Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony at the threat hearings was clear: After falsely claiming that fentanyl was the top threat to the United States, she said the second threat was China. That’s important background to the most interesting comment I’ve seen about the chat.
The Trumpsters on the chat were obsessed with making Europe pay for the operation. But — as Nathalie Tocci noted in this NYT story focused on the Trumpsters’ obsession — the entire conversation ignored the import to China of transit through the Suez Canal.
“It is clear that the trans-Atlantic relationship, as was, is over, and there is, at best, an indifferent disdain,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of Italy’s Institute of International Affairs, who formerly advised a top E.U. official. “And at worst, and closer to that, there is an active attempt to undermine Europe.”
[snip]
He and others, like Anna Sauerbrey, the foreign editor of Die Zeit, noted that the explicit demand for payment, rather than just political and military support, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, was new. And it ignored the fact that “the U.S. depends on global trade,” she said, and that “France, Britain and the Netherlands have deployed ships to the region” for the same purpose. The Americans, she said, “are constantly overlooking European efforts.”
China, for example, gets most of its oil imports through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and does much of its export trade with Europe through the same sea route. But no one is asking China to pay, Ms. Tocci noted.
Indeed, it was at the center of debates over whether the strikes should go forward, which decision Tulsi Gabbard claimed had been made long before the chat started, and which debate, in yesterday’s cover story, was hailed as a policy process working.
Eleven minutes after Mike Waltz kicks off the thread with instructions that Joint Staff is sending “a more specific sequence of events in the coming days,” JD Vance piped in to say he thought the strikes were a mistake.
He focused on the fact that (he claimed) just 3% of US trade goes through Bab el-Mandeb, whereas 40% of Europe’s does.
Both Joe Kent (Tulsi’s unconfirmed aide) and John Ratcliffe respond that they could wait; indeed, in an arguably classified text, Ratcliffe says that more time would “be used to identify better starting points for coverage on Houthi leadership.” Kent also offers to provide unclassified details on shipping, perhaps to correct JD’s claim.
Remember, the person most likely to have been the “JG” whom Waltz tried to add to the chat instead of Jeff Goldberg is Jamieson Greer, Trump’s trade representative, who likely would have had the precise details (and also might be sufficiently grown up to point out how stupid this Signal chat was).
Then Pete Hegseth pipes up to second JD’s specific concerns about messaging, including his worry that (ha!) the plans will leak and “we look indecisive.”
Waltz responds to JD’s original point, correcting him about how much US traffic transits Bab el-Mandeb, accounting for the fact that the stuff transiting the canal ends up in trade with the US.
That’s the first 27 minutes of the substantive discussion. Somewhere between 8:32 and 8:42AM, Waltz adds “SM,” believed to be Stephen Miller.
After adding Miller (but without mentioning he added him), Waltz returns to the issue of sea lanes, asserting that unless the US reopens them, they won’t get reopened.
JD suggests that if Hegseth is okay with the strikes, “let’s go.” He suggests Houthi targeting of Saudi oil facilities are one downside risk, not Saudi involvement, which is why the US has often chosen to lead on Houthi strikes.
Then Hegseth agrees that the Europeans are “free-loading It’s PATHETIC,” and says “we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can” reopen the shipping lanes — which may suggest he believes China could do it too.
As Tocci pointed out to NYT, there’s no discussion of asking China to pay for these strikes. No discussion of how doing so for China helps China build its influence in Europe. No discussion at all in how this might affect China.
These boys purportedly intent on confronting China simply don’t consider the policy decision’s affect on China. JD and Whiskey Pete, at least, are interested primarily in hurting Europe.
Another 46 minutes elapse before SM — added after JD was wailing about the Europeans — comments. He offers an interpretation of what Trump said: a green light on the operation, he opines, but the US would harass Egypt and Europe after the fact to extort a payback.
Eleven minutes later, Hegseth — the guy to whom JD appealed on this issue — agreed with SM’s interpretation of the President’s intent.
That settled it. As I noted, SM’s — presumed to be Stephen Miller, Trump’s top domestic policy advisor — interpretation of the President’s intent is the sole backup in this now public document that the President authorized the strike at all: “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light.”
And the next thing we know, after Waltz resets how long until this PRA/FRA-covered communications will be destroyed illegally — DOD is flattening the apartment of someone’s girlfriend.
Fist-flag-fire!
By March 17, locals in Sanaa were claiming 53 people had been killed in this and ensuing strikes, including five children.
Even ignoring the foreknowledge of a civilian target, that makes the whole thing legally precarious, because everyone on the list is relying on SM’s interpretation of presidential intent. With the foreknowledge, it puts everyone involved in the strike at much greater legal risk because the legality of it, seemingly a target with significant civilian exposure, is so fragile.
But the other thing it does is show SM — again, believed to be Trump’s top domestic policy advisor — serving as the surrogate for Trump, and doing so in a way designed to shut JD up.
Like wormtongue, his mere gloss of the leader’s intent is treated with uncontested authority.
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This was an odd podcast, because Nicole and I went back and opened live to talk about Trump’s ambush of Zelenskyy.
I’ll say more in coming days. One thing I think is super important is that the SEC is moving to settle with Justin Sun, the Chinese-linked businessman who dumped $30 million into Trump’s crypto scam during the election. Once you do that, you’ve made bribery legal (which Pam Bondi and Chad Mizelle have been rushing to do in any case). Once Russia has the luxury of bribing Trump, Ukraine was never going to win this “negotiation.” The rest is just show, with America’s sovereignty and world peace to pay for it all.
Trump announces the end of the transatlantic alliance
First it was Emmanuel Macron, putting his hand on Trump’s knee as he publicly corrected Trump in the Oval Office, in the presence of cameras, on the fact that Europe’s contributions to support Ukraine were (a) grants, not loans, and (b) larger than the contributions made by the US. Trump, in turn, tried to toss out his well-worn talking points, but the damage was done. Trump was called out by a foreign leader as a liar, in his very own office and seat of power.
Then it was Keir Starmer, waving a fancy invitation from King Charles to a state dinner, who did exactly the same thing. He publicly corrected Trump in the Oval Office, in the presence of cameras, on Europe’s support for Ukraine. Again, Trump hemmed and hawwed, and embraced the (Starmer: “unprecedented!”) invitation to a second state visit, but the damage was done. Trump was called out by a second foreign leader as a liar, in his very own office and seat of power.
You had to know this would not sit well.
As network after network played the clip of Macron’s hand on Trump’s knee, after all the networks showed Trump fawning over the Bright Shiny Thing that Starmer dangled in front of him, as Starmer very politely called Trump a liar, everyone knew that this would not end well.
And today, it was Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s turn . . . and as anyone with half a brain could anticipate, it *did* not end well.
Personally, I was amused by J.D. Vance’s holier-than-thou whining about Zelenskyy making a benign appearance in Pennsylvania saying “thank you” to the US for their support and calling it Election Interference. I don’t remember Vance taking up umbrage when the head of DOGE Elon Musk appeared and spoke at the national political rally of the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) party just days ahead of the recent German election, and who repeatedly praised the AfD via Xitter. After the AfD came in second, with a sizable caucus in the new Bundestag, Musk called the head of the AfD to offer congratulations and called her party the future of Germany, and Vance’s reaction was *crickets*.
Well, to be scrupulously fair, that’s not true. He *did* say something, but rather than condemning such interference, Vance joined it. At the Munich Security Conference, Vance praised the AfD (not by name but by lauding their political positions on immigration and other policies) and attacked mainstream German political parties for refusing to work with the AfD.
Americans might not have been listening to all of this, but the Europeans were – especially the Germans – and they knew exactly who Vance was praising. After the German elections, the victorious chancellor-elect made a stunning statement. From Deutsche Welle:
After his party’s victory in the election was confirmed Sunday night, [CDU party leader Friedrich] Merz said that he wanted to work on creating unity in Europe as quickly as possible, “so that, step by step, we can achieve independence from the US.”
