Dear Everybody:
The big news today is that Pete Hegseth fired the Secretary of the Navy:
--Hegseth fired Navy Secretary John Phelan without any warning, effective immediately, and in the middle of a war. (Note: He had previously fired the Army Chief of Staff.)
--Garrett M. Graff; "So now Pete Hegseth has fired the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Staff of the Army, both in the middle of a war, both with no publicity or known explanation. Seems fine."
--Ghost Goat: "They were resisting illegal orders for sure."
--Axios: "Phelan didn’t understand he wasn’t the boss. His job is to follow orders given, not follow the orders he thinks he should be given."
--Phelan was no prize. He had no military experience at all and was just a big Trump donor. He was also in the Epstein files. He flew on "the Lolita Express" with five other men including Jean-Luc Brunel (sent to prison for trafficking of underage girls, where he "committed suicide") and six girls whose names are redacted in the files, which means they were all victims.)
--Phelan is being replaced by Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao, who may be even worse. He believes witches have taken over California, is a far-right extremist and gun nut, a climate and an election denier, and someone who thinks that women who get abortions are Nazis. (He has previously run for office, so that’s why so many of his opinions are known.)
--Boone Daniels: "Hung Cao is a nutter! He makes Hegseth look normal and RFK, Jr. look smart."
--Rumors are flying about why Hegseth fired him. Among them are that he refused to follow an illegal order (nukes?), that Hegseth was jealous of him because he had Trump’s ear, that he wasn’t moving fast enough on Trump’s plan to design a whole new fleet of battleships named after Trump.
--Cath RN, PhD: "I read that he was jealous of the closeness that the SecNavy had with IQ47."
--Feed after Midnight: "John Phelan was completely unqualified to be the Navy Secretary. But the consequences of his immediate firing and Lindsey Graham boasting that he had a great call with Trump on Iran has people wondering if something is afoot. I’ve said it a number of times, the longer this goes on, the more likely Trump says "FUCK IT" and makes this situation 1000 times worse."
--Sarah Longwell: "We’re in the middle of a pretty important naval blockade standoff with a country we’ve threatened to destroy, so it seems like a weird time for the Secretary of the Navy to abruptly depart. And by weird, I mean, "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"
--Biker Daddy: "Stalin purged his military, too."
In other war with Iran news:
--Iran seized two commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz despite Trump’s claim that Iran has no Navy.
--Trump: "We totally control the Strait, just so you understand. For all the fake news out there."
--34 tankers bypassed the US blockade.
--Iran is now threatening the undersea internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz. There are seven major ones in the Strait.
--Karoline Leavitt admitted Americans will be stuck in the Iran War until President Donald Trump is willing to pull out. She also said, "Well, we obviously know who we’re negotiating with because our negotiating team has sat down with those individuals in person. But obviously there’s a lot of internal friction and internal division, which again, just proves the efficiency of Operation Epic Fury in the first place."
--And more and more Republicans are talking approvingly about nukes. GOP Senator Roger Marshall: "Trump should nuke Iran to keep them from ever having a nuclear weapon." (Note: He also suggested we starve them out, which is a war crime. Of course, so is nuclear warfare.)
--Today Trump was asked, "Would you use a nuclear weapon against Iran?" Trump: "No. Why would I need it? Why would a stupid question ike that be asked? A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody." (I’d like to feel reassured by this, but since he changes what he says about every 10 seconds, somehow I don’t. On the other hand, one of our group members said maybe it meant that the generals told him no in no uncertain terms--remember General Caine walking out of that meeting?--and so he’s now making that look like it was his decision.)
--He was also asked, "What do you say to the American people who question how much longer this will last? Obviously you know they’re having higher gas prices." Trump: "You’re such a disgrace. Did you hear what I said? How many years was Vietnam?" (VietNAM? When did this turn into Viet Nam? We were in Viet Nam either for eight years or for twenty, depending on how you’re counting, with 58,000 American deaths to show for it. Plus, we lost.)
--Also Trump: "I would’ve won Vietnam very quickly if I were president. Look at Venezuela. I took it over in 45 minutes."
--Trump reposted a post of Mark Thiessen’s: "If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones who don’t."
--He also shared a piece headlined, "Will Trump go full Sherman in the war on Iran?"
--He also posted, "I’m ordering the Navy to shoot any boat putting mines in the Strait."
--And "We actually have full control over the Strait."
--And "I don’t need a deal."
--War hawk John Bolton: "I think...the ceasefire itself is incoherent. And I’m afraid that’s also a pretty good description at the moment of the direction of US policy. I think the president’s lost. I don’t think he knows what to do next."
--Paul Krugman: "It becomes clearer with each passing day that the people who took us to war with Iran had and have no idea what they’re doing--that they’re adolescents who think they’re playing video games while thousands die and the world careens toward economic crisis."
Meanwhile, Republicans are lining up to defend Trump’s handling of the war:
--Sarah Huckabee Sanders; "Everybody wants to say this is a war that Trump started. I think it’s a war he’s ending."
--GOP Rep Addison McDowell: "(Trump’s) the best negotiator to ever live. You’ve got him already saving these people in Iran. He very well might be leading us into world peace."
