-dunk prosecution where there could be no doubt of Bolton’s guilt.

These two theories are not mutually exclusive, of course, but I would lean toward Theory B as most likely. If Kash Patel is henceforth going to be dragging Trump’s enemies into court, to hold them accountable for their roles in what Tulsi Gabbard has called a “seditious conspiracy,” it helps his credibility if he can start with a slam-dunk case. And it also helps Patel that Bolton is seen as a Republican-leaning figure, picked to serve in both of the two most recent GOP administrations.

All this is speculation on my part, but if my hunch is right, we can expect a grand jury indictment of Bolton in just a few weeks — perhaps as early as next month — and the charging document will contain allegations (and references to evidence) that look very, very bad for John Bolton, so bad that even the most anti-Trump analyst on CNN won’t defend him.

UPDATE: A few thoughts from a friend:

There is a lot of speculation happening, and I’ve shared a few hunches of my own, but I certainly don’t claim to know anything about this case beyond the basic facts that are being reported by others.



 

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After Alaska Summit Meeting, Putin Confirms Ukraine War Was Biden’s Fault

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We all knew this, of course, and Trump has been saying it for three years, but now we have it directly from Vladimir Putin:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the war between Russia and Ukraine would never have begun if President Donald Trump were president in 2022 instead of then-President Joe Biden.
Putin’s comments came during his joint press conference with Trump in Alaska following their three-hour-long closed-door meeting with top advisers about the war in Ukraine.
“I’d like to remind you that in 2022, during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague the situation should not be brought to the point of no return when it would come to hostilities,” Putin, speaking in Russian, said according to a translator. “And I said it quite directly back then that it’s a big mistake.”
“Today, when President Trump saying [sic] that if he was the president back then, there will [sic] be no war, and I’m quite sure that it would indeed be so. I can confirm that,” he said, per the precise audio translation.
Trump has long said that the war would not have happened if he were president at the time. In fact, during a CNN town hall event in May 2023, Trump said as much and that Putin would agree with his statement.
“If I were president, this would have never happened, and even the Democrats admit that. Putin knew it would have never happened, and his pipeline would have never happened,” Trump said. “A lot of things would have never happened.”
“All those dead people, both Russian and Ukrainian… they wouldn’t be dead today, and all those cities that are blown up and disintegrated right to the ground, that wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
Putin contrasted his virtually non-existent relationship with the Biden administration with his “business-like and trustworthy” relationship with Trump and expressed optimism about a potential end to the conflict.
“I think that overall, me and President Trump have built a very good business-like and trustworthy contact, and have every reason to believe that moving down this path, we can come and the sooner the better to the end of the conflict in Ukraine,” he said.

Of course we can be sure that this will be construed by many Democrats — e.g., Adam Schiff — that Trump is Putin’s stooge, but such an interpretation is reading the situation bass-ackwards.

Let me explain something very basic about statesmanship: Plot a 4-point axis with the terms “friendly/unfriendly” and “strong/weak.” Now, if a foreign country is friendly and weak, you don’t need to worry about them as a potential adversary, but they’re also not going to be any help in a crisis. A country that is friendly and strong is a valuable ally. Now, a foreign country may be unfriendly — indeed, overtly hostile — but if they’re weak, who cares? Their hostility is impotent. Greatly to be feared, however, is the country that is both unfriendly and strong.

So, try to see this situation from Putin’s perspective. With Joe Biden as president, America was simultaneously weak and overtly hostile to Russia, and Biden’s “strategy” (if we can deem it as such) was to rely upon our so-called “European allies.” For years I’ve been saying that it’s ridiculous to refer to France, Germany, etc., as “allies,” because from a military point of view, they are utterly worthless. If push came to shove, how many combat-ready divisions could Our European Allies™ actually deploy, even in their own defense, much less at some troubled hotspot elsewhere in the world? So the idea of the Biden administration is that we would rely on Our European Allies™ to deter Russia while, at the same time, we would continually insult Russia and engage in various covert hostilities against the Putin regime. We saw the result.