Until recently, this would have been a highly unusual thing for any leader of the CDU to say. After all, it has always had a strong affinity for the US.
“Merz aligns himself with the legacy of historical CDU leaders such as [former chancellors] Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl, both of whom played pivotal roles in strengthening transatlantic relations,” said Evelyn Gaiser, a policy advisor on transatlantic relationships and NATO with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German think tank that is associated with but independent of the Christian Democrats.
[snip]
Merz spoke out after JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in February, in which the US vice president said that the biggest threat to Europe did not come from Russia or China, but “from within.”
“This is really now the change of an era,” Merz said on stage at the MSC. “If we don’t hear the wake-up call now, it might be too late for the entire European Union.”
Add this into the context of withdrawing from the World Health Organization and eliminating all the work done by USAID, and the message is crystal clear. While yes, this meeting today in the Oval Office was about Ukraine, it was really a sign of something much much larger.
In April 2021, when Joe Biden addressed a joint session of Congress in a non-State of the Union address, he said this:
I’ve often said that our greatest strength is the power of our example – not just the example of our power. And in my conversations with world leaders – many I’ve known for a long time – the comment I hear most often is: we see that America is back – but for how long?
We now know the answer: four years and five weeks.
RIP the Transatlantic Alliance (1945-2025).
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There are two stories that attracted a lot of attention last week that offer the same lesson.
The first story is the report that after firing a bunch of people in charge of securing nuclear weapons, Trump’s minions have tried to rehire them, which was first reported by CNN.
Trump administration officials fired more than 300 staffers Thursday night at the National Nuclear Security Administration — the agency tasked with managing the nation’s nuclear stockpile — as part of broader Energy Department layoffs, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
Sources told CNN the officials did not seem to know this agency oversees America’s nuclear weapons.
An Energy Department spokesperson disputed the number of personnel affected, telling CNN that “less than 50 people” were “dismissed” from NNSA, and that the dismissed staffers “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.”
The agency began rescinding the terminations Friday morning.
The other is that the USAID is trying to prevent anyone still at the now-shuttered agency from telling the press that the life-saving grants for which Marco Rubio issued waivers have not actually been reauthorized to operate, which Greg Sargent focused on after John Hudson disclosed a memo making the order.
A new internal memo circulating inside the U.S. Agency for International Development neatly captures this split. The Washington Postreports that the memo warns USAID employees not to communicate with the press about the shocking disruptions in humanitarian assistance that are being caused by the Trump-Musk attack on the agency, which are already producing horrific consequences. The memo said this transgression might be met with “dismissal.”
The memo claims to be correcting a “false narrative in the press” about the disruptions to that assistance. It notes that Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month issued a waiver to “lifesaving humanitarian assistance,” allowing it to continue despite the Trump-Musk freeze in agency spending. This has meant that this assistance has “continued uninterrupted and has never paused,” the memo claims, while warning recipients against any “unauthorized external engagement with the press.”
Now, at one level, this chaos is happening because many of the people enacting these cuts are DOGE boys with no idea what they’re looking at. Don Moynihan (who is an indispensable source on the policy issues of all this) uses the nukes case as one example to make the same point: because ignorant people were making the firing decisions, they eliminated a slew of critical positions.
Musk’s management style when it comes to downsizing has been to cut to the bone, and then hire back if he fired too many. This philosophy might make sense if you are running a social media company where its not a big deal if Twitter goes down for a couple of hours. It makes less sense where the a) failure of government systems has big and sometimes irrevocable costs, and b) it is not easy to replace expertise once you have eliminated it. On the latter point, many public jobs take time to develop knowledge of the policy domain, organizational practice and tasks. Those are not qualities that are easy to rebuild if you just spent a year training a new employee who has now been fired.
[snip]
Let me note that I feel like this lesson should not be necessary. We should not need to spell this one out. One measure of the collapse of the Soviet Union was that they could no longer afford to keep staff to secure nuclear warheads. Why would the US voluntarily downgrade it’s own capacity to manage its nuclear arsenal? And yet, DOGE fired 1 in 5 federal staff that manage the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
Have you heard about the National Nuclear Security Administration before? Probably not. It’s one of those jobs that we hopefully never need to think about, because if we do that means something has gone badly wrong. But it’s also one of those jobs that someone needs to ensure is staffed appropriately to make sure something does not go badly wrong. As a citizen, its fine if you are not aware of NNSA, but bear in mind that when the right attacks wasteful bureaucracy, these sort of invisible agencies performing important tasks are some of what they are talking about.
Apparently DOGE does not know much about the NNSA either. To be fair, when you have zero experience of government, why should you? But if you have zero experience of government, you should also probably not be in the position of firing 300 of the guys who take care of the nukes. CNN reported that the fired staffers included “staff who are on the ground at facilities where nuclear weapons are built. These staff oversee the contractors who build nuclear weapons, and they inspect these weapons.”
After enough members of Congress got upset, the firings were rescinded. Just one problem. DOGE made the firings effective the day they were received (no notice, not severance), immediately shutting down access to government emails. And they did not have contact information to tell NNSA employees they were unfired.
[snip]
Under Biden, the IRS had received long-awaited and much needed funds that allowed it to rebuild after a period of sustained downsizing, and was becoming more effective.
The IRS represented a very simple test for the credibility of DOGE. Was it really interested in efficiency and state capacity? If so, you support the tax enforcement, the biggest return on investment in government, generating somewhere between $5-9 for every additional $1 spent on enforcement.
Or did DOGE want to minimize parts of the state that bothered billionaires?
We have our answer. In the middle of tax season, the IRS was told to lay off thousands of workers hired as part of the rebuilding project.
Part of the DOGE hype is that after they fire everyone, they will figure out better ways to do the job using, uh, AI and such. But there is no second act where it gets better. They don’t have a plan to fix what they are breaking because they don’t understand or care about the damage they are doing. Breaking government is the point. It is not as if DOGE has some magical IRS plan up their sleeve. There is no plan.
The story is not just that these DOGE boys have no idea what they’re looking at, being so incompetent that the word “nuclear” doesn’t even spark their interest.
It’s that after ideologues fire competent bureaucrats, they’re often left without a way to turn the bureaucracy back on again when they realize they actually needed it.
Take the first example, the people ensuring the security of America’s nuclear arsenal. As NBC followed up, after Congressional lobbying and a press campaign convinced someone to reverse the NNSA firings, the DOGE boys had no easy way to contact those who had been fired to order them to return to work.
National Nuclear Security Administration officials on Friday attempted to notify some employees who had been let go the day before that they are now due to be reinstated — but they struggled to find them because they didn’t have their new contact information.
In an email sent to employees at NNSA and obtained by NBC News, officials wrote, “The termination letters for some NNSA probationary employees are being rescinded, but we do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel.”
AP has a follow-up noting — among other things — that the key jobs were in Texas, Eastern Washington, South Carolina, and Tennessee. These are not just crucial jobs for national security, but many of them represent job losses in Republican areas.
Something similar has happened at USAID.
It shouldn’t have, because there, one key player shutting down the agency, Pete Marocco, actually worked at USAID in the first Trump term. The declaration he has submitted in multiple suits admitted he shut down already-committed funds on his own authority, without Marco Rubio’s involvement. He described that after he started firing administrators, administrators were unable to answer his questions, which he deemed insubordinate rather than just a natural consequence of firing the people who might be able to answer his questions. Nevertheless, his inability to get answers is what he used to justifying shutting everything down.
As a former USAID staffer, Marocco should have the competence to know better — but ProPublica describes why his own past insubordination may be a better explanation for his war against the agency.
The flood of USAID lawsuits has produced an associated flood of sworn declarations that describe, from the perspective of people involved, what is really happening.
For example, as part of a suit by the American Foreign Services Association, a program officer described that, even though she supervises 30 emergency food assistance programs, she had not (as of February 7) been able to get a waiver for any of them, resulting in food rotting in warehouses.
