We've Been Had

On November 16, 2023, Representative Ro Khanna appeared on Meet the Press, hosted by NBC News' Kristen Welker.  The California congressman and Republican Thomas Massie were the sponsors of, and were heavily invested in, the House bill which purportedly would force the Justice Department to release all of the files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein. 

At that point, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had joined Massie, Representative Nancy Mace, and Representative Lauren Boebert as the few GOP Representatives willing to buck the White House and endorse the Massie-Khanna initiative, although, as Khanna told Welker, he was hoping for at least 40 Republicans overall to jump on board. 

So the NBC personality asked the Californian "Your joint bill with Thomas Massie is going to come to a vote on the House floor. It's expected to this week. Do you think you have enough votes for it to pass?" Massie responded "We do, and there's nothing I have been prouder of or more meaningful than this work. The credit goes to the survivors."

 

If this was his proudest moment, he set the bar very low.  The House passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act (with only one "no" vote), the Senate followed suit, and three days after the Meet the Press interview The Washington Post reported that President Donald J. Trump had announced

that he has signed a bill directing the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, documents related to the sprawling sex-trafficking investigation into the onetime powerful financier that are fervently sought by Trump’s political opponents and members of his political base.

After Trump’s announcement, made in a social media post, the Justice Department will have 30 days to release all unclassified documents about Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019 and died in an apparent suicide while in federal custody.

At that point, waiting thirty days was no big deal, and that period is almost over as of today, December 14, 2025. However

despite Trump’s signature, there are many reasons to doubt that a bulk release of the files is imminent — the legislation calling for the release of the files includes major loopholes, and the Justice Department has said little about its plans….

What Congress is “legally entitled to” is a more complicated question than the rhetoric from Capitol Hill might imply.

The legislation that Trump and Congress agreed to pass gives the Justice Department a few exceptions under which it can refuse to release material. Among them: if release “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution.”

On Friday, Trump ordered Bondi to launch a federal investigation related to Epstein — this one aimed at his ties to several prominent Democrats….

That new investigation could become a reason for the Justice Department to block release of many files. Bondi and her deputies have previously said they cannot release information about active investigations.

Other information could be covered by grand jury secrecy rules. The bill does not explicitly waive those.

The Justice Department has also said many of the files cannot be released because they contain sensitive victim information and pornographic material. The legislation contains another exception allowing the Justice Department to withhold material that “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” or “depicts or contains child sexual abuse.”

Nonetheless, Khanna has taken us for idiots. As The Guardian noted

a warning for those in the Trump administration who may find themselves pressed to withhold information: comply or face the consequences.

“Now, it’s federal law for those documents to be released, and if the justice officials don’t release it, they will be prosecuted, and they … could be prosecuted in a future administration,” Khanna told the Guardian on Wednesday evening, shortly before Trump put his signature on a bill intended to reveal the truth about what he spent weeks calling a “Democrat hoax”.

“The career officials [that] are making these decisions have to think that they’re going to be subject to future contempt of Congress or criminal prosecution, and they’re taking a huge risk … if they violate that, given that administrations change,” the California lawmaker added.

Oh my gosh, they're quaking in their boots, they are. We are reminded that in Barack Obama's first term, the President

made it clear that we don’t torture now — but he’s done very little to ensure that we won’t do it again in the future.

The Justice Department’s Thursday announcement that it has closed its investigation into all torture-related actions save two particularly gruesome fatalities was a poignant reminder of that inaction.

Obama has renounced torture. He has issued a new executive order defining acceptable interrogation techniques. He has reasserted the illegality of many of the techniques used in American prisons around the world during the first few years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

But he has also repeatedly expressed his desire to “look forward instead of looking backward.” As a result, there has yet to be any accountability for the actions of the Bush/Cheney administration. And none appears forthcoming.

And without accountability — without either criminal prosecutions or some sort of official national reckoning of what took place — there’s no reason to think that the next time a perceived emergency comes up, some other president or vice president will not decide to torture again.

President Trump has not decided to have anyone tortured- not yet, anyway- but the expansion the power of the Executive branch in his Administration has grown beyond what was expected by even those who long ago warned that he is a fascist. Meanwhile, Barack Obama, he of the "look expected instead of looking backward," remains not only Democrats' most popular politician, but enormously popular in the mainstream media, and in the media generally.

So those career officials Representative Khanna is warning need not fear having to appear before bar of justice in the next presidential administration or at any time. In the very unlikely event they are held accountable, Donald Trump and the American people will little notice, and care less. Even Khanna's admonition itself is telling, being directed not against President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, or even Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, but against "career officials." That's quite a bit down the chain of command.

Evidently, Trump has the least to worry about because we learned in July that

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche informed President Donald Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein that the Department of Justice and the FBI reviewed.

The officials told Trump of their plan not to release any additional documents, the report says, because the material contained child pornography and the personal information of victims.

Here is a safe guess: the child pornography and/or the personal information of victims were not mutually exclusive of the name "Trump."

Now they are, thanks to the FBI's work on behalf of Bondi and Trump. As is probably obvious to Representatives Khanna and Massie, the full, unadulterated Epstein files will not be released even if the Justice Department complies with the law as written. On a positive note, we will know whether the Administration has chosen to be fully transparent or instead hide behind issues of national security, current investigations, or claimed concern for victims. If after release, there is a deep and widespread, fully bipartisan call for President Trump's resignation, we will have seen much of what had been hidden.. If not, we've been had.

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Simple Questions Requiring a Simple Answer

In a law class (but not in law school) a few decades ago, the law professor periodically would pose to my class a yes/no question and ask for a response. Before he got one, he would answer it himself: "it depends."

And so it was that Bill Maher on his podcast asked Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks "if you had to live in the Middle East, so, tomorrow, where would you live?" He mentioned several cities and countries, Pakistan, Karachi, Cairo, Amman/Jordan, Beirut/Lebanon. Syria, Tel Aviv, West Bank/Ramallah, even name-checking the Houthis.  He added "Where would you live/ What city would you live in? Where would you be comfortable- in that dress?

Bill Maher SNAPS at Ana Kasparian after she blames “Islam on whitey.”

MAHER: “If you had to live in the Middle East. Any city. Where would you live where you’d be comfortable in that dress?”

ANA: “I’m sure I would not be comfortable in this dress in any of the various Middle… pic.twitter.com/RyeqrYUkyN

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) December 8, 2025

" 

Kasparian would have flunked Professor Rose's class. Instead of defaulting to blaming USA policy on the Middle East, she should have replied "it depends." (The complete discussion of the topic, according to this blogger, is below.)

A rudimentary search for information regarding clothing permissible in the Middle East reveals a confusing array of laws and rules. What can be worn depends upon the country, the sex/gender of the individual, and, to a lesser extent, circumstances. There is no "one size fits all," especially because the government of each nation determines its own regulations.  Regrettably, the clearest explanation, and an objective one, comes via artificial intelligence, Google's Gemini:

A woman can wear a dress in nearly all Muslim countries, but the style and modesty required vary greatly, from Western-style dresses in fashion-forward cities like Dubai or Istanbul to modest, loose dresses in more conservative areas, with countries like Turkey, UAE, Qatar, and Central Asian nations being generally relaxed, while places like Saudi Arabia (which recently relaxed mandatory abayas) and Iran still have strong cultural expectations for covering shoulders and knees.

Kasparian could have explained that whether she'd be comfortable in a Middle Eastern country wearing her dress depended on several factors. But of course she didn't.

She didn't do so because she would be acknowledging something the left is loathe to concede.  Islam is different than Christianity or Judaism, the other two major monotheistic religions. And although Jewish extremism and Christian extremism present their own particular issues at times and places, in the modern world, Islamism represents both a broader and more serious problem.

Imagine someone being asked whether a normal dress- not even one especially revealing could be worn in Israel, currently being governed by a coalition of the ultra Orthodox; in the USA, in which the base of the governing party is composed of evangelical Christians; or in the white supremacist nation of Russia. The woman would be incredulous that even such a question would be asked.

But being unable to dress as one wishes without threat of punishment is widely, though not universally, prevalent in Muslim countries of the Middle East. And it could not be admitted to Bill Maher by a fairly prominent individual of the left. (Neither, truthfully, is it admitted by most centrists and, yes, conservatives.)

Clothing can be a complicated issue. Nuclear weapons not so much, thus this hypothetical is at least as telling:

MAHER: “Well, they have nuclear weapons, which they don’t use. If Hamas had a nuclear weapon, how many seconds would it take before they used it on Israel?”

ANA: “I don’t know.”

MAHER: “Three. Three’s the answer. Three seconds.”

ANA: “How do you know that, Bill? Come on.”

MAHER: “Because it’s in their charter.”

"I don't know?"  A living, breathing human being, co-host of  The Young Turks podcast, with 6.7 million subscribers, doesn't know whether Hamas would launch a nuclear weapon at Israel if they had one.  

That can't be stupidity or naivete. No one can be that stupid or naive. There is a glaring absence of honesty in political discourse in this country, and failure to recognize the danger of radical and militant Islamism is one of the most dangerous.

ANA: “You wanna get exhilarated right now? I can exhilarate you.”

MAHER: “I know you’re gonna say genocide, and I’m gonna say, well, you don’t know what the word means… Hamas is the bad guy. If you don’t get that, you don’t get much.”

ANA: “What Hamas did on October 7th was disgusting killing.”

MAHER: “Well, that’s the easiest thing in the world to say… If you hate oppression… Hundreds of millions of women have basically no freedom in the Muslim world.”

ANA: “So we should slaughter them instead, which is what’s been happening.”

MAHER: “Well, you should prosecute a war to the end. That does involve slaughter in every war.”

ANA: “Civilians get killed in wars.”

MAHER: “Especially when you hide behind them.”

ANA: “But when 83%, according to the IDF’s own data… 83% of the people that they’ve killed are civilians—”

MAHER: “Because they hide behind them.”

ANA: “But Bill, do you understand that by killing so many civilians, they are essentially multiplying extremism.”

MAHER: “I do understand that. Do you understand that there’s very often in the world two very bad choices… You don’t have a good choice. You have the bad choice and the even worse choice.”

ANA: “Israel has nuclear weapons, Bill. They have nuclear weapons.”

MAHER: “Well, they have nuclear weapons, which they don’t use. If Hamas had a nuclear weapon, how many seconds would it take before they used it on Israel?”

ANA: “I don’t know.”

MAHER: “Three. Three’s the answer. Three seconds.”

ANA: “How do you know that, Bill? Come on.”

MAHER: “Because it’s in their charter.”

ANA: “You have a difficult time at least acknowledging the atrocities that have been committed against innocent civilians in Gaza.”

MAHER: “Well, it depends on what you call an atrocity. All wars are going to have atrocities… During the Civil War, a lot of people would say, especially in the South, that Sherman did not have to burn Atlanta quite as badly as he did. I mean, we were pretty brutal. But would you also then just say, well, we don’t know who the good guys were in that war? No, I think it was the North.”

ANA: “I think much of the problems we have in the Middle East are due to the enabling of this expansion. Look, it’s an expansionist policy.”

MAHER: “They’ve never been trying to expand.”

ANA: “They’re trying to annex the West Bank right now. And Lebanon—southern Lebanon—and Syria, which they’ve succeeded in.”

MAHER: “Excuse me, these are all places that they were attacked from. When they became a country in 1947, they said, ‘Okay, we will accept half a loaf.’ They had as much right to that land as anybody. There was a continual presence there since 1000 BC, when King David had a kingdom.”

ANA: “I don’t care about that at all.”

MAHER: “But it’s relevant!”

(MAHER AND ANA TALK OVER EACH OTHER)

 MAHER: “You’re calling them colonizers. They’re not colonizers.”

ANA: “They’re expanding, and they’re annexing land. That’s what colonizers do.”

