Our Un-American, American President

The president once again shows that he has no understanding of America's constitutional traditions. Plus a Pete Hegseth update and a very patriotic musical interlude!

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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Hegseth Update

Things are a still a shitshow at the Pentagon:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon in January with almost no government experience and huge ambitions to remake the way the military was being run.

In just three months in office, Mr. Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has instead produced a run of chaos that is unmatched in the recent history of the Defense Department.

Mr. Hegseth’s inner circle of close advisers — military veterans who, like him, had little experience running large, complex organizations — is in shambles. Three members of the team he brought with him into the Pentagon were accused last week of leaking unauthorized information and escorted from the building.

A fourth recently departed member of Mr. Hegseth’s team, John Ullyot, who had been his top spokesman, accused Mr. Hegseth of disloyalty and incompetence in an opinion essay in Politico on Sunday. “The building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership,” Mr. Ullyot wrote.

The discord, according to current and former defense officials, includes: screaming matches in his inner office among aides; a growing distrust of the thousands of military and civilian personnel who staff the building; and bureaucratic logjams that have slowed down progress on some of President Trump’s key priorities, such as an “Iron Dome for America” missile-defense shield. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal business.'

… The battles that have roiled Mr. Hegseth’s inner office, though, have focused more on often petty bureaucratic disputes than policy issues, said current and former defense officials. Staff members have complained that meetings overseen by Mr. Hegseth’s handpicked chief of staff, Joe Kasper, meander or take pointlessly bawdy turns.

One meeting Mr. Kasper led this month, with a group that works with veterans that was offering its services to the Pentagon, devolved into a recounting of an evening Mr. Kasper and a representative of the group spent at a Washington strip club, said a person who took part in the session.

What a mess. However, if you think this will lead to Hegseth getting quickly pushed out as Secretary of Defense, I have bad news. Yesterday, Trump gave Hegseth a public stamp of approval — and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News, “This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change you are trying to implement.”

For his part, Hegseth attended the Easter Egg Roll at the White House and blasted “disgruntled former employees” for the bad press he’s receiving, which omits the fact that those “disgruntled former employees” were, until a week ago, among his most trusted advisors.

Hegseth isn’t necessarily the first Secretary of Defense to have problems inside the Pentagon. Donald Rumsfeld had a famously adversarial relationship with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Rumsfeld wasn’t an idiot who knew nothing about defense policy or how the Pentagon is run. Moreover, at least Rumsfeld was surrounded by political allies. The same cannot be said of Hegseth, who just lost three of his closest aides (all of whom are clearly leaking negative stories about him).

But, at least for the time being, the White House seems prepared to keep Hegseth on board. The reason, I believe, is twofold: it would be humiliating for Trump to jettison his Secretary of Defense pick, whom he expended enormous political capital getting confirmed, less than 100 days into the job. Moreover, pushing out Hegseth would give his opponents, particularly the New York Times, which ran the most recent Signal group chat story, a scalp, and that is anathema to Trump and his allies.

By the way, speaking of that Signal chat story …

Minutes before U.S. fighter jets took off to begin strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen last month, Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, used a secure U.S. government system to send detailed information about the operation to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The material Kurilla sent included details about when U.S. fighters would take off and when they would hit their targets — details that could, if they fell into the wrong hands, put the pilots of those fighters in grave danger.

…. according to the two sources, less than 10 minutes elapsed between Kurilla’s giving Hegseth the information and Hegseth’s sending it to the two group chats, one of which included other Cabinet-level officials and their designees — and, inadvertently, the editor of The Atlantic magazine. The other group included Hegseth’s wife, his brother, his attorney and some of his aides.

This is the problem for the White House. There will be a drip-drip of bad news stories on Hegseth, which could force Trump’s hand. As I noted the other day, I would be shocked if Hegseth still has this job six months from now or even in a year, but for the time being, he is likely safe. Of course, with Trump, you never know — Hegseth could be gone by the time I post this.

*** One other note on the Signal story above: that he sent classified military info less than ten minutes after he received it, confirms what I long assumed about the original Signal chat story — that Hegseth was showing off. First, he did it for his fellow Cabinet officials, then his friends and family. Honestly, what a clown.

Our Un-American President

Shutterstock

Yesterday, the president of the United States posted the note below on his Truth Social feed:

The key phrase here is “we cannot give everyone a trial.”