For example, while it was announced that most USAID funding would be frozen, a waiver is supposed to be available for life-saving humanitarian assistance, which would apply to the more than 30 emergency food assistance programs I support. Without my knowledge, the partners I manage, nearly all of which work on lifesaving, emergency food assistance, were sent email notices from their Agreement Officers directing them to fully or partially stop their work. As an Agreement Officer Representative for these awards, I am required to be copied on any communications, which never happened. While I tried to obtain a waiver for the programs I manage, there was no guidance on the process by which our patterns could obtain a waiver and none of the programs were ever formally approved to keep running. I am skeptical that the waiver actually exists. At this point, if a waiver does in fact exist, the implementation has been so chaotic with so many employees either furloughed or on administrative leave that as a practical matter it isn’t available to those who need it. While the programs I manage are under a stop work order, food commodities sit in warehouses rotting and scheduled food distributions to vulnerable populations do not happen and children miss follow-up appointments for treatment of severe malnutrition.
A contracting officer’s declaration in the same suit described the conflicting management orders, the lack of access to experts, and the technical access limits that made it impossible to implement the waiver program.
As a Contracting Officer, some of the awards on this list were perplexing and the sudden push to do this while nearly all of our counterparts with technical knowledge about where awards were in the waiver process and what the programmatic purpose of each award were locked out of the network and suspected to be on administrative leave.
There was an approved tab with one single PEPFAR award despite the fact that the Agency has many different PEPFAR awards and we were told a waiver had been granted for PEPFAR and Emergency Food Assistance. There were no Emergency Food Assistance awards on the approved tab. Concerns were raised by Contracting Officers and Regional Legal Officers alike who replied all to Matthew’s email with concerns. We asked for clarification on the reason for the contract terminations and for confirmation that OAA had consulted with OMB and made a determination consistent with the Executive Order on realigning foreign aid. If these awards had not received such a determination, the termination would be in violation of the executive order. We received no reply to those questions. A contracting officer replied all to the email asking if Congressional notification had been made on these terminations and noted that Congressional notification is required when a termination will involve reduction in employment of 100 or more contractor employees which these actions would likely result. It was also asked if USAID had taken steps to adhere to our Congressionally authorized and funded responsibilities on these terminations.
These emails received no reply from OAA leadership and our working level supervisors urged us to proceed with the terminations and meet the deadlines.
Subsequently at approximately 6PM that same day, Nadeem Shah, Deputy Director of Washington Operations for OAA, sent around an email entitled “PLEASE PAUSE ALL AWARD TERMINATIONS” asking staff to hold off on all award terminations in Matthew’s previous email.
[snip]
When my technical bureau’s access was supposedly restored yesterday, we quickly discovered that they do not have access to our Agency File system called ‘ASIST’ nor do they have access to our financial system in direct violation of the TRO issued the night of February 7, 2025. This makes it incredibly hard for them to provide programmatic information to help with the program review process. To date, the technical bureaus have not had any opportunity to provide any inputs or relevant information for the programmatic review. I am extremely concerned that Agency and State Dept leadership do not have the relevant information needed to thoroughly evaluate programming
Importantly, this seems to suggest that PEPFAR — one of the programs that Republicans have vociferously championed — was only partly restored because someone didn’t understand the multiple programs it involves.
Another staffer in the same AFSA lawsuit, a controller, described how bureaucratic and technical problems have prevented people from disbursing funds even for the programs that have gotten waivers.
9. On February 3, the situation changed yet again. As of that date, every time I tried to hit the “certify” button to begin a disbursement, I received an error message stating that I did not have authority to proceed. I contacted Phoenix Security to inquire if there was a technical problem in the system and was told “on Friday January 31, we were instructed to remove the ability to certify payments.” They did not indicate who instructed them, only stating “Unfortunately I am unable to reverse this decision.”
10. On February 5, all USAID controllers received another diplomatic cable indicating that USAID personnel could no longer process payments themselves but must request approval from a Senior Bureau Officer before forwarding the payment packages for processing. However, as of February 11, nobody can agree on who is the appropriate SBO for USAID payments and the State Department hasn’t processed a single payment based on the new procedure.
11. As of February 9, when I try to log into Phoenix, I receive a new error message stating that my sign-in attempt has failed. I have even less access to Phoenix after the February 7 court order than I did before that date.
12. I have been in touch with many colleagues and all report the same experience. To my knowledge, worldwide there are no USAID financial management personnel, including controllers, that can access Phoenix.
13. I have not been able to process payments under any of the waivers included in the January 24 cable, including legitimate expenses incurred prior to January 24 under existing awards or those for employee operating expenses. Though the waivers exist on paper, in reality all USAID funds have remained frozen because of technological barriers added to the system, I don’t know by whom. Phoenix will not let us disburse anything.
In a different USAID-related lawsuit by contract recipients, the head of a faith-based non-profit, Mark Hetfield, described how attempts to get waivers looked in practice.
11. On February 3, 2025, HIAS also received a revised “Notice of Suspension” for its work in Chad from PRM via email stating that HIAS should stop all work under the grant unless exempted from suspension as “existing life-saving humanitarian assistance” defined by the Department as “core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.” See February 3, 2025, Letter from Philip Denino, PRM Grants Officer, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit F. In his cover email, Mr. Denino stated that “PRM will follow up shortly to set up a meeting to discuss the specific HIAS programming in Chad that falls under the exemption for life-saving humanitarian assistance.” See February 3, 2025, Email from Philip Denino, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit G. That meeting with PRM took place the next day, February 4, during which HIAS and PRM staff discussed what activities would qualify as “lifesaving humanitarian assistance.” PRM asked HIAS to provide an overview of HIAS’ activities conducted in Chad pursuant to the award that HIAS deemed exempt from the 90-day suspension. HIAS prepared and sent the requested overview. See February 7, 2025, Email from Guillermo Birmingham to Philip Denino, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit H. However, after the meeting, Mr. Denino sent a follow up email indicating they he had been “given guidance that PRM will not be providing any additional information regarding the application of the waivers/exemptions to activities” and that he could only refer us to the revised Suspension Memo to guide us in resuming activities. See February 4, 2025, Email from Philip Denino to Guillermo Birmingham, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit I. Nor would we be able to receive funds to continue work under a waiver/exemption since all federal government payment portals were and are not functioning, making the purported waiver/exemption process cited in PRM’s revised Notice of Suspension useless.
12. On February 10, HIAS’ Chief Financial Officer again asked PRM for guidance on what would qualify as an emergency exemption from the indefinite suspension of PRM funds. In response, PRM’s Grants Officer stated, “I can’t provide guidance. It was determined much higher than me.” HIAS’ CFO then expressed concern to PRM that the lack of guidance coupled with the inability of aid organizations to access payments is making it impossible for organizations to provide the lifesaving humanitarian services identified by PRM as exempt in their revised Suspension Notice. See February 10, 2025, Email exchange between Guillermo Birmingham and Philip Denino, annexed to this declaration as Exhibit J.
He included a stack of backup, including the email instructing that Comptrollers were instructed not to provide any guidance on what was considered life-saving programming covered by the waivers.
Ultimately, USAID simply refused to tell grant recipients whether they had received a waiver or not, and if so for which parts of their programming. And it wouldn’t matter anyway because the computer systems on which it all runs are not functioning. State doesn’t want employees telling the press that life-saving grants haven’t been resumed, because Marco Rubio doesn’t want to confess to Republicans that he failed to deliver what he promised them.
Whether intentional at USAID or the inevitable outcome of arbitrary ignorance, the effect is the same.
It’s not just that the DOGE2025 attack on government has destroyed critical expertise. But absent that expertise, Trump’s minions are finding it difficult to reverse the ill effects of their initial assault, because the initial damage they do to both systems and expertise makes it far harder to reverse their initial failures.
Last July, JD Vance envisioned this process as a de-Ba’athification, which he imagined was targeted at a caricature of liberal culture, but which in reality targeted the civil service. Someone who served in Iraq really did set out to recreate the same insanely stupid policy decision that made Iraq a decade-long clusterfuck — he really did set out to launch that same kind of attack on his own government.
We’ve seen this movie before. It was, perhaps, Americas biggest failure ever.
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For some time, we’ve all been assuming that Trump will defy court orders reining in his assault on the government. And then, in the wake of Judge Paul Engelmayer’s order enjoining Scott Bessent from altering Treasury’s payment system before Friday, JD Vance ran his mouth, convincing everyone that that moment is already here.
Overnight, filings in at least two of the lawsuits against Trump’s attacks suggests that Trump is, at least for now, complying.
In the Rhode Island case in which states enjoined OMB from withholding government grants the government filed a response describing, among other things, how they’ve worked to ensure payments to Oregon continue.
In the New York lawsuit, also brought by states, DOJ asked for clarification of the scope of Engelmeyer’s order and opposed the breadth of it (noting, that there were contractors who did work on the system and also listing some senior Treasury officials, political appointees, who needed access). With that, Thomas Krause submitted a declaration saying he’s the only Special Government Employee who currently has permission to access the system (meaning they’re also complying with Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s order in DC), but also revealing that Marko Elez — the DOGE boy who was included in Kollar-Kotelly’s order — has not returned to Treasury. Krause even notes (as I did) that the order to destroy what Elez has done likely conflicts with the order Kollar-Kotelly issued.
DOJ is pushing at the terms of the orders limiting government actions. But it at least claims it is complying.
There is other conflicting evidence about implementation. I have also seen reports that USAID people stationed overseas were having their access to communications systems restored, in compliance with Carl Nicoles’ order. But WaPo reports that the Administration continues to process resignations in potential defiance of George O’Toole’s order halting the Fork in the Road program.
I don’t doubt that at some point Trump will defy the courts. But for a number of reasons, I suspect they won’t outright defy judges yet.
One main reason is obvious: Trump and Russ Vought want John Roberts to grant him the authority to — basically — neutralize Congress’ power of the purse. To do that, he needs a clean appellate record. So he has to go through the process of engaging in good faith (even while arguing, as he did in his response to the Engelmeyer order, for a maximal theory of Executive power).
Another reason likely has to do with Pam Bondi. She has her own malign goals for DOJ, such as a likely assault on medical abortion pills, both between and within states. Plus, she is pursuing Trump’s attacks on sanctuary states.
But to use DOJ for these policy purposes, there has to be a DOJ, with attorneys more competent and experienced in Federal litigation than Ed Martin, the Acting US Attorney in DC. With the possible exception of the birthright citizenship defense, DOJ has real AUSAs fighting these cases, AUSAs who are going to be unwilling to risk their bar license on frivolous legal arguments or lies.
Finally, I think DOJ is in a risky situation in its confrontation with attorneys and FBI personnel. Ben Wittes noted recently, the Administration needs the FBI, in ways it doesn’t need USAID personnel, at least not in the same potentially catastrophically visible way they need the FBI.
The FBI rank and file have power in this equation that other agencies, such as USAID, for example, do not have. The Trump administration does not need USAID. It wants to eliminate foreign aid anyway, so if the personnel at the aid agency get uppity, who cares? And if they quit? All the better.
The FBI is not that simple. For one thing, the administration does need law enforcement. If there’s a terrorist attack, and there will be, and the FBI is not in a position to prevent it or investigate it quickly and effectively, the administration will take the blame.
This administration also draws its legitimacy from backing the blue. Even in their war on the intelligence community, Donald Trump and his people always tried to distinguish between the rank and file and the “bad apples” who were running things. Waging a full-scale war against the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, a war that is all about targeting street agents for having done their jobs, is a dangerous game—far different from sacking an FBI director, or even two, who went to some elite law schools and served at the upper levels of the Justice Department.
Then there’s the problem of capacity. FBI agents are actually very hard to replace—good ones are, anyway. The physical demands are significant. Most have specialized education of one sort or another. And while people often imagine FBI agents as glorified cops who kick doors down, the truth is that a lot of agents have exquisitely specialized expertise. The training of a good counterintelligence agent takes many years. Some agents have specialized scientific training. There are even agents who specialize in art theft. Take out a thousand FBI personnel for political reasons, and you destroy literally centuries of institutional capacity. A good FBI agent is much harder to create than, say, a good assistant U.S. attorney.
The confrontation with FBI has allowed accidental hero, Brian Driscoll (who is only serving as Acting Director as opposed to Acting Deputy Director because the White House made an error), has played this well, including by raising his own profile and the successes of the FBI.
That hasn’t stopped DOJ from demanding loyalty pledges, in the form of treating the mob that violently attacked cops and the Capitol as more patriotic than the cops themselves or the Members of Congress who did their duty — effectively (though WaPo doesn’t make this clear) forcing FBI agents to disavow treating a violent attack as a crime. But that, in turn, risks real backlash.
To be sure, there’s a lot of garbage that’s being dealt here. DOJ told Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that DOGE at that point only had read-only access to Treasury data (which Anna Bower recognized as an attempt to parse). But a footnote in the overnight filing in New York confesses that’s false.
Since January 20, 2025, one other Treasury employee—Marco Elez—had “read only” access to or copies of certain data in BFS payment systems, subject to restrictions, and access to a copy of certain BFS payments systems’ source code in a “sandbox” environment. Krause Decl. ¶ 11. Mr. Elez resigned on February 6, 2025 and returned all Treasury and BFS equipment and credentials the same day. Id.
That footnote cites Krause’s declaration. But the bit about the sandbox copy is not in the cited paragraph.
Since January 20, 2025, one other Treasury non-career employee—Marko Elez—had access to BFS payment systems and payment data covered by the order. Mr. Elez resigned on February 6, 2025, and returned all Treasury and BFS equipment and credentials the same day. Treasury staff have quarantined and disabled access to all devices and accounts used by this individual, which can now only be accessed by civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the BFS who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations. Further, based on technical controls in place, BFS oversight of Mr. Elez’s work, instructions provided to Mr. Elez regarding proper data handling, and subsequent technical review of his activities, I currently have no reason to believe Mr. Elez retains access to any BFS payment data, source code, or systems. I am concerned that deleting the contents of these accounts and devices would violate Treasury’s document preservation duties in connection with related litigation entitled Alliance for Retired Americans, et al. v. Bessent, et al., Civil Action No. 25-0313 (CKK) (D.D.C.).
Similarly, an OPM suit may well prove that DOJ has misrepresented other claims to courts. And as the FBI lawsuits hung overnight, DOJ forced Driscoll to provide names of all the FBI Agents who worked on January 6 cases.
But these discrepancies may well be useful. At the very least, it provides cause for the AGs to insist that Krause appear before Judge Jeannette Vargas, the judge assigned to the case (who ordered the parties to try to clarify Saturday’s order) to explain what Elez was doing with his sandbox and why anyone should believe he hasn’t been rehired, somewhere, to play in his sandbox some more. That, in turn, would support the very cybersecurity arguments that various lawyers are trying to make. And it’ll advance the reporting already going on.
JD Vance might well like to simply ignore Engelmeyer’s order. Mike Davis might want Trump to appeal this immediately to SCOTUS. Trump might want to start siccing his mob on judges.
But there are good reasons to believe that that won’t happen, yet — at least not until Trump gets a few more of his national security and DOJ nominees through the Senate.
And until then, this legal process is a tool — a tool that can be used to buy time, but also a tool to use to hem in Trump’s mob.
Update: In RI, John McConnell issued what is likely the first, “no really, you have to follow my orders” order.
Update: DOJ has appealed McConnell’s order, even though it is not ripe.
Meanwhile DOJ has filed really long filings in DC in an attempt to persuade Carl Nichols to reverse his TRO in the USAID example, basically slandering unnamed professionals left and right. Things do look more dire, because Trump is basically refusing to fund blue states until SCOTUS tells him to–and maybe even not then. Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have simply capitulated to Trump’s insane nominees.
Update: Above I noted that DOJ needs career AUSAs to make these arguments, at least for a while.
Well, in the USAID case, those career AUSAs just had to cop to two, um, errors. The bigger one was the central dispute at the hearing last week: Whether USAID had only frozen prospective contracts, or all of them
Additionally, although Secretary Rubio’s January 24, 2025 directive only froze future contract obligations, id. ¶ 3, payments on existing contracts were paused as well as part of efforts by agency leadership to regain control of the organization’s spending and conduct a comprehensive review of its programs. See id. ¶¶ 5–10. Counsel for Defendants was unaware of this development prior to the hearing. [my emphasis]
This implies that Peter Marocco froze existing contracts without the authority of Marco Rubio. And he’s accusing USAID personnel of being insubordinate.
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There is no truth to the rumor that Donald J. Trump wearing an apron while dispensing french fries at a McDonald’s fast food restaurant in Pennsylvania was part of his preparation for a new career move should he lose tonight [Sunday, October 20, 2024. Photo by Doug Mills/AP.]
As the voters stream to the polls today, as workers at precincts around the country welcome voters to cast their ballots, as state and county election officials prepare for the counting that will take place, and as lawyers prepare for the inevitable fights in the days to come, it is incumbent on us at EW to shoot down rumors of conspiracies flying around on this momentous day.
So let’s get right to it.
There is no truth to the rumor that the staff at Mar-a-Lago has put plastic sheeting over the walls, to make cleaning up any thrown pasta easier. If anyone tells you that the custodial staff is worried about Trump throwing his dinner around once results start coming in, do not believe them.
There is no truth to the rumor that JD Vance has prepared a concession speech filled with remorse for the things he said about Kamala Harris during the campaign, and there is absolutely no truth whatsoever that Peter Thiel is preparing to have JD Vance disappeared for his failure to win.
There is no truth to the rumor that Lara Trump is planning to move to Saudi Arabia should Harris/Walz win.
There is no truth to the rumor that Fox News has a contingency plan to have an intern shut down the power to the FOX studios and take them off the air on election night if the results come in putting Harris over the top.
There is no truth to the rumor that Ivanka and Jared are giving the Saudi’s back the money they were given to “invest” back in 2020.
There is no truth to the rumor that Elon Musk is shorting DJT stock.
There is no truth to the rumor that Mike Pence has a bottle of champagne on ice for he and Mother to share this evening, should Trump/Vance lose.
There is no truth to the rumor that Alito and Thomas are so despondent at the mere thought of Trump losing that their doctors are worried about them succumbing to heart attacks in the next 72 hours.
There is no truth to the rumor that Bill Barr is preparing a memo for Kamala Harris, laying out the rationale for her naming him as her new AG should Trump lose.
There is no truth to the rumor that Liz Cheney has practicing her sincerity in anticipation of making a call later this evening to Donald Trump, offering her solemn condolences at Trump’s loss, and absolutely no truth whatsoever that her practice sessions are not going well because she can’t get through two sentences without laughing.
There is no truth to the rumor that Gavin Newsom is planning a call to Donald Trump Junior and Kimberly Guilfoyle, offering condolences on the occasion of the loss of Trump/Vance.
There is no truth to the rumor that Ted Cruz already has purchased a new home in Cancun, and absolutely no truth whatsoever that in a gesture of bipartisanship, Colin Allred has already generously agreed to bring pizza and empty boxes to help him pack.
There is no truth to the rumor that Mitt Romney has laid in numerous kegs of beer for his watch party tonight at the Romney family home, and absolutely no truth whatsoever that Mitt’s sister niece Ronna McDaniel is planning to resume using “Romney” in her name again.
There is no truth to the rumor that Trump’s staffers are secretly preparing to call in sick this evening, rather than attend any watch parties or “victory” rallies, so that they can prepare to enter witness protection programs.
THERE IS NO TRUTH TO ANY OF THESE THINGS.
There is also a rumor that the members of Putin’s election interference unit are reeling in terror at the mere thought that Harris/Walz may win, resulting in an all-expenses paid one way trip to Ukraine for the entire group. This rumor we have been unable to debunk or verify.
If you have heard other rumors that need to be shut down, please add them in the comments.
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WSJ’s report that Elon Musk has had a number of communications with Vladimir Putin and other top Russians is unsurprising. Musk has obvious buttons to press (not just his narcissism, but also his insecurity about trans women arising from being dumped for Chelsea Manning and his daughter transitioning). And Musk has increasingly parroted obvious Russian propaganda of late.
I want to pull the passages of the story that describe the when, what, and who, because they’re important for understanding the import on the race.
As the story describes, Musk was originally supportive of Ukraine’s plight after Russia’s invasion. But then Musk’s provision of Starlink to Ukraine became one of what seem to be a number of complaints Russia raised about Elon’s businesses. And that period of pressure is when Musk’s public comments about the war began to change.
Later that year, Musk’s view of the conflict appeared to change. In September, Ukrainian military operatives weren’t able to use Starlink terminals to guide sea drones to attack a Russian naval base in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow had occupied since 2014. Ukraine tried to persuade Musk to activate the Starlink service in the area, but that didn’t happen, the Journal has reported.
His space company extended restrictions on the use of Starlink in offensive operations by Ukraine. Musk said later that he made the move because Starlink is meant for civilian uses and that he believed any Ukrainian attack on Crimea could spark a nuclear war.
His moves coincided with public and private pressure from the Kremlin. In May 2022, Russia’s space chief said in a post on Telegram that Musk would “answer like an adult” for supplying Starlink to Ukraine’s Azov battalion, which the Kremlin had singled out for the ultraright ideology espoused by some members.
Later in 2022, Musk was having regular conversations with “high-level Russians,” according to a person familiar with the interactions. At the time, there was pressure from the Kremlin on Musk’s businesses and “implicit threats against him,” the person said.
But the most interesting ties have to do with Russia’s exploitation of Xitter for propaganda. The piece describes how Musk published Tucker Carlson’s simpering “interview” with Putin.
Earlier this year, Musk gave airtime to Putin and his views on the U.S. and Ukraine when X carried Tucker Carlson’s two-hour interview with the Russian leader inside the Kremlin. In that interview, Putin said he was sure Musk “was a smart person.”
And Musk’s contacts with other Russians include some with Sergei Kiriyenko, who is in charge of the Doppelganger effort.
But more conversations have followed, including dialogues with other high-ranking Russian officials past 2022 and into this year. One of the officials was Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, two of the officials said. What the two talked about isn’t clear.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department said in an affidavit that Kiriyenko had created some 30 internet domains to spread Russian disinformation, including on Musk’s X, where it was meant to erode support for Ukraine and manipulate American voters ahead of the presidential election.
As for the contacts with Putin? Those are sourced to intelligence sources, suggesting that US — or possibly foreign — spooks are aware of the contacts.
One current and one former intelligence source said that Musk and Putin have continued to have contact since then and into this year as Musk began stepping up his criticism of the U.S. military aid to Ukraine and became involved in Trump’s election campaign.
But those contacts are not broadly known.
Knowledge of Musk’s Kremlin contacts appears to be a closely held secret in government. Several White House officials said they weren’t aware of them.
If spooks or the FBI are tracking these ties, you would closely guard details, not least to protect the coverage they have on Putin himself.
Both the Pentagon’s official comment and that of an anonymous source suggest the government is acutely aware of all this, but thus far measuring it in terms of leaks, not whether Musk’s reported Ketamine abuse or his open embrace of anti-American conspiracy theories make him unfit to retain clearance.
A Pentagon spokesman said: “We do not comment on any individual’s security clearance, review or status, or about personnel security policy matters in the context of reports about any individual’s actions.”
One person aware of the conversations said the government faces a dilemma because it is so dependent on the billionaire’s technologies. SpaceX launches vital national security satellites into orbit and is the company NASA relies on to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
“They don’t love it,” the person said, referring to the Musk-Putin contacts. The person, however, said no alerts have been raised by the administration over possible security breaches by Musk.
And that’s sort of the underlying problem: Until Musk does business with a sanctioned entity or leaks information, these contacts would only be illegal if you could prove Musk were acting as an agent of Russia.
If this concerns you any more than Musk’s long-standing public Russophilia already should, then the best thing to do in the short term is to use Musk as a way to attack Trump’s campaign (as Tim Walz did the other day, though mostly just attacking Musk for being so dorky).
But there are three things not included in this story that make it more interesting.
First, Justin Trudeau testified last week that Tucker was being funded by RT.
Conservative political analyst Tucker Carlson and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson were among those who were funded by the Russian state-owned news outlet RT to boost anti-vax claims in 2022, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed while under oath during testimony delivered Wednesday at the Foreign Interference Commission.
I’m genuinely a bit confused by Trudeau’s claim — whether he means Tucker himself was being funded or his promotion was. In any case, he was discussing 2022 activities (notably, the trucker protests that I hope to hell DHS keep in mind as potential election or post-election disruption).
But Tucker was mentioned in the RT indictment. One point I made about how DOJ unrolled it is that it disrupts or criminalizes ongoing funding from RT, and can be used as a basis for ongoing investigation and/or charges.
The more important detail not included in this story, given WSJ’s mention of Kiriyenko, is the involvement of Russian entities in magnifying the conspiracy theories behind the Southport riots in the UK.
“While all the action is happening on the ground and people in Britain are dealing with the consequences of this misinformation,” says Al Baker, managing director of Prose, “the people stoking the violence, the people flooding Telegram and other platforms of misinformation are largely based outside the UK.”
What it shows is the nature of the new far-right – not a tightly organised hierarchy based in a specific location, but an international network of influencers and followers, working together almost like a swarm to stir up trouble.
In the UK riots, you had both Musk and possible Russian bots stoking anti-migrant violence in a foreign country. If Musk has facilitated that — or even just if Kiriyenko used his contacts with Musk for ostensibly other reasons to optimize interference efforts on Xitter — that would be a grave concern (though the latter hypothetical involves no criminal exposure for Musk).
But by far the most important thing excluded from this story (it is admittedly tangential to the description of these contacts, but not to the import of them) is JD Vance.
Musk’s involvement in Trump’s campaign cannot be separated from Trump’s pick of JD Vance as his running mate, someone who is even more pro Russian than Musk, and someone whose regressive Catholic ties have aligned neatly with Russia in the recent past. Donald Trump has been an exceedingly useful idiot for Putin, but he was unreliable as to Putin’s immediate policy goals like eliminating sanctions.
There’s abundant reason to believe that JD’s selection was the price of Musk’s support (though it was a pick Trump was inclined to make anyway).
If Russia is using Musk to affect the election, it’s not clear whether the primary goal would be electing Trump or placing JD in the position where he would become President.
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There’s a fetish in the traditional media for asking Republicans to disavow crazy things Trump has said or done. This involves Tom Cotton so frequently I’m thinking of naming the phenomenon “Cotton swabs.” Marco Rubio and — since he became Speaker — Mike Johnson are other frequent participants in “Cotton swabbing.”
Perhaps Manu Raju confronts the person in the halls of Congress, perhaps they get invited to a Sunday show. And then the reporter asks them to be outraged about something outrageous that Trump said. Rather than disavowing it, the Republican blurts out some kind of propaganda instead.
Instead of serving as an opportunity to get Republicans to distance themselves from Trump, Republicans exploit the “Cotton swab” to perform obeisance to Trump’s fascism and air propaganda on the mainstream media.
It works every single time.
Yet journalists keep trying it, never varying their method.
Because he’s a smooth and shameless liar, JD Vance is especially adept at exploiting “Cotton swabs.”
In the past week, JD’s “Cotton swabs” have involved questions about whether JD would have certified Joe Biden’s victory. It started when NYT’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked JD the question five times.
Last few questions. In the debate, you were asked to clarify if you believe Trump lost the 2020 election. Do you believe he lost the 2020 election? I think that Donald Trump and I have both raised a number of issues with the 2020 election, but we’re focused on the future. I think there’s an obsession here with focusing on 2020. I’m much more worried about what happened after 2020, which is a wide-open border, groceries that are unaffordable. And look, Lulu —
Senator, yes or no. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Let me ask you a question. Is it OK that big technology companies censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, which independent analysis have said cost Donald Trump millions of votes?
Senator Vance, I’m going to ask you again. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes? I think that’s the question.
Senator Vance, I’m going to ask you again. Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? And I’ve answered your question with another question. You answer my question and I’ll answer yours.
I have asked this question repeatedly. It is something that is very important for the American people to know. There is no proof, legal or otherwise, that Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election. But you’re repeating a slogan rather than engaging with what I’m saying, which is that when our own technology firms engage in industrial-scale censorship — by the way, backed up by the federal government — in a way that independent studies suggest affect the votes. I’m worried about Americans who feel like there were problems in 2020. I’m not worried about this slogan that people throw: Well, every court case went this way. I’m talking about something very discrete, a problem of censorship in this country that I do think affected things in 2020. And more importantly, that led to Kamala Harris’s governance, which has screwed this country up in a big way.
Senator, would you have certified the election in 2020? Yes or no? I’ve said that I would have voted against certification because of the concern that I just raised. I think that when you have technology companies —
The answer is no. When you have technology companies censoring Americans at a mass scale in a way that, again, independent studies have suggested affect the vote. I think that it’s right to protest against that, to criticize that, and that’s a totally reasonable thing.
Two other journalists imagined they could do better. After letting JD claim that Trump’s lies about Aurora have some truth to them and insisting that he knows better about disparate assistance in North Carolina, for example, Martha Raddatz again gave JD a chance to claim that the two-day delay of letting people see Hunter Biden’s dick pics swung the 2020 election, and utterly predictably, he took the opportunity to falsely claim that “big tech” had “censored” Hunter Biden’s dick pics and that that was cause enough to declare the 2020 election invalid.
RADDATZ: Senator, we’re just about out of time here. We’re just about out of time here. And I want to end with this — in interview after interview, question after question, and in the debate, you refused to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
So I’m just going to assume that if I ask you 50 times whether he lost the election, you would not acknowledge that he did. Is that correct?
VANCE: Martha, you’ve — you asked this question, I’ve been asked this question 10 times in the past couple of weeks. Of course, Donald Trump and I believe there were problems in 2020. You haven’t asked about inflation, the —
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: No, I’m sorry, let’s stick to this. I know — I know —
VANCE: The American people want us to talk about how to make their lives better. They don’t want us to —
RADDATZ: Why won’t you say that? Why won’t you say that?
VANCE: Because — because, Martha, I believe that in 2020, when big tech firms were censoring American citizens, that created very serious problems. And by the way, Martha, you’re — you’re a journalist. You represent the American media.
Look at the polling on this. A lot of Americans feel like they were silenced in the run-up to the 2020 election. That is such a bigger issue. That fundamental problem —
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: If you — I just want to —
VANCE: — that me and Donald Trump talking about it, and unfortunately, Martha —
RADDATZ: But I don’t understand why you want to say that you believe it?
(CROSSTALK)
VANCE: She’s — well, won’t just say what, that I think the 2020 election had some problems? I’ve said that repeatedly.
RADDATZ: Did Donald Trump lose? That’s the question, and you know that’s the question.
VANCE: Martha, I’ve said repeatedly I think the election had problems. You want to say rigged. You want to say he won. Use whatever vocabulary term you want — I want to focus on the fact that we had big technology firms censoring our fellow citizens in a way that violated our fundamental rights.
Thankfully, Phil Bump laid out the absurdity behind JD’s answer so I don’t have to. What JD claims was a question about censorship was, in fact, a question about whether, if the hard drive that right wingers claim is a laptop yielded information about China that Congress never managed to find in two years of trying, would it have changed their vote.
It is not the case that tech companies censoring a story — specifically, a New York Post story about an email attributed to a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter — cost Trump the election.
This, too, has been explored at length in the past, but it should immediately fail the smell test anyway. The 2020 election was a referendum on Trump, on his presidency and particularly on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It is ridiculous to suggest that this would have changed had Twitter (as it was then known) not briefly limited the sharing of a New York Post story about how one of Hunter Biden’s business partners sent him an email thanking him for getting him in the room with his father.
The “independent studies” which Vance mentioned presumably refer to one poll conducted on behalf of the right-wing Media Research Center after the election. It presented respondents with a sweeping claim linking Biden to foreign business interests, asking whether awareness of that purported link would have led people to reconsider their votes. A chunk of self-reported Biden voters said they would have.
Setting aside the vast inaccuracies inherent in having people assess what they would have done had the conditions of their decision-making been slightly different, the question didn’t even center on the New York Post story! It was about purported Chinese investors and used the same “Biden family” framing on which the failed Republican impeachment probe depended.
Even ignoring all the other false premises — that the hard drive he claims was a laptop was “censored,” that the right wing poll is accurate — not even the laptop itself, in federal hands, has substantiated illegal conduct beyond a known crack addiction and a gun purchase.
I would add that, in his answer to NYT, JD justifies a claim about what he would have done in 2021 with a partisan poll not taken until two years later. His answer is based on false premiise after false premise and a time machine.
But, as Bump also lays out, this answer is especially ridiculous given the confirmation that Trump’s campaign has done what JD falsely insinuates the Biden campaign did in 2020: Ask a tech company (probably all tech companies) to censor data.
As Ken Klippenstein described when declaring victory, Elon Musk personally made the decision to reverse his permanent suspension when NYT exposed the Trump campaign’s involvement.
Late last night, X (née Twitter) reinstated my account after banning me on September 26 for publishing the J.D. Vance dossier. Elon Musk personally intervened, in the name of “free speech principles,” according to correspondence I’ve seen. Musk had previously declared me “evil” before X suspended me in a move we now know was coordinated with the Trump campaign.
“I’ve asked X Safety to unsuspend him, even though I think he is an awful human being,” Musk told political commentator Brian Krassenstein (and frequent doppelgänger of mine) on October 11. “Important to stay true to free speech principles.”
The reinstatement of my account later that day reversed what X had previously informed me was a “permanent” suspension. The only explanation I’ve received from X came in an email from Twitter Support last night. The email reiterated my alleged violation of X’s policy on posting private information, but also said that the incident may have been a mistake on my part, for which reason I was being un-suspended.
Note, Klippenstein’s account is back. The links to the JD dossier are not. Xitter is still doing what Elon Musk claims is an affront to free speech, suppressing true information.
It is a testament to the voluntary impotence of the press that they don’t make JD pay a price for these ridiculous claims.
After all, if he believes his premise — that the throttling of content based on stolen information is such a severe abuse that it makes the entire election illegitimate — then he has already conceded that he and Trump cannot score a legitimate victory. If it is the case that “big tech” “censorship” can delegitimize an entire election — even ignoring that Trump’s campaign made demands and Biden’s campaign only asked for non-consensual dick pics to be taken down — then he has conceded all legitimacy.
To be sure, I’m not saying this. I think Vance and Trump might still win this, fair and square.
But Vance, based on his comments, has already stated that if Trump wins, Trump’s victory will be illegitimate based on his success at censoring the JD Vance dossier.
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As journalists who focus on social media-enabled disinformation grow overwhelmed by the extent to which broad swathes of Americans have become detached from reality…
The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality. As Hurricane Milton churned across the Gulf of Mexico last night, I saw an onslaught of outright conspiracy theorizing and utter nonsense racking up millions of views across the internet. The posts would be laughable if they weren’t taken by many people as gospel. Among them: Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that Hurricanes Milton and Helene were “weather weapons” unleashed on the East Coast by the U.S. government, and “truth seeker” accounts on X that posted photos of condensation trails in the sky to baselessly allege that the government was “spraying Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton” in order to ensure maximum rainfall, “just like they did over Asheville!”
As Milton made landfall, causing a series of tornados, a verified account on X reposted a TikTok video of a massive funnel cloud with the caption “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO FLORIDA?!” The clip, which was eventually removed but had been viewed 662,000 times as of yesterday evening, turned out to be from a video of a CGI tornado that was originally published months ago. Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn’t be obliterated overnight—offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on.
… NYT decided to do a puff piece on Elon Musk’s support for Trump.
Done as anything else than a corruption (which the piece largely ignores) or GOTV story, such a piece is in exceedingly bad taste.
All the more so given the way the NYT buries some of the most scandalous parts of the story.
In paragraph 23, for example, NYT cites two sources confirming that the Trump campaign intervened to get Xitter to take down links to the JD Vance dossier that Ken Klippenstein posted; it neither explains what was in the dossier nor names Klippenstein (indeed, aside from a photo caption, the article as a whole ignores JD Vance’s role in the Musk-Trump bromance).
The relationship has proved significant in other ways. After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.
Donald Trump and top Republicans have spent years complaining that Twitter throttled, for two days, a NY Post story on the hard drive of Hunter Biden’s personal data that Trump’s personal attorney was disseminating. Elon Musk allowed propagandists to sort through Xitter’s internal discussions, and when Matty Taibbi misrepresented a reference to the takedown of dick pics, some of which Guo Wengui had altered, Musk outraged, “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?”
Congress has held hearings! Trump still whines about the throttling of the NY Post story in his campaign rallies. That’s the excuse he uses for dodging the 60 Minutes interview.
This has been a central theme of right wing grievance for years. The Hunter Biden “laptop” is the founding myth in a far right reconceptualization of “free speech.” And when NYT catches Trump and Musk doing what they complain about, NYT buried that in paragraph 23.
More dangerous still is the way NYT misrepresents Elon Musk’s dangerous disinformation.
In the very last section of the 2,200 word story, starting around paragraph 33, NYT purports to describe Musk’s “misinformation,” suggesting he’s dumb, not deliberate.
If America PAC is the most ambitious and costly manifestation of Mr. Musk’s support for Mr. Trump, nowhere has his cheerleading been more evident than on X.
Since publicly endorsing the former president in July, he has posted at least 109 times about Mr. Trump and the election. And while he has said in the past that the platform should be “politically neutral,” he has used it to advance election misinformation and the baseless claim that Democrats are engaging in “deliberate voter importation” and “fast-tracking” immigrants to citizenship to gain control over the electorate.
One post with that claim this month has garnered nearly 34 million views, according to X’s own metrics, underscoring the scale of attention that Mr. Musk, owner of the platform’s most followed account, can command.
“Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of smothering regulations (that have nothing to do with safety!), humanity will never reach Mars,” Mr. Musk wrote this month in a post that has gained nearly 18 million views. “This is existential.”
Online, Mr. Musk has painted a dark picture of what would happen if Mr. Trump lost, a circumstance that could hurt Mr. Musk personally. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged “trashing Kamala nonstop” and being all in for Mr. Trump.
If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, “how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”
This passage ignores Musk’s most important disinformation — things like his misrepresentation of hurricane response and his magnification of the most dehumanizing propaganda about migrants (including Haitians in Springfield, OH). NYT stupidly parroted Trump’s claim that they would replace normal turnout by sowing disinformation about this stuff, yet now they soft pedal how Musk is doing things that might get people killed.
Crazier still, NYT chooses not to mention Musk’s personal role in stoking far right anti-migrant violence in the UK, including his Tweet asserting that Civil War is inevitable. (NYT also doesn’t mention Musk’s attempt — with a legal fight all the way to the Supreme Court — to thwart Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump and his intransigence in the face of Brazilian legal requests as part of its response to a coup attempt.)
Musk has become a transnational vector for far right political violence.
NYT doesn’t mention that.
And finally, most insane of all, NYT doesn’t mention that Elon Musk has, more than once, joked about assassination and Kamala Harris.
After the Secret Service reached out to him the first time, Musk repeated the claim in the last week, joking with Tucker Carlson.
NYT calls this — repeated “jokes” about assassinating Kamala Harris — “insult[ing the Democratic Party’s] candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Elon Musk isn’t helping Trump get elected, NYT’s excuse for posting this puff piece. He’s helping Trump stoke fascism.
And rather than explaining the risk, NYT simply buries it.
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It’s a lot harder to work that to your advantage in a debate.
By that I meant that JD lies as much as Trump does, but because his ego is not as fragile as Trump’s, he would bulldoze through the same lies Trump wanted to tell without getting distracted by his own ego.
That prediction held up. JD smoothly lied over and over again. This is a man who — by description — came naturally to pitching the Iraq invasion. Occasionally (such as when Walz noted that Trump built just 2% of his wall and Mexico didn’t pay for it), Vance seemed to visibly wince about how bad the product he’s selling is. But otherwise he smoothly pitched policies that only work when they come packaged in fear-mongering and hatred. He smoothly claimed that censorship by private companies was a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump siccing a mob on Mike Pence.
Earlier in the day before the Vice Presidential debate, I suggested one should read Amanda Marcotte and John Ganz’ columns of the day in tandem. The columns provide a useful background to the debate.
Marcotte observed that JD Vance routinely whines about press coverage not just because he’s thin-skinned, but because that whining is viewed as strength.
In the dull world of the extremely online right, where “cat lady” is forever the sickest of burns, it is also common to mistake throwing a tantrum for strength. “Free speech” is defined as “we speak, you listen — and faint in adoration.” Live in that space long enough and you start to think that yelling at a reporter for asking a question isn’t embarrassing behavior. No, in the online MAGA world, sputtering “How dare you!” at a journalist for doing their job is regarded as a feat of strength on par with storming the beach at Normandy. It’s tempting to see Vance whining yet again and assume that he’s sorely in need of therapy. That may be so, but it’s also true that his online space is a culture where whimpering like a spoiled child is mistaken for toughness, and he’s forgotten that most people are rightfully grossed out by it.
But in a piece explaining why there’s such a real risk Trump will still win, John Ganz raised another reason why, I think, JD whines so much about the media. Ganz noted that consensus media has collapsed in America — and Donald Trump has stepped into that void, cultivating rabid support from the fragmented world of disaffected conspiracy theorists left behind.
We are accustomed still to thinking of the country at its post-War self, dominated by mass media, mass politics, the mass movement, the struggle for political and cultural hegemony, that is to say, the struggle over the definition of common sense and what is “normal.” Prime Time. Must See TV. The water cooler. That’s all gone now. We should think of the United States today as being more like the country Gilbert Seldes portrays in his classic on 1800s America, The Stammering Century, where he documents not unified nation, but a patchwork of small movements lead by “fanatics, and radicals and mountebanks,” a country of “diet-faddists and the dealers in mail-order Personality; the play censors and the Fundamentalists; the free-lovers and eugenists; the cranks and possibly the saints…Sects, cults, manias, movements, fads, religious excitements…” Trump knows how to reach those people. Democrats today, much less so. Maybe they shouldn’t even try. I certainly think pandering to that tendency in American culture isn’t good. But maybe that’s not a tendency in American culture at all, it just is American culture.
Trump and Vance thrive on the fragmentation of America created by the collapse of the media. And so they treat the media as a performance of power.
Vance attacked experts and the media over and over in yesterday’s debate, appealing instead to “common sense.” He appealed to and encouraged distrust in government. His attack on what he falsely termed “censorship” was a defense of the crackpots Trump mobilized to attack the Capitol on January 6 (and he made two implicit defenses of Russian disinformation along the way).
The second most notable moment in the debate came when Vance complained that, “The rules were you weren’t going to fact check,” when he falsely claimed the Haitians in Springfield were undocumented. It was a tell. Vance and Trump need these false claims to sow division. They need these false claims to attack rationality.
Shortly before the debate, 60 Minutes announced that Trump was going to forgo their traditional pre-election interview. After 60 Minutes made the announcement, Trump’s bouncer-spox Steven Cheung tried to spin it in a way that didn’t amount to Trump chickening out again:
Here’s what Cheung said:
Hunter Biden’s laptop
Nothing was scheduled
CBS was going to commit the “unprecedented” sin of fact-checking Trump
There’s a tiny bit more substance on the laptop comment than the normal invocation of “Hunter Biden’s laptop” as foundational moment in Trump’s cult than there normally is. Trump is complaining that he is owed an apology because Lesley Stahl refused to report on its contents in 2020 — ignoring the question of newsworthiness! — only after she could verify it.
Trump, 78, was referring to “60 Minutes” reporter Lesley Stahl admitting to him in a 2020 sitdown that she refused to cover The Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 because “it can’t be verified.”
I learned that from NYPost, which didn’t wait to verify the hard drive of a laptop before it misrepresented what an email said, which used a copy of the hard drive copy that had at least one email added to it after it left John Paul Mac Isaac’s custody, and which itself was based on a copying process that resulted in 62% bigger copy (measured in page size — blame prosecutors for doing that!) than the underlying laptop.
Even as Xitter, Google, and Facebook censor the JD Vance dossier stolen from a Trump staffer far more aggressively than anyone ever throttled NYPost stories about the Hunter Biden hard drive (outlets besides Xitter are fairly invoking a policy against foreign malign influence campaigns; Xitter claims it’s about Vance’s privacy), Trump is claiming he was injured because news outlets didn’t chase a laptop copy to which they were not granted access by Trump’s own lawyer.
But the function of his invocation of a hard drive that even the FBI never validated serves as the same marker it always does: Four years later, four years in which media outlets have still never found anything more than dick pics and completely legal influence peddling, merely the invocation of the hard drive serves as the foundation of an object of faith for Trump’s mob. One must believe in it even if one cannot validate it. Goodness knows, that’s what got Hunter Biden convicted on gun crimes.
Relatedly, on Monday, Judge Robert Richardson finally ruled on John Paul Mac Isaac’s defamation claims: none of his defamation claims held up (partly because he was a limited public figure, partly because most of his defamation claims never even mentioned him. Hunter Biden’s counterclaim was dismissed on statute of limitation grounds. Along with Judge Rudy Contreras’ decision, last Friday, that the disgruntled IRS agents can’t intervene in Hunter’s lawsuit against the IRS, he can include their lawyers in his claims, but cannot sue for a Privacy Act violation, the rulings close off much of what we might learn from these lawsuits.
The Hunter Biden hard drive and its aftermath will continue to serve as an untethered article of faith among those who need to believe the Bidens are more corrupt than Trump and his son-in-law.
And in that same world of faith, neither Donald Trump nor JD Vance are going to willingly participate in a venue where their false narrative of fear might be disturbed by facts.
Most people treat debate as a draw. Virtually all agree that, like almost all VP debates, it won’t make an ounce of difference in the race, because they never do. Even after admitting the latter point, though, Bulwark’s Jonathan Last assessed JD’s success in smoothly delivering those lies differently.
Vance was so good that I wonder if this debate might become a case of catastrophic success. Because tomorrow a whole bunch of people in Conservatism Inc. are going to be talking about how Vance is the post-Trump savior they’ve been waiting for.
I wonder what Donald Trump will think about that?
That’s the question I kept coming back to, all night long.
[snip]
I doubt Vance did anything meaningful to help Trump’s electoral prospects. But he absolutely helped his own prospects for 2028, or 2032, or whenever Trump leaves the scene.
Or gets pushed.
Donald Trump created his own fictional character, the successful tycoon who gets things done by firing people and exacting revenge.
JD has no such persona. He has, instead, a flawless ingratiating ability to deliver lies credibly.
The debate is not going to affect the election.
But I think JD did what he needed, for his own wildly ambitious goals: He doubled down on undermining democracy, and ratcheted up the professionalism of Trump’s attack on truth.
Update: Added the ad that Harris did of the JD non-answer.
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