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The Wisdom of Ignorance

The favorite character in the Republican Senate caucus is Sergeant Hans Schultz- played by the late John Banner- famous for "I know nothing, nothing" or "I see nothing. I know nothing."

On December 3:

MSNBC: You just outlined the dangers posed by drugs. So what explanation do you have for Trump pardoning the former president of Honduras who was a convicted drug trafficker?

SEN. ROGER MARSHALL: I don't know the details of that pardon. Happy to look into it. I can't speak to… pic.twitter.com/oE1IVQca0m

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2025

Then on Sunday

On NBC, “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker reminded Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas that Trump pardoned a man “who trafficked more than 500 tons of cocaine into the United States.” She specifically asked, “How does that make America safer?”

The senator professed ignorance. “Well, I haven’t spoken to the president about that pardon,” Cotton replied, adding, “I’d have to know more about the circumstances.”

But that was nothing compared to the response of Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri to George Stephanopoulos of ABC's This Week when he asked the Republican "Do you support this pardon of the former Honduran president?" Schmitt replied

I'm not familiar with the facts or circumstances, but I think what's telling here is to try to imply that somehow President Trump is soft on drug smuggling is just ridiculous. It's totally ridiculous. He's the -- he has provided border security like we've never seen before. And the fact is, these cartels now, because the southern border is closed, they've gone to the high seas.

So, President Trump is acting with his core Article II powers. No serious legal expert would doubt that the president has authority to blow narco terrorists out of the water, who are poisoning a hundred thousand Americans every year. If you watched the SEC Championship Game yesterday, the Big 10 Championship Game, combine those two stadiums with the number of people there, that's how many people are dying each every year from the poison that's coming from these narco terrorists.

So the fact is, George, President Trump has been delegated the authority by Congress to designate terrorist organizations. He has done that. He sent a letter to Congress saying he was going to initiate these strikes. We've had regular briefings about it, including from Secretary of State Rubio, including from other high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense. He's executing those.

Article II does not grant the President of the USA any such powers, and it's not a close call. Moreover, the authority granted by Congress to the President to designate terrorist organizations, Executive Order 13224 provides "a means by which to disrupt the financial support network for terrorists or terrorist organizations."  It has nothing to do with blowing boats out of the water or even executing terrorists. None.

Donald Trump has practically trademarked the Art of the Big Lie, and now his disciples have joined the game. So, too, have they emulated Donald who, if he is to be believed, knows nothing- nothing. In October, he

granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of a cryptocurrency exchange who had pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023, and whose company struck a business deal in May involving the Trump family’s crypto venture. But now the president has claimed he did not know who Mr. Zhao was.

Mr. Trump distanced himself from Mr. Zhao in an interview with “60 Minutes” broadcast on Sunday, during which he was questioned about the decision to pardon Mr. Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 after being accused of money-laundering violations that allowed criminals to move money on his cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.

“I don’t know who he is,” Mr. Trump said. “I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”

The President didn't know who he is, though he knew that Zhao received a four-month prison sentence and "heard it was a Biden witch hunt."  Trump has made a habit of this, falsely claiming at one time or another not to have heard of one individual or another whom he did know. They include rapper Lil John, lawyer George Conway, former defense secretary Robert Gates, then-Senator Bob Casey, former campaign manager George Papadopoulos, then-acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, Vladimir Putin. He met them, knew them, and even worked with some of them. But he didn't know them. And of course, "I don't really know why" Jeffrey Epstein was taking young women from Mar-a-Lago.

Nonetheless, I can't blame Democrats for ignoring the apparent ignorance of Republicans. If the public cared, it could have elected Kamala Harris over Trump in 2024; Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016;  Al Gore over George W. Bush in 2000; and truth be told, John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008, Understanding of  such things as government, foreign policy, and the office itself hasn't been a priority of American voters in at least several decades.

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A Call to Extinction

In the clip below, Hillary Clinton asks about college students from around the world "Where are they getting their information?" She found in speaking to college students

They were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok. That is where they were learning about what happened on October 7th. What happened in the, you know, days, weeks, and months to follow that is a serious problem. It's a serious problem for democracy, whether it's Israel or the United States. It's a serious   problem for our young people.

Though she recognizes a particular obstacle to understanding the Middle East, Clinton realizes it's a serious problem for understanding current events generally. Oddly- or maybe not so oddly- some people disagree.

Hillary Clinton has crawled out of her cave to accuse young people of not knowing the truth about Israel because of “social media.”

She is full of shit.

Social media didn’t drop the bombs on Gaza. Israel did & the U.S. supplied them.

FREE PALESTINE. pic.twitter.com/63e9dL4N5B

— Power to the People ☭🕊 (@ProudSocialist) December 2, 2025

A few days ago, Pew Research Center reported

Adults under 30 are much more likely to get news on social media than older adults. There is a 48 percentage point gap between the shares of Americans ages 18 to 29 and those 65 and older who get news on social media at least sometimes (76% vs. 28%).

Compared with older adults, young adults are especially likely to get news from Instagram and TikTok. The difference is stark even between those ages 18 to 29 and the next oldest age group, ages 30 to 49.

The tweeter isn't primarily concerned with whether young people get most of their information about current events from social media. However, it is a major part of this argument because, were he to concede social media's impact, he's have to acknowledge the effect of an incredible (in the correct sense of the term) source.

The former Senator and Secretary of State continued

I was talking to (Bush 43 Secretary of State) Condi Rice and you know, she said in an interview that I did after the 2-point peace plan came out, she and I were in CBS and she said when people were chanting "from the river to the sea," she would ask the students "what river, what sea" and they didn't know. I had the same experience.

It's impossible to determine the veracity of the claim that many students Rice and Clinton spoke to didn't know what river and what sea the chant pertained to. Nonetheless, there is plenty of reason to believe that this was their experience and that it was not coincidental. In a poll commissioned in late 2013- after the Israel/Hamas war began- the Wall Street Journal commissioned a poll which found that 86% of students supported the chant.  However

less than half (47%) were able to name the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as the boundaries that the controversial chant was talking about.

Other students polled gave answers including the Nile and the Euphrates rivers, the Dead Sea and even the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

They didn't know what the chant pertained to, yet they supported it. They didn't know that if there is a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, it would encompass the occupied territory of the West Bank, the territory known as the Gaza Strip, and Israel proper.

It's likely, therefore, that they didn't know that Gaza was controlled by Hamas, elected in 2006 and at the time serving in the 17th year of their four-year term. It is even less likely that they understood that Arabs in Israel proper enjoy more rights than they do in any other nation in the Middle East.

And it is a safe bet they didn't know that the "Palestinian" is a term originating relatively recently for political purposes. Nor would they understand that Israelis, living on the historical land of Palestine, are Palestinians while "Palestinians" living in the diaspora are not Palestinian but Arabs who are residents of Jordan or other nations. 

But it's likely they do understand that "from the river to the sea" is a shortened version of "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." Thus, most of the pro-"Palestine" crowd know that a "free Palestine" would amount to a "no more Israel."  They do know that Israel is the designated Jewish state, created because of past wrongs committed against Jews, especially in Nazi German. (Jews did not generally fare well in most of the Arab world, either, but anyone under 60 or so can be forgiven for not knowing that.)

In late September, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, and Portugal recognized a state of Palestine announced plans to recognize "Palestine." Soon afterward, Israel launched a military strike against Qatar, ostensibly to kill Hamas officials who were meeting there. Shortly afterward, Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire, euphemistically referred to as a "20-point peace plan."

France apparently defined "Palestine" as including the West Bank and Gaza. Great Britain referred to the "occupied territories," presumably the West Bank and Gaza, which is governed by Hamas.  The United Nations currently gives "permanent observer" status to the Palestinian Authority, which is the governing authority in the West Bank and only the West Bank. 

This is a muddled situation because "Palestinians" has become an operative term only in the past few decades, as it has become politically useful messaging. However, the ancient land of Palestine encompassed everything from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The slogan "from the river to the sea" or "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" pertains to the entire area and evisceration of the State of Israel.

As usual, Hillary Clinton was right, in this case about two things:. the ignorance of many college students about a Palestinian state and about social media's impact. And that is a much greater problem.  

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Deceptiveness

Batya Ungar-Sargon maintains that she once was a liberal and now is a conservative. A podcaster who unfortunately has an hour-long show on weekends on CNN's NewsNight With Abby Phillip, she addressed the controversy over the military's air strike on a boat in the Caribbean. She says in the video below

But I'm saying the whole point here is, is it still a legitimate target or not? If they can get on that debris and call for the rest of the narco-terrorists to show up and save them, it's still a legitimate military target..... If the radio is still working on the boat, then it's still a legitimate military target.

Seen and heard in context, Ungar-Sargon clearly means "the radio was still working ton the boat and therefore it's still a legitimate military target." 

 

NYT: "The military would attempt to rescue survivors who appeared to be helpless, shipwrecked and out of what the administration considered a fight. But it would try again to kill them if they took what the United States deemed to be a hostile action, like communicating with… pic.twitter.com/87gAeeP4id

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) December 4, 2025

In its reporting, the New York Times reporters she cites named as their sources "Pentagon officials," "U.S. officials," several U.S. officials," and, most often, "officials." 

By contrast, Ungar-Sargon was confident, if not certain, notwithstanding presumably realizing that Admiral Frank M. Bradley, who commanded the operation, and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were due to testify before a House of Representatives Committee the following day. Oops:

The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.

As far back as September, defense officials have been quietly pushing back on criticism that killing the two survivors amounted to a war crime by arguing, in part, that they were legitimate targets because they appeared to be radioing for help or backup — reinforcements that, if they had received it, could have theoretically allowed them to continue to traffic the drugs aboard their sinking ship.

Defense officials made that claim in at least one briefing in September for congressional staff, according to a source familiar with the session, and several media outlets cited officials repeating that justification in the last week.

But Thursday, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley acknowledged that the two survivors of the military’s initial strike were in no position to make a distress call in his briefings to lawmakers. Bradley was in charge of Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the strike and was the top military officer directing the attack.

So Ungar-Sargon, at least at this point, appears to have been wrong about her loud and confident implication that the last two individuals murdered by missile were trying to get their comrades to come rescue them. Worse yet, arguably, was the "narco-terrorism" or "narco-terrorists" phrase the right is bandying about. 

Even if all the individuals were involved in terrorism, they were not terrorists. They would have been distributing drugs not for political gain, but for profit. And the victims were not innocent bystanders but, depending on where the drugs were headed, foolish customers or profit-oriented drug salesmen themselves.

Republicans have figured out that invoking "terrorism" or "terrorist" is popular justifies almost anything with a huge segment of the public. Additionally, the news media is reluctant to question the designation.  In the odd case in which that doesn't work, claiming we are at "war" often carries the day. Much of politics is a battle of messages and thus far Democrats are losing this one.

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It Begins at the Top

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?  The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up....some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.” -Hillary Clinton, 9/9/16

 An "America First" (according to her bio) tweeter, with, according to Elon Musk, 347,300 followers on X:

“President Trump is trying to silence me, threatening to kill me for saying what is true”

WTF is he talking about?! Trump has never threatened to k@ll him. What an outrageous lie!

pic.twitter.com/mxyxrqR7qu

— Spitfire (@DogRightGirl) December 1, 2025

On November 20, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt  had told reporters

that President Trump does not want to execute members of Congress who urged the military not to follow unlawful orders, but that he wants to see them “held accountable.”

Trump earlier Thursday responded to a video made by six Democrats with military and intelligence backgrounds, calling it “seditious behavior from traitors” and later posting “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

“Does the president want to execute members of Congress?” a reporter asked Leavitt.

“No,” Leavitt said. “Many in this room want to talk about the president’s response, but not what brought the president to responding in this way."

Well, hey, whenever a President calls for the  execution of a specific American- six, in this case- it tends to be a topic of conversation.  As Senator Kelly put it in the video above, "seeing that video, here is how any other President would have responded. They would have said two words: "of course. But that's not how this President responded."

Any other President would have but Donald Trump has a very different vision of America. The Arizona senator added

My family knows the cost of political violence. My wife Gabby was shot in the head and nearly died while speaking to her constituents. The President should understand this, too. He has been the target of political violence by himself. The Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Elizabeth Hortman, and her husband were murdered in their home this year. The governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, had his house firebombed this year. 

Then, Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University, a place I had visited just a few weeks ago with Republican senator John Curtis. Faced with a wave like this, every other President we have ever had in the history of this nation would have tried to heal the nation. But we all know Donald Trump. He uses every single opportunity to divide us.

Shortly after the murder of Charlie Kirk, Donald was aske on Fox News how his Administration would stem extremism of the left and the right and commented

I'll tell you something that's going to get me in trouble but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. They don't want to see crime. They're saying "We don't wan these people coming here. And we don't want you burning our shopping centers. We don't want you shooting our people in the middle of the street. 

The radicals on the left are the problem. They're vicious and they're horrible. And they're politically savvy, although they want men in women's sports. They want transgender for everyone. They want open borders.

Violence from the right, according to a President who evidently views it as righteous,  is driven by opposition to crime. Donald was criticized for these remarks but only modestly.

Contrast to the outrage- the ongoing outrage- over Hillary Clinton's remarks on the campaign trail in September of 2016.  She described "basket of deplorables" as "the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic- you name it.  It remains a cliche in national politics as if the candidate had been condemning all of Donald Trump's supporters.  However, a moment later, she noted that Trump "tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric and

Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

And so the guy who defeated Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024 charges six members of Congress with seditious behavior, says the penalty for that is death, and some of his supporters appear to believe that Trump has not threatened the lives of those Democrats. The greater problem, as Hillary Clinton would realize, occurs when the President's spokesperson is hateful, dishonest, or evasive.  Donald Trump selected a press secretary in his mold, and she never disappoints.

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Comrades

On Sunday, Democratic senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, followed by Republican senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, were interviewed by Dana Bash on CNN's State of the Union. You won't be surprised that the staunchly right-wing Mullin falsely accused Kelly of calling President Trump "racist." You will be surprised that it was nowhere near the most ridiculous thing he said.

The President wrote on Truth Social "I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the US system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions." Although he added "anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country" will be removed from the USA, he did not clarify whether an incumbent President who hates his own country is included.

In response, Senator Kelly told Bash that the President "has kicked out legal immigrants already. This is kind of more of the same from this President. When he says things like Third World countries, what is he really saying? I think what he's saying is, he doesn't want brown people in our country. And that is disturbing and it's un-American."

Mullin is a faithful and enthusiastic ally of Donald, and Kelly's remark set him off.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin: "Mark Kelly is saying the most ridiculous things I've ever heard…He just got done saying that the president was racist because he doesn't like brown people, yet I sit in front of you as a Cherokee Indian and I'm very close friends with the president." pic.twitter.com/ueb3twU4I4

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) November 30, 2025

Although Kelly did imply that Trump is a racial bigot, he did not say that Donald is a racist.  He argued that Trump not wanting "brown people in our country" is "un-American." If Mullin takes issue with that connection, he didn't say he did.

That is not a difference without a distinction; Republican voters typically are aggrieved because they believe that Democrats, liberals, or progressives are always calling them, and anything that moves, "racist."  Mullin chose to feed into that narrative, a false one though the anger that conservatives feel because they believe they are being labeled "racist" is a political liability for Democrats.

The Oklahoma senator claims citizenship in the Cherokee Nation and strongly implies that Trump could not be "racist" because the two are "very close friends."  Of course, that does not preclude Donald from harboring a prejudice against tribal members generally. 

In 2011, Bradford Plumer of The New Republic reviewed that old “some of my best friends….” defense, which self-identified tribal member Mullin trotted out to defend Donald Trump. Plumer noted the first recorded use in the 1908 presidential campaign but

By 1928, the trope was being trotted out as a defense against accusations of intolerance. John Roach Straton, a fiery Baptist preacher from New York, had launched a noisy campaign against Al Smith, a Catholic Democrat running for president. Straton was the guy who popularized the notion that Smith was “the candidate of rum, Romanism, and rebellion,” but, responding to charges that he was some sort of anti-Catholic bigot, Straton told the AP, “Understand I am not a foe of the Catholics. Some of my dearest friends are Catholic.” (To prove his open-mindedness, Straton even agreed to debate Smith inside New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral.)…

The most infamous case, however, came in 1937. Hugo Black had been nominated for the Supreme Court, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had just uncorked a series of articles revealing Black’s past involvement in the Ku Klux Klan. Black’s defense memorably included the line “Some of my best friends are Jews,” which earned him no small amount of scorn from newspaper editorialists (that line, after all, had been the title of a book-length history of anti-Semitism by Robert Gessner the previous year). That line couldn't stop Black's confirmation...

In 1986, Mary Jackman and Marie Crane published a paper in Public Opinion Quarterly investigating what they called the “cynical reasoning implied by the infamous ‘Some of my best friends are black, but…’ expression.” Their survey data suggested that “personal interracial contact is selective in its effects on whites’ racial attitudes, that intimacy is less important than variety of contacts, and that any effects are contingent on the relative socioeconomic status of black contacts.” In other words, having a black friend or two wasn’t at all incompatible with holding racist beliefs about broader groups.

In decades past, the notion that if an individual had a close friend who was black or gay, he or she could not possibly be prejudiced against the demographic group to which the other person belonged. Once (justifiably) derided as ridiculous, this chestnut now is applied more widely, as Mullin demonstrated.

Yet, if Kelly believed that anyone not already realizing that Trump is a bigot could be convinced by rational argument, he could have presented a wealth of evidence.

In testimony before a House of Representatives committee in 1993 in which he argued that the federal government gave tribes operating gambling facilities an unfair advantage over his own, Trump stated "if you look- if you look at some of the reservations that you have approved- you, sir, in your great wisdom, have approved- will tell you right now, they don't look like Indians to me, and they don't look like Indians."  

"Indians" don't all look alike. In a 2011 profile of Senator Mullin published in High Country News, a reporter- himself a member of Cherokee Nation- wrote that his subject "does not fit stereotypical notions of what it means to be Indigenous, either in how he looks or how he operates as a lawmaker. Mullin is also white-passing."  

In his ongoing effort to rewrite history

In March 2025, President Trump ordered the Smithsonian Institution and the secretary of the interior to identify sites that may include “improper partisan ideology.” The New York Times reports that the administration is reviewing scores of exhibits across the country that mention slavery, climate change, or Native Americans, such as exhibits on displays at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina, and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The National Park Service has also been directed to review all items in gift shops for “anti-American content.” As a result, the administration is considering banning books from gift shops, including The 1619 Project on the history of slavery in America and a picture book about former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary.

The removal of physical exhibits on public lands began in July 2025 when the administration removed an exhibit at Muir Woods National Monument called “History Under Construction.” This exhibit brought attention to the Native Coast Miwok people, who have lived in the region for thousands of years, as well as a women’s movement that was among the first to protect Muir Woods. It also addressed the racist ideologies of many of the people who helped protect the monument across the 19th and 20th centuries.

This doesn't prove Donald Trump hates tribal peoples but it pertains more directly to the issue than does the friendship of one individual, who is as white as most non-Hispanic white Americans, with the President. For what it's worth: for most people, appearances matter and white people usually are more favorably inclined to someone of a different ethnic group if he/she does not look dramatically unlike white people. Markwayne Mullin fits the bill.

Nonetheless, Donald Trump can love everyone belonging to a Native American tribe and still be not only a bigot, but an actual racist.  We know that because he is one, as is clear from the record, especially from an incident in 1988 and one in 2024.

Jack O'Donnell was hired in 1987 as Vice President of Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City and the following year was promoted to President. He left in late 1990 and shortly thereafter wrote "Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump, His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall."  Although highly critical of Trump, O'Donnell went silent for the next quarter century because "I wouldn't have discounted the possibility that he could change." However, he became less sanguine about his former boss when the latter embarked upon his birther conspiracy against President Barack Obama.  

O'Donnell observed Trump in June of 2016 "preening in the lobby of Trump Tower amid a phalanx of American flags, launching his candidacy with a promise to build his now-infamous wall to protect us from Mexican criminals and 'rapists.' He hadn't changed at all." The author noted 

In 1988, shortly after I was promoted to president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino, he invited me up to New York for lunch. There was a lot to talk over one issue in particular: one of our senior managers, who happened to be African-American. Donald considered him incompetent and wanted him fired. When I acknowledged some shortcomings in the man’s performance, he instantly became enthused. “Yeah, I never liked the guy,” he said. “And isn’t it funny, I’ve got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

I was mortified. We were in a restaurant in Trump Tower. I worried he’d be overheard. But he went on, “Besides that, I’ve got to tell you something else: I think the guy is lazy, and it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is. I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”

Laziness as a "trait" in blacks (or individuals of any racial group) would be a reference to an inherited characteristic- nature not nurture.

Fast forward to December of 2023, passing over numerous pejorative remarks about people based upon their race, color, national origin or gender, to one particularly revealing remark.  During a campaign appearance

“They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd at a rally in New Hampshire. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

Trump then repeated the use of “poisoning” in a post on his social media website Truth Social, saying overnight in an all-caps post, that “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”

The term “blood poisoning” was used by Hitler in his manifesto “Mein Kampf,” in which he criticized immigration and the mixing of races. “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” Hitler wrote.

This wasn't a teenager, or an adult who has experienced an unusually secluded upbringing somewhere. This was a former President of the United States of America announcing as clearly as he could that he is a flat-out racist.

Nonetheless, one member of the House of Representatives, a close ally of Donald Trump, says the President couldn't be a racist because the two of them are pals. Well, that settles that, I suppose.

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Blaming Political Opponents For Murder

Senator Markwayne Mullin always has been a classy guy, ever-ready to bridge differences.

 

And now there is this:

Democrats warned of “illegal” orders with zero proof, and insinuated our military would shoot civilians. Days later, two national guardsmen were brutally attacked in Washington, D.C. pic.twitter.com/RxYyDkG64d

— Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) November 29, 2025

In the video posted to this tweet of the Oklahoma Republican, Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan can be seen commenting

It makes me incredibly nervous that we're about to see people in law enforcement, people in uniform military get nervous, get stressed, shoot at American civilians. It is very, a very stressful situation for these law enforcement and for the communities on the ground, So it was basically a warning to say, like, if you're asked to do something, particularly against American citizens, you have the ability to go to your JAG officer and push back.

Mullin says Slotkin "owes every single person in uniform an apology" and

That's such an insult to nearly every man and woman that has ever served this great nation other from law enforcement or into, or into the military to say that you're gonna get nervous and you're gonna shoot at citizens, U.S. citizens. That is not happening. We know that's not happening. I know that's not happening. 

She's saying that they're not trained well? Is she saying that we don't have the best men and women in serving this great nation?

We may have the best men and women in the Armed Forces but, judging from this video, the best are not serving the Democratic Party, and far worse are serving the Republican Party.

Slotkin erred in referring to "people in law enforcement, people in uniform military" because she was speaking exclusively of military personnel. Her point, as would have been obvious to Mullin, was that National Guard soldiers legitimately face a very stressful situation when called to perform law enforcement.

It's understandable that they would  As explained in the two-month old video below, "the problem is that soldiers are trained to see people as possible threats while police officers are supposed to protect citizens and soldiers, as they say, are warriors and police officers are guardians."  The perspective most soldiers hold, as well as insufficient or inapplicable training, render them unlikely to engage in community policing, however that's understood by officials and police officers in urban environments.