In August 2021, the Biden administration enacted its disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Were these unrelated incidents? Of course not. Just ask yourself: How long does it take to plan, organize and mobilize for a major military action? About six months, I’d say. The minute Putin saw the Biden bungle in Afghanistan, that’s when he ordered his army to prepare for the Ukraine invasion. When it became apparent, in December 2021/January 2022, the Russia was building up its forces near Ukraine, what was the Biden administration’s response? Talk, talk, talk.

Putin spotted Biden for the gutless wonder he was –the typical bully-braggart, always threatening others, but afraid of a real fight — and Ukraine suffered as a consequence. Liberals with the Ukraine flag logo in their social media profiles can hate Trump all they want, but it won’t change the fact that Russia never would have invaded if it hadn’t been for Biden’s bumbling and weakness. Democrats will never admit this, but when did anyone ever expect Democrats to tell the truth?



 

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Big Win for President Trump as House Votes to Pass the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

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This is the kind of blogging I very seldom do, because the legislative process is generally boring, when it’s not painful. Grant that sometimes, the process is both boring and painful, but only the ultra-nerdy policy wonks ever get excited about this stuff, and I’ve never been one of those.

Both House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune deserve praise and gratitude for getting the votes necessary for passage of H.R.1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (yes, that’s the official name). Given that Republicans have a razor-thin House majority, and they’re six votes shy of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, this was a near-miraculous accomplishment. Bradley Jaye at Breitbart:

Republicans successfully met Trump’s Independence Day goal – belittled as unrealistic by the establishment media – clearing the path for a bill signing ceremony Friday that undoubtedly will be one for the ages.
Trump, in a Thursday morning Truth Social post, accurately called the legislation “one of the most consequential bills ever.”
The bill, which codifies into law much of what Trump has done through executive action and unlocks much more that required Congressional approval, may be considered by history as Trump’s crowning achievement. . . .
[T]he legislation manages to include almost every campaign promise Trump made on his Shermanesque march through all seven swing states, delivering wins conservatives never could have dreamed of during the Barack Obama or George W. Bush — or even Trump 45 — administrations.
Although Democrat fearmongering on Medicaid reforms has received outsized attention from the establishment media, the legislation not only extends or makes permanent Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — including no taxes on tips, overtime, or social security – but delivers on Trump’s signature issue of border security.
In many ways, the big, beautiful bill realizes the promise of Trump’s 2016 win, during which the mogul destroyed the open borders globalists’ stranglehold on the Republican Party.

Even discounting for the MAGA fever hype factor of that description, this is nevertheless a major win for Team Trump, and may help congressional Republicans stem the expected 2026 mid-term backlash. Historically, the president’s party loses seats in mid-term elections, but the Democrats are in disarray, demoralized and discombobulated after the wretched end of Biden’s embarrassing one-term stint in the White House, so it’s possible the GOP can avert the typical mid-term defeat. Meanwhile, let me throw out a somewhat crazy take on how and why this deal got done:

The Israel-Iran war.

What was the biggest threat to passage of the Big Beautiful Bill? A Senate filibuster. Mike Johnson could whip his caucus and twist arms to get enough votes to pass the bill in the House, but how could it ever get past the Senate, where it takes 60 votes (or 59 senators, plus the VP’s vote, if necessary) to get “cloture” and let a bill proceed to an up-or-down vote.

OK, so the Big Beautiful Bill got final House approval on June 10. Three days later, Israel launched its attack on Iran, targeting their military leadership and nuclear weapons program. The war culminated June 22 with the U.S. striking three Iranian nuclear facilities, and two days later, Trump announced a ceasefire ending what he called “The 12-Day War.”

Trump’s decisive action as Commander-in-Chief served as a stark contrast to Biden’s weakness and now let me ask you, who is the Democratic Party leader in the U.S. Senate?

Say what you will about Chuck Schumer — and I’m pretty sure I’ve never said anything good about him — he has always been pro-Israel, and as much as Chuck hates Trump, you have to imagine that him seeing Trump standing strong against the mullahs in Iran counted for something.

Perhaps my hunch on this is crazy, but how else do you explain why Schumer didn’t wage a filibuster to stop what is obviously a major legislative victory for Trump? As much as our “America First” friends may lament it, I say Trump won by playing the Zionist card.

Anyway, Stephen Miller is in the gloat zone.

Really, this is a big win, and we don’t get many of those on Capitol Hill, so it’s best to gloat all we can when we get the chance.



 

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The Worst News Network on the Planet Has Covered Itself in Shame This Week

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For the past couple of days, I’ve been watching CNN (so you don’t have to) and — dear merciful God! — there are no words to describe how awful it is. On the other hand, the attempt to describe it gave me an excuse to beat that dead dog again with a 1,300-word opus:

Among the errors to which journalists are prone, none is so common as the delusion of instant expertise. Assign a reporter to do an article about theoretical physics, and by the time he files his story, he’ll be convinced he’s Stephen Hawking. You see this sort of phony expertise everywhere in the media nowadays, including sports, where every ESPN panelist offers his predictions with rock-solid confidence, and never acknowledges his mistake when the team he’d picked to win ends up on the wrong side of a lopsided blowout.
Trafficking in fake expertise is routine practice at CNN, where their dwindling audience is now expected to believe that such personalities as Kasie Hunt and Erin Burnett know more about the effectiveness of U.S. military weapons than does Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. It’s worth noting in this context that CNN invested heavily in the idea that Hegseth was not qualified to be in charge of the Pentagon, despite his experience as an officer in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq.
Scarcely had the B-2 bombers returned from their bombing mission against Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility than CNN went to work to prove that the Air Force mission was a failure. . . .

Please read the rest of my latest American Spectator column. When I sent it to Dianna Deeley, she complained that I’d started the Paw Patrol theme song playing in her head. We’re on a roll!



 

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How Trump Ruined the Media’s Weekend

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Oh, sure, it was a bad Saturday for the Ayatollah, but try to imagine what it was like for the news media. Suppose you’re the lead national security reporter for the Washington Post or the New York Times. It’s a Saturday in June, so maybe you’re out at the beach for the weekend, having a nice seafood dinner with friends at some beachside bistro on the Maryland shore. You’re probably on your third glass of wine when, shortly before 8 p.m., your phone explodes with messages from your editors.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT! THAT SON OF A BITCH!”

Which is how reporters talk, by the way, especially when they find out on a Saturday night that they’ve got barely an hour to write the lead for a front-page story in the Sunday paper, and the only information they’ve got is a Truth Social message from Donald Trump. Bwa-hahahahaha!

A lot of reporters had their weekends ruined this way. The front-page story in the Metro edition of the Washington Post carries three bylines (Dan Lamothe, Evan Hill and Warren Stroebel), and down at the end, it gives credit to two other writers, Natalie Allison and Alex Horton, as having “contributed to this report.” Meanwhile, of course, the news desk was scrambling to remake the layout of the front page, and clearing space for the “jump” on page A11, as everybody in the newsroom — skeleton staff on a Saturday night — was scrambling to deal with this story.

It didn’t end there, however. After rushing to get a story in the early Metro edition (the one delivered to the suburbs), then they immediately turned around to do an update for the late city edition. Shortly after Trump’s Truth Social message, the White House put out the word that there would be a 10 p.m. press conference.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT! THAT SON OF A BITCH!”

Which is how reporters talk, when they find out they’re going to have to write up a second version of their front-page story — including quotes from the press conference — with just minutes to spare before the presses roll for the late edition. Great weekend at the beach, eh?

OK, so after filing your first version of the story, you might have 30 or 45 minutes before Trump’s press conference, time enough to write up a quote or two from your “intelligence community” sources. And then — as the final weekend-wrecking insult from the president you loathe with ever fiber of your being — at the end of his White House press conference, Trump announces that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General Dan Caine will hold a Pentagon press conference at 8 a.m. Sunday.

“HOLY FUCKING SHIT! THAT SON OF A BITCH!”

Which is how reporters talk, when they realize that after a night spent scrambling to write a front-page story, they’re going to have to get up early Sunday and head down to the Pentagon for a press conference by that smug Fox News bastard Pete Hegseth. It’s absolutely . . . perfect.



 

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Dow Jones Gains Nearly 3,000 Points After Trump Deports Gay Makeup Artist

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Look, I’m not one of these All-Purpose Expert types who hangs around on social media all day pretending to know everything about whatever’s the big Democratic Party talking point at the current moment. Today’s economic “expert” was, just a few weeks ago, an “expert” on national security, and last October was an “expert” on election polling. Go back to 2014, and their area of expertise was the “campus rape epidemic,” but then in 2016, they suddenly acquired authoritative knowledge of Russian “election interference.” In 2020, they became experts on viral epidemiology before turning their attention to “systemic racism.”

So I don’t claim to know why the stock market suddenly boomed upward this afternoon, and I’m not sure the media does, either:

The stock market mounted one of its biggest rallies in history after President Donald Trump announced a pause in some of his “reciprocal” tariffs on the globe, causing a market that has been under extreme pressure for the past week to explode higher.
The S&P 500 skyrocketed 9.52% to settle at 5,456.90 for its biggest one-day gain since 2008. For the broad market index, it was the third-biggest gain in post-WWII history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 2,962.86 points, or 7.87%, to close at 40,608.45 for its biggest percentage advance since March 2020. The Nasdaq Composite jumped 12.16% to end at 17,124.97, notching its largest one-day jump since January 2001 and second-best day ever.
About 30 billion shares traded hands, making it the heaviest volume day on Wall Street in history, according to records that go back 18 years.
“I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately,” Trump posted on his Truth Social. Trump, in the same post, said he was raising the tariff on China higher again to 125%.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later clarified that all countries except China would return to the 10% baseline tariff rate, down from the higher rates that previously shocked the markets, as negotiations take place.

OK, so the “experts” are telling us that this has something to do with tariff policy, and maybe they’re right. On the other hand . . .

A gay makeup artist who arrived in the US last year in search of asylum has been flown to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Andry José Hernández Romero was one of 238 Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration on 15 March, reports CBS News.
The news follows a deal brokered between President Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele allowing the US to send deportees to the central American’s country maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, located in Tecoluca.
“Our client, who was in the middle of seeking asylum, just disappeared. One day he was there, and the next day we’re supposed to have court, and he wasn’t brought to court,” Lindsay Toczylowski, Hernandez Romero’s lawyer, told CBS’s 60 Minutes.
“It’s horrifying to see someone who we’ve met and know as a sweet, funny artist, in the most horrible conditions I could imagine.”
Lawyers and family members for the deportees say they have had no contact with the prisoners since they were deported. However, TIME photojournalist Philip Holsinger, who has been reporting from the ground at CECOT, has reportedly described hearing one young man say, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a stylist,” as he cried out for his mother, was slapped and had his head shaved.
Hernandez Romero’s crown tattoos are the only evidence US immigration officials have given in court to accuse him of being part of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang Trump is campaigning to eradicate. . . .
Meanwhile Hernández’s mother, Alexis Dolores Romero de Hernández, has been quoted by The Guardian as saying: “Everyone has these crowns, many people. But that doesn’t mean they’re involved in the Tren de Aragua … He’s never had problems with the law.”
She furthermore added: “Let my son go. Review his case file. He is not a gang member.”

Oh, don’t worry, the “sweet, funny artist” should be very popular among his fellow inmates in the Salvadoran maximum-security prison.

Every Democrat in Congress will run for reelection next year promising to protect the rights of gay Venezuelan makeup artists. Why, I can hear Jasmine Crockett now, saying she’s “done picking cotton” — and done doing her own makeup, too! But what about the rights of gay American makeup artists, huh? When you start importing gay makeup artists from Third World countries, it drives down the wages of native-born gay makeup artists. Or at least, that’s what some “experts” tell me.

Correlation is not causation, except when it is, but I’m not claiming to be an expert on cosmetic artistry or economics, either. All I know is that (a) Andry José Hernández Romero is now in a Salvadoran maximum security prison and (b) things look a lot better for the 401(k) balance.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, as experts in Latin would say.

In completely unrelated news, Britney Spears is still crazy.



 

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‘Signal-Gate’: CIA Sabotage? Or Another ‘Anonymous’ in the Trump White House?

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Tuesday evening, I watched Laura Ingraham interview National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who promised to “get to the bottom” of how a supposedly secure text-message conversation between top officials of the Trump administration “accidentally” included notorious anti-Trump Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. Democrats and their media allies are trying to turn “Signal-gate” into a scandal, while Trump’s defenders are circling the wagons and denouncing Goldberg. But what we’re not getting is a plausible explanation of how this happened.

My friend Matt Margolis has kept digging away at this story, without getting any definitive answer to the big question, and what is being said by Waltz and other administration officials doesn’t help explain this. They’re defending, not explaining, and if I were Donald Trump I’d give Waltz about 72 hours to figure out who screwed the pooch, or else he would become the former National Security Adviser.

Was it a CIA setup? Matt Margolis writes:

[A]ccording to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Joe Biden first authorized the use of Signal for government communications.
This jibes with what CNN’s Scott Jennings revealed Monday night. His sources told him that Signal was preloaded on various devices when the Trump administration took over for the Biden administration.
“I did learn a few things in some of my conversations, if you’re interested,” he said. “One is that the Signal program was preloaded on a number of devices and agency computers in this circuit when they got there. So, in their view, it was already in use.”
On Tuesday, [CIA Director John] Ratcliffe confirmed that the Biden administration installed the Signal messaging app on CIA computers and approved it for work use.
“So that we’re clear, one of the first things that happened when I was confirmed as CIA director was Signal was loaded onto my computer at, uh, the CIA, as it is for most CIA officers,” Ratcliffe said in sworn testimony Tuesday. “Um, one of the things that I was briefed on very early, Senator, was by the CIA records management folks about—about the use of Signal as a permissible work use. It is. That is a practice that preceded the current administration to the Biden administration.”

OK, so if the CIA installed the app, we could imagine a scenario in which someone on the agency’s staff had a “backdoor” on the administration communications devices, and used that access to insert Jeffrey Goldberg into the Signal chat group. If that’s what happened, the CIA operative responsible needs to be identified, indicted, arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But that’s just one scenario, and it’s not even the worst-case scenario. No, far worse is the possibility that this mysterious “accident” was done by a backstabber inside Team Trump.

You remember Miles Taylor, don’t you? He was the Department of Homeland Security chief of staff who, under the byline “Anonymous,” published a 2018 New York Times article with the headline, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” A year later, “Anonymous” published a book and, shortly before the 2020 election — by which time he was actively campaigning for Joe Biden — Taylor admitted that he was “Anonymous.” So what may have been exposed by “Signal-gate” is that someone else is now going the “Anonymous” route.

This is where I find myself troubled by what Waltz said in that interview with Laura Ingraham. She raised the idea — obviously, it’s occurred to others besides me — that a staffer was responsible:

“Is someone in your intel team trying to cause trouble here? Because that’s the scuttlebutt out there.”
Waltz answered, “No. Look, this is a great group. The president has a great team. This is not first term.” . . .
Ingraham then asked, “So, you don’t know what staffer is responsible for this right now?”
Waltz answered, “Well, look, a staffer wasn’t responsible. And, look, I take full responsibility. I built the group. My job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.” . . .
Ingraham followed up, “So, a staffer did not put his contact information?”
Waltz answered, “Of course not.”

Hmmm. This doesn’t add up. Waltz appears to be saying that he himself entered Jeffrey Goldberg’s number onto the message chain, even as he denies having any contact with Goldberg.

The point here is, nobody inside the White House should be communicating with Jeffrey Goldberg, ever, for any reason. So where did this number come from? Who put it into the group chat? Waltz seemed to be telling Ingraham that somehow he had gotten “spoofed,” that Goldberg had engaged in some kind of impersonation — so that Goldberg’s number showed up on Waltz’s phone under somebody else’s name, but I’m having a hard time figuring out how this could have happened. Like, you get a phony text message that says it’s from Amazon, and your package didn’t get delivered so “click here,” etc., but is the NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER going to fall for that kind of stupid hacker trick on his GOVERNMENT-ISSUED SECURE PHONE?

Anyway, the story so far doesn’t make sense. Waltz has promised to “get to the bottom of it,” and he better be pretty damned quick about it, or he’s going to be spending more time with his family, as they say.



 

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