Ready, Fire, Aim!

"The presence of Donald Trump — his angry tweets, the mix of instability and venality, and sometimes borderline illiteracy that he has brought to the American presidency — seems to have sucked the oxygen out of attempts at serious reporting or discussion about where precisely he is leading the country."

Ned Temko - The Jewish Voice

The above comment is from a 2018 review of a book about America called, "If Only They Didn't Speak English" by the BBC's North American Bureau Chief, Jon Sopel. More about him and another book he wrote in a moment,

But for now, I want to offer those hard-working reporters of all stripes, and my Democratic friends, some advice. Ignore the goofy stuff. I know it's hard, but let's face facts. We aren't going to buy Greenland, take over the Panama Canal, annex Canada, or run Gaza. They aren't going to happen and going to any amount of trouble discussing them is a waste of time.

Tariffs? Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, a phrase I never dreamed I'd write, waved him off with things they either were going to do anyway or that didn't require any heavy lifting.

The Gulf of America? Just, no. Only those supplicants at Google or the other boot lickers will go with it, and I'm hoping the Associated Press will stand its ground.

Trump will forget all that within a few weeks, if not days, anyway. And as far as the Gulf, the next Democrat in office will change it back.

I opined in an earlier example of my drivel, that this crowd will overreach, screw up and ultimately stumble over their own hubris.

We are seeing it already with Elon Musk and his band of merry men...er...boys. They have fired so many people and with so little analysis, they found they had let go of the folks who guard the nukes. Yes.

Officials in the Trump administration fired more than 300 employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration on Thursday night, only to reverse course upon learning the workers’ responsibilities, CNN reported Friday night.

The NNSA is housed under the Department of Energy, which is tasked with researching and oversight of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, as well as energy production in general. CNN reports...

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.

Some of the fired employees included NNSA 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.

And by the way, most of those nukes are produced right here in Texas at Pantex in Amarillo.

At a decidedly uncomfortable joint press conference, and as Musk's 5-year-old son wiped boogers on the Resolute Desk, Musk and Trump were asked about the fraud and corruption they say they found all through the government. They didn't have an answer. One of my favorite writers, Andrew Sullivan commented...

And front and center: a drug-fueled, sleep-addled billionaire, commandeering the Oval Office, offering half-baked political theories, threatening judges with impeachment, tweeting at the pace of an adderall-addicted gamer, and holding press conferences with a toddler on his shoulders, where he tells the world he cannot be trusted to tell the truth. I guess there are some people who find all this deeply impressive.

And he is a conservative.

Now the DOGE website, updated earlier this week to include information about the federal workforce across agencies, contained details about the headcount and budget for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency responsible for designing and maintaining U.S. intelligence satellites, according to a review by ABC News.

Needless to say, that bit of information is supposed to be secret. Oops.

Again, Andrew Sullivan offered an alternative scenario for Trump and Musk...

Imagine what they might have done. Trump could have announced that Musk and his minions were going in to audit the federal government. Within a few months, they’d bring a report, outlining every insane piece of waste or DEI excess or fraud they could find. Trump would then urge Congress to vote on these reforms. Win, win, win. It’s a great idea to shake up the joint with an outsider! But nah. They are busy ensuring that any cuts they make are brutal, dumb, and destined to expire.

Over the past three weeks or so, the Trump Justice Department has made a series of personnel moves that have rattled the institution. That includes targeting prosecutors and FBI personnel who worked on the January 6 Capitol riot investigation. A key figure in these efforts has been a top department official appointed by Trump - Emil Bove. 

According to a memo Bove wrote, the FBI “actively participated in what President Trump appropriately described as ‘a grave national injustice’” by investigating the January 6 US Capitol riot. So, he fired them.

This, though, is fairly dripping in irony since Bove himself was involved. Bove led efforts by federal prosecutors in New York to help the FBI aggressively investigate, identify and arrest Capitol rioters in the New York area. His former colleagues say that Bove was aggressive in his work on January 6. They also say he never voiced any reservations about the investigation and what they were doing. Oops.

And of course, the new AG, Pam Bondi, oversaw the sleazy deal with the indicted Mayor of New York, Eric Adams. That deal has led to the resignations of 7 of her top DOJ prosecutors.

One of them, Hagan Scotten, an Army veteran and two-time winner of the Bronze Star, showed in his resignation letter why he got those medals...

"Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected official, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to me."

Now we come to the new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth...

At a meeting of NATO defense ministers, ironically in Munich, Hegseth opened his beer hole and did his best rendition of Neville Chamberlain. He told all and sundry that Ukraine had better give up any notion of Putin returning territory he has taken and forget about joining NATO. And, of course, Europe better belly up to the bar, because Ukraine's military aid will mostly come from them down the road.

Apparently, he overshot the runway in giving away the President's plan for solving the Ukraine conflict, which consists of basically leaving President Zelenskyy on the sidelines and giving Vladimir Putin whatever he wants.

Now, the vice-President was also there and tried to clean up the screw-up but in the process, lectured Europe on the importance of listening to the radical folks like the German AfD party. And that intolerance for neo-Nazis is the real danger, not Putin. And of course, if this deal is struck, Putin will simply bide his time, you know, like that other guy in that first Munich agreement years ago.

Much of what is being done, including stealing the power of the purse and dismantling whole departments, could be stopped by Congress. It is a shame we seemingly don't have one now. That's a pity and I hope they reassemble real soon.

I mentioned BBC correspondent Jon Sopel earlier, and a good friend sent me a copy of his second book, chronicling his coverage of the first Trump term, "A Year at the Circus."

I haven't finished it yet, but can highly recommend it as an outsider's perspective on what we are seeing. He says the rapidity with which stories came roaring at reporters caused a big spike in treatments for ADHD.

"Our symptoms are that we think that whatever is happening at any given moment in the White House is the most important thing the world has ever seen and is going to shake the very foundations of the most powerful country in the world. And the next day, we can't remember what it was we were so vexed about because, invariably, we have gone on to the next earth-shattering event emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

But, remember, so far, what is being done is meeting with the approval of the majority of the public if polls are to be believed. The showy, but so far pretty ineffective immigrant roundups, the declaration that there are only two sexes, duh, and the elimination of government jobs are just fine with the voters. No one yet is thinking ahead that these things are really only for show, and maybe when the VA is truly understaffed, and their tax refund is late or their school doesn't get the money the DOE usually distributes, they'll think a little more about it.

NPR talked the other day with a Trump voter form North Carolina. She seemed like a perfectly nice person and allowed that she was pretty happy with everything so far, except pardoning violent January 6th rioters. When asked what she'd like to see the President do, she replied, "Make English the official language."

Is that at all important? Does it really matter? Was it what voters thought they were getting? Of course not. But with some folks, these shallow non-issues resonate.

So, my advice to my fellow scribblers and Democrats is, remember Muhammed Ali. His "Rope a Dope" strategy was to let the other guy punch you silly while you simply block the blows. Then when he is worn out, you go on the offensive.

If you are a reporter, getting your panties in a wad over every bit of nonsense is pointless and makes you look all snowflakey. And if you are a Democrat, gathering and chanting outside whatever office Musk just closed is pointless. It looks silly. Trust me. As part of the generation that opposed Viet Nam, the marches didn't end the war. The casualties did that. We were just noisy accompaniment.

The mean tweets, blatant lies and unforced errors are going to come thick and fast. Pace yourselves.