   

When members of the National Guard were activated for deployment to Chicago, they and Marines were given two weeks of training. They received a brochure produced by the Department of Defense, as well as a slide presentation which (pursuant to the Posse Comitatus Act) forbade them to be involved in security patrols, traffic control, crowed control, or riot control. However, they were told verbally that they could perform those tasks. 

Slotkin inadvisedly conflated police officers with military personnel while she obviously was referring strictly to military. This is unfortunate because as Mullin very likely understands, her point was that members of the Armed Forces are not trained in community law enforcement, which is clearly accurate and relevant. The Oklahoman can choose to misunderstand the Michigander, and even to be ignorant about the training the National Guard receives. 

But Senator Mullin went beyond that in strongly implying that Democrats were responsible for the shooting in Washington, D.C.- in which one individual has now died- of  the two members of the National Guard. If Democrats were willing and able to confront directly that appalling insinuation, they would not only refute that charge. They also would emphasize that Markwayne Mullin has relieved the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, of responsibility in the shooting.

It's par for the course. Many Republicans believe the greatest threat to the USA is not terrorism, Russia, or China, but the Democratic Party. Democrats should make this clear to the American people, no matter how much their GOP friends and colleagues squeal from being called out. Moreover, the six Democratic members of Congress who patriotically produced the controversial video must recognize that Elissa Slotkin, who obviously has been nervous defending the ad, is not their best spokesperson.

.

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All Biden's Fault, As Usual

In a major upset, the Trump Administration has said something truthful. NPR notes

Two West Virginia National Guard members deployed to Washington, D.C., remain in critical condition after being shot while on patrol just blocks from the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

"Two families are shattered and destroyed and torn apart as the result of the actions of one man," said Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

"Two families are shattered and destroyed and torn apart as the result of the actions of one man," said Pirro, in what should be obvious but, judging from most of the response from the Administration, apparently is not.

Immediately after a report (not substantiated at the time) that an Afghan national was responsible for shooting two members of the National Guard deployed to Washington, D.C,. the X right got into action politicizing the crime.. One was Bo Loudon, of whom during last year's campaign it was reported

Despite barely being old enough to vote, 18-year-olds Bo Loudon and Barron Trump were unofficially recruited onto team Trump to help the oldest presidential candidate in history tap into the manosphere and capture the “bro vote.”

Earlier this year Trump, 78, began experimenting with the new audience by engaging with YouTubers and podcasters, many of whom are sympathetic towards the MAGA movement....

 Loudon, a conservative content creator, and the youngest Trump heir were apparently tasked to help Trump navigate the complex web of internet celebrities and influencers.

“The strategy is reaching an audience that maybe isn’t being recognized,” Loudon told Piers Morgan on Thursday.

Much to the distress of the vast majority of the world not named Javier Millei, Viktor Orban, or Vladimir Putin, we know how that turned out. The 19-year-old maintains his influence in Trumpland. Therefore, he promptly amplified Donald's stridently partisan and anti-American response to Wednesday's shooting:

🚨BREAKING: President Trump just revealed the Biden admin. extended the stay of the foreigner "animal" who shot our National Guard.

Follow: @BoLoudon pic.twitter.com/UJzsF8dGuh

— Bo Loudon (@BoLoudon) November 27, 2025

Before we even knew the suspect's motive(s), Trump had decided the real culprit was not American policy or the (presumed) offender himself. It was a former President. And that is turning out to be less than the entire truth.

🚨 BREAKING: The Trump administration is suddenly blaming Biden for the D.C. shooter’s asylum approval…

…but CNN just confirmed the shooter applied for asylum in December 2024 and was approved in April of THIS YEAR, under Trump. pic.twitter.com/bUe5iJzJSF

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) November 27, 2025

Nor could we have been surprised that the Trump rot has seeped even into the Central Intelligence Agency, where in an e-mailed statement Director John Ratcliffe claimed

In the wake of the disastrous Biden Withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden Administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the U.S. Government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation.

This individual — and so many others — should have never been allowed to come here. Our citizens and servicemembers deserve far better than to endure the ongoing fallout from the Biden Administration's catastrophic failures.

In such cases, it's customary to say "before the bodies are even cold...."  Yet, the the Administration quickly not only decided, but proclaimed, that Operation Allies Welcome was a grave error ("and so many others") but that the primary culprit was not Rahmanullah Lakanwal but Trump's immediate predecessor.

Those "so many others" slandered by Donald's C.I.A. director served as partners to the C.I.A. in Afghanistan and deserved exceptional consideration by Washington when the war in Afghanistan ended. They sacrificed in their capacity for the USA and had they remained in Afghanistan, would have been targeted by the new Taliban government. The program has been imperfect but that was not the message of either the President or the C.I.A. director, who slammed the program itself and the President who created it.

And that Taliban government did not come about magically when the USA withdrew from Afghanistan in spring of 2021. Rather

The Trump Administration February 2020 negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the tAliban tha t excluded the Afghan government, freed 5,000 imprisoned Taliban soldiers and set a date certain of May 1, 2021 for the final withdrawal.

And the Trump administration kept to the pact, reducing U.S. troop levels from about 13,000 to 2,500, even though the Taliban continued to attack Afghan government forces and welcomed al-Qaeda terrorists into the Taliban leadership.

The withdrawal, though chaotic in execution, was planned and orchestrated by the first Trump Administration, negotiated with the Taliban and behind the back of the Afghan government. As we now see with the Russia-Ukraine war, it is Donald's style figuratively to pull the rug out from under our allies and shoot them in the back.

Very few other Democrats, liberals, or progressives are doing what tweeter Allen is doing, indirectly defending the Biden Administration by explaining that the Trump Administration does not have clean hands in the case of Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Notably, his bio reads "America FIRST," in contrast to the MAGA crowd which inaccurately portrays itself as "America First."  

At the very least, though, the Trump Administration should be held responsible for caring less about the Guardsmen or the nation they were representing than they do in condemning another American President. Donald speaks for the America Last crowd or, perhaps, the Hate America gang. 

In either case, more Democrats need to realize that a narrative has quickly formed and a counter-narrative, that President Trump has put our soldiers in harm's way, must arise. It will be hard to motivate Democrats to do that. Here is a suggestion: pretend Donald Trump is blaming Barack Obama, not Joe Biden, and Democrats will do something about it. 

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Illegal Orders No Obstacle

On ABC's This Week without George Stephanopoulos, Senator Elissa Slotkin told Martha Raddatz

This president in the last administration, his last administration, asked his secretary of defense and his chairman of the Joint Chiefs to, quote, "shoot at their legs” at unarmed protesters in front of the White House that he wanted moved.

Raddatz responded "Actually, I know- I know you're talking about Mark Esper's book," to which Slotkin replied "yeah" and Raddatz commented "He didn't exactly say that. he said the president suggested that, but they were never ordered to do that."

Well, Martha, you got us there because in Esper's book 

"The president was enraged," Esper recalled. "He thought that the protests made the country look weak, made us look weak and 'us' meant him. And he wanted to do something about it.

"We reached that point in the conversation where he looked frankly at [Joint Chiefs of Staff] Gen. [Mark] Milley and said, 'Can't you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?' ... It was a suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that moment as this issue just hung very heavily in the air."

It was not an order, but a mere "suggestion." Raddatz also asked "Do you- so- so, let's talk right now. Do you believe President Trump has issued any illegal orders?" Slotkin responded

To my knowledge, I -- I am not aware of things that are illegal, but certainly there are some legal gymnastics that are going on with these Caribbean strikes and everything related to Venezuela. And I think that's why --

A few questions later, Raddatz maintained

And with these service members calling you, couldn't you have done a video saying just what you just said? If you are asked to do something, if -- if you are worried about whether it is legal or not, you can do this. It does imply that the president is having illegal orders, which you have not seen.

The Michigan senator noted that when a member of the armed services with a concern approaches her, he or she is told "go to your JAG officer, ask them for explanation, for top cover, for their view on things."

That's fine but inadequate, thus giving rise to this objection from Utah's senior US Senator:

Why would one encourage troops to ignore orders from the commander in chief—based on an apparent presumption the he issues illegal orders—in the absence of illegal orders?
pic.twitter.com/A3YZ0RqPs2

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) November 24, 2025

It's hard to blame Lee for being opportunistic by jumping on a mistake by omission by a Democratic colleague, who might have mentioned that three days earlier

that President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in Washington D.C. was likely unlawful and inflicted serious harm on the District’s right to govern itself.

 U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb, appointed by former President Joe Biden, found that the Trump administration overstepped the law when it deployed more than 2,000 Guard members into D.C. streets for routine patrols.

This wasn't the last word because

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb put her order on hold for 21 days to allow the Trump administration time to either remove the troops or appeal the decision. The ruling marks another flashpoint in the months-long legal battle between local leaders and the president over longstanding norms about whether troops can support law enforcement activities on American streets.

Nonetheless, the moral of the story remains that President Trump issued an order which probably is illegal and at least could raise in the minds of Armed Services personnel a question about its legality. Yet, Senator Lee claims there has been "an absence of illegal orders." 

This wasn't an isolated order given that ten days before Judge Cobb determined that the Administration had violated the law with deployment of Guard members to the District of Columbia, free speech organizations had filed a friend-of-the-court brief 

in the Supreme Court in Trump v. Illinois, the state’s lawsuit challenging President Trump’s attempt to federalize National Guard troops and deploy them into Chicago and surrounding counties. Both the federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit have so far blocked this deployment. The case is at the Supreme Court on the Trump administration’s emergency application seeking to stay or temporarily lift the lower courts’ orders blocking the deployment.

Most recently are the strikes against people on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Call the victims "narco-terrorists-  as does Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth- they still are very likely extrajudicial killings. 

Never issued an an illegal order, my foot.  If no illegal order is contemplated, someone inform the President, who asked in a post on his ironically named Truth Social (emphasis his)"LOCK THEM UP???" and reposted someone else's "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!" He neglected to say "I haven't issued any illegal orders and wouldn't."  Credit him with uncharacteristically not lying.

On November 24, Hegseth labeled the video "despicable, reckless, and false." It is unclear what was "false." Was it "you can refuse illegal orders" or "it's a difficult time to be in public service" or "Americans trust their military?" Hegseth doesn't say, yet now has initiated against Senator Mark Kelly, retired U.S. Navy captain, a "thorough review" to "determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures." Still no claim that the President has issued no illegal order nor that he will not in the future..

In March, US District Judge James Boasberg ordered aircraft taking accused gang members to Venezuela to return to the USA. Instead, they landed in Venezuela and the detainees were held in what is considered a "notorious prison." Boasberg found probable cause to hold the Administration in criminal contempt of court and a hearing is scheduled for December 1. One expected witness is "a former U.S. Justice Department attorney who filed a whistleblower complaint that claims a top official in the department suggested the Trump administration might have to ignore court orders as it prepared to deport Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members."

Not only have illegal orders been issued by this regime, the President's reaction on November 23 to the video by the Patriotic 6 contains a glaring omission. He contended

The traitors that told the military to disobey my orders should be in jail right now, not roaming the fake news networks trying to explain that what they said was OK. It wasn't, and never will be. It was sedition at the highest level, and sedition is a major crime. There can be no other interpretation of what they said.

Funny it is that Senator Lee and other Trump sycophants are claiming on behalf of the President what the latter won't claim himself- that no illegal order has been issued.

Terrorism is the go-to term today to rationalize any illegal action. Our future may include "gambling terrorists" or "shoplifting terrorists" or even "Democratic terrorists." (Trump himself already has gone there.).  The possibilities are endless. When the Administration more brazenly ignores court orders, we probably will hear of "judicial terrorists," especially if we don't oppose illegal actions as boldly as have those six members of the House Democratic caucus.

   

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