--Interior Secretary Doug Burgum: "Brilliant on President Trump’s part. The world is already a safer place than it was two years ago, thanks to President Trump, and I’m super optimistic about where the world is gonna be coming out the backside."
--Joni Ernst: "He is the President of Peace."
In Trump dementia/madness news:
--In the midst of all his threats against Iran, Trump posted a clipping about the last season of his TV show, THE APPRENTICE, and how popular it was.
--Heather Delaney Reese: "This is a man reaching backward for proof that he once mattered because the present keeps telling him something he cannot accept. The votes keep not going his way., the people keep not doing what he tells them. The walls keep showing cracks that he cannot plaster over fast enough."
--Trump is mostly busy planning his revenge on the press at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
--They apparently sent him an invitation as a courtesy because he never attends, but this year he took them up on it and said he’s coming.
--And then he leaked his plan for the dinner--he plans to use it to get revenge on all the Fake News outlets who have crossed him. He plans to give a vicious speech--"a scripted tantrum"--targeting them with a "revenge attack" and then leaving before they can say anything back.
--One of the reasons he’s leaving early is that he doesn’t want to be there when they give the Katharine Graham Award to the journalists who reported on his connections to Epstein.
--chaserblue resists: "So...we have reached the ring of Hell where we are subject to Trump’s SCRIPTED TANTRUMS? What the fuck is next?" (Don’t ask that.)
--Satanic Donut: "What a petulant child. The emotional maturity of an 8-year-old in an 80-year-old body. And he has no fucking shame about it."
--Scruffy R: "So, news flash: He’s gonna attend the White House Correspondents Dinner, blast them all, then run out. Like he did with Viet Nam. I’d suggest dog whistles handed out, forks clinking on glasses, and lots of boos to drown out his oran pollution. And not one of ‘his’ will tell him how bad that’s gonna look."
In RFK, Jr. news:
--RFK, Jr. has been up on Capitol Hill all this week, first before the House and then the Senate, and it is NOT GOING WELL.
--He claimed he had nothing to do with the measles epidemic currently raging in the US. He said it started before he ever took office: "I have nothing to do with the measles outbreak here."
--RFK, Jr.: "There’s no cut in Medicaid. Dem Rep Landsman: "Just do the math with me...you either added $1 trillion to the deficit or you cut Medicaid by $1 trillion."
--When asked about cuts to social programs in order to finance the war, he growled, "It’s not my department."
--RFK, Jr.: "There is nobody legally enrolled in Medicaid who is losing coverage. Dem Rep Smith: "That is just not true."
--Dem Rep Carter: "I really wish you’d spend more time thinking about the American people, less time talking about whale heads, bear heads, and raccoon parts." RFK, Jr.: "I don’t talk about any of those things."
--Dem Rep Ruiz: "Trump and the White House have benched you because you’re making the President look bad." RFK, Jr.: "That’s not true." Ruiz: "I think the reporting is correct. You’re making the President look bad. You talked publicly about snorting cocaine off a toilet bowl seat. Your words, not mine."
In historical news:
--Six years ago today we were in the depths of the COVID pandemic. Trump held one of his daily press conferences and suggested ingesting bleach to kill the COVID virus. (Note: He was crazy then, too.)
In other news:
--Republican leadership planned to vote to gut the Endangered Species Act, but didn’t have the votes, so had to pull it.
--Trump is in talks to send Afghans (who helped the US war effort and put their own lives in danger and were thus given sanctuary in the United States) to the Democratic Republic of Congo, shipping them off to a country where they know no one and do not speak the language.
--Dem Rep from Florida Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from Congress after a federal indictment led to her being found guilty by the House Ethics Committee on 25 charges.
In good news:
--A federal judge threw out Laura Loomer’s lawsuit against Bill Maher for defamation. He had said she was having an affair with Trump. The judge ruled that 1) Maher was obviously joking, and 2) that she had produced no evidence she was harmed by his comments.
--Scientists at Cambridge have developed a solar-powered reactor to break down hard-to-recycle plastic waste using acid from old car batteries, converting the waste into clean hydrogen fuel and valuable industrial chemicals.
--A federal judge said the Trump administration violated the First Amendment when it pressured Facebook and Apple to remove ICE-tracking groups and apps.
Best photo of the day, from NASA’s Hubble telescope: "Young Stars in the Trifid Nebula" 5000 light years from earth. You can see the picture here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-dazzles-with-young-stars-in-trifid-nebula/
Best comment of the day, from EvviesD: "His thinking is more fantastical, delusional, and broken from reality. Psychosis is pretty clear sometimes."
And today is Shakespeare’s birthday! Happy birthday to the Bard who has brought us so much joy over the year and so many great quotations! And words! We have Shakespeare to thank for: downstairs, eyeball, too much of a good thing, I haven’t slept a wink, gossip, the world’s your oyster, jaded, heart of gold, kissing, obscene, rant (thanks, we needed that one for Trump), zany, what the dickens, bedroom, in my heart of hearts, my own flesh and blood, cold-blooded, it’s Greek to me, lackluster, blushing, outbreak, swagger, frugal, majestic, pious, suspicious, lonely, fashionable, assassination, one fell swoop, elbow room, eat out of house and home, something wicked this way comes, and we have seen better days. And that’s just a sampling! Happy 462nd, Will!
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis