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Why Trump's Iran Strike Hype Is Falling Flat

Why Trump's Iran Strike Hype Is Falling Flat

Whatever United States military forces may have achieved in last week's brief attack on Iranian nuclear sites — a question that will not be answered definitively anytime soon — we have learned again the most fundamental fact about the current occupant of the White House.

Under Donald Trump, the principal purpose of our military and diplomatic policies is not to enhance American national security or pursue any strategic objective. The most important goal of every U.S. action is childishly simple: to make Trump look heroic and feel powerful, no matter how pointless or destructive it otherwise proves to be.

And Americans, normally susceptible to spurious presidential appeals to nationalism and fear, seem to have noticed that Trump's little war had no plausible aim — and only put the nation in jeopardy of another ruinous "forever war."

Trump's motives in addressing Iran and its nuclear ambitions -- distorted by his unquenchable envy (and enmity) toward his predecessor Barack Obama -- have been questionable from the very moment he first stepped into the White House. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, delivered by the Obama diplomatic team and our European allies in 2015, severely restricted Iran's nuclear program.

It is now clear that Trump's withdrawal, effectively killing that agreement, led directly to the recent advances in the Iranian nuclear program, which in turn provoked Israel to mount its recent military campaign. Had the JCPOA held, as it would have with American support, there would have been no "emergency" need to blow up the Iranian nuclear sites now.

Trump himself created the crisis that he now seeks credit for ending, with his repeated claims that the munitions fired on Iran by American submarines and stealth bombers had "obliterated" the mullahs' nuclear industrial complex.

But did he end the crisis? Were those nuclear facilities and uranium stockpiles "totally destroyed"? Or did the Iranians somehow preserve their nuclear options in case of a military attack?

It would be surprising if they had failed to do so, since Trump — always childishly demanding global attention — foolishly boasted well in advance of his intentions to hit Iran. Having at first claimed that the U.S. would not get embroiled in Israel's military campaign, and indeed that he had tried to discourage it, the president grew jealous of the Israel Defense Forces' apparent success and determined to glom some glory for himself.

American intelligence agencies later told journalists that the biggest operational security problem in our Iran operations was Trump's egomaniacal posturing. The Iranians assuredly took notice and moved as much of their equipment and enriched uranium stockpiles as possible to secret locations.

Merely asking how it all transpired — and how it might have affected the successful "obliteration" of the Iranian nuclear program — was enough to enrage not only Trump but his national security team. The journalists who reported an initial bomb damage assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which found that the air raids had only set the Iranian drive back by "a few months," provoked a hysterical response from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He accused news outlets that revealed the DIA report of lacking patriotism and respect for the armed services, personally berated journalists, including a former Fox News colleague, and immediately ordered a leak investigation.

What Hegseth didn't do — and what Trump didn't do — was deny that the DIA had issued that damning report. Instead, they instantly and rather suspiciously produced a contradictory CIA estimate that reinforced Trump's original claims. Meanwhile, European intelligence agencies and other sources have indicated that, at the very least, Iran has kept a substantial stockpile of enriched uranium, enough to produce several weapons in the future.

When that will be, we cannot know for certain. What we do know is that the military attack on Iran, occurring even as the U.S. was supposedly negotiating with its leadership, has spurred that country and others to build the world's most dangerous weapons as quickly as possible.

Perhaps that is why nearly every poll now shows that Americans strongly disapprove of Trump's Iran misadventure. Foreign leaders have no reason to believe anything Trump says, and neither do we.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism(St. Martin's Press, 2024).

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Besides Food Dyes, What Endangers Children's Health? Bobby's Hypocrisy

Nobody should have trusted Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to "make America healthy again," especially after he sold the slogan to President Donald Trump for a cabinet position. But the events of recent days have exposed the cynicism and contradictions behind that sonorous pledge.

On May 22, the Make America Healthy Again Commission, named by Trump and chaired by Kennedy, delivered an ambitious report on children's health, which warned that our kids are "the sickest in the world" and loudly blamed ultraprocessed foods, environmental poisons, prescription drugs and lack of exercise for their condition. While the report offered few specific solutions to the problems identified, Kennedy promised that policy recommendations would be forthcoming in the next 100 days.

Unsurprisingly, the lengthy MAHA report promoted the HHS secretary's obsessive opposition to vaccines, despite their proven track record in saving millions of lives of both children and adults — and the recent horrific incidents of unnecessary deaths from measles in communities with low vaccination rates. Despite that troubling feature, other aspects of the report — in particular its focus on encouraging consumption of whole foods and reducing the food industry's most destructive production and marketing processes — won praise from respected scientists who otherwise harbor grave doubts about Kennedy (and Trump).

While the nation awaits Kennedy's vague initiatives on child health, however, the Trump administration is moving rapidly to thwart whatever progress might result from banning a toxic food dye or two. The Environmental Protection Agency, with the full support of the president, under the leadership of a far-right former congressman from New York, has set out to prove that its title is a misnomer. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has announced that his agency will drop much of its historic effort to prevent dangerous pollution of air and water.

What Zeldin really aims to protect are the commercial interests of coal, oil and other dirty industries. Boasting that he will oversee "the biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history," the EPA chief plans to roll back dozens of regulations designed to prevent particulate matter, smog, nitrogen oxides, lead and mercury from entering the bloodstreams of Americans and inflicting deadly effects on their brains, lungs and hearts, causing disease and premature deaths.

While he mulls the most efficient means to destroy the regulatory structures that have reduced pollution over the past 50 years, Zeldin is offering special favors to polluting firms on request. His agency has set up a dedicated email account where industrial polluters can request a "presidential exemption" from regulations that are meant to curtail their dumping of poisons under the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. In practice this will mean increased exposure for vulnerable Americans, especially children, to the same toxic chemicals decried by the MAHA report.

Let's recall at this point how Trump, during his campaign last fall, urged the oil industry to give his campaign "a billion dollars" to ensure his victory — so that he could provide policy favors and pliant officials like the execrable Zeldin.

Among the glaring ironies, as noted in Scientific American, is that Kennedy himself suffered a bout of mercury poisoning years ago from contaminated canned tuna. Eight years ago, when he was still working as an environmental lawyer, he railed against the first Trump administration's attempt to roll back mercury regulations of coal-burning power plants. And even during his HHS confirmation hearings, he touted his record fighting polluters. "The same chemicals that kill fish make people sick," he warned last January.

Kennedy was right, but now he is silent about the ruinous policies pursued by Zeldin, who sits beside him on the MAHA Commission. He complains constantly about fluoride in state and local water supplies, but mercury is a far more potent menace to children's physical health and intellectual development. At its core, Make America Healthy Again is a deception — and it is Kennedy's hypocrisy that now endangers children's health.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism(St. Martin's Press, 2024).

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

At First HHS Press Conference, Kennedy Enrages Autism Families With Falsehoods

At First HHS Press Conference, Kennedy Enrages Autism Families With Falsehoods

Conducting his first press conference as secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. moved swiftly to demonstrate yet again why he is so unfit for that critical cabinet post.

In one of many egocentric abuses of his newfound power, Kennedy has directed his department’s resources away from vital research on cancer and Alzheimer’s, among other major diseases, initiating instead a massive effort to discover an environmental cause of autism – which reflects his own obsession more than sound science.

But leaving aside the gross mismanagement of HHS, the National institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration and the many other agencies whose capacity for good he is rapidly destroying, Kennedy went out of his way on Wednesday to stigmatize the autistic children he is supposed to be helping.

"These are kids who will never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date,” Kennedy intoned, gravely and inanely. “Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

This broad-brush smearing of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder was both damaging and grossly inaccurate. There is a reason why scientists and doctors use the word “spectrum” to describe what is a very broad category that ranges from those who require intensive care and assistance to those who are fully autonomous and indeed display extremely high levels of intellectual capacity and talent in many fields.

Perhaps Kennedy should have a word with his fellow Trump henchman Elon Musk. Americans have at least vaguely understood the wide variations in autism ever since the tech zillionaire revealed his own childhood diagnosis on various platforms, including a monologue on Saturday Night Live and a TED talk. For all his egregious faults and fascistic inclinations, Musk does appear able to toilet himself and to get a few dates. He may or may not be able to write a poem but produces an alarming number of deceptive “Xeets" on his social media site X.

As for Kennedy himself, there will be much more to say about his grimly incompetent and ruinous stewardship of the public health institutions that his family – and especially his late uncle Sen. Edward Kennedy – helped build into exemplars of American greatness.

For the moment, let’s note that contrary to his suggestion, millions of autistic human beings around the world and in America go to work every day. They contribute to society by creating value in myriad ways, the least of which is their payment of taxes. They go on dates, fall in love, nurture families, and some of them not only can hit a baseball but are top athletes, including an Olympic snowboarder and a Division One basketball player. (I happen to know an autistic young woman who was the star of her Little League softball team.)

While acknowledging that some autistic kids are burdened with the disabilities recited by Kennedy, let’s also note that the great majority of our autistic fellow Americans, unlike him, have never lapsed into heroin addiction for a decade or more; never peddled narcotics to fellow students; never serially betrayed their spouses with humiliating adulteries; never abused animals in public displays of weirdness; never injected themselves with overdoses of steroids; never profited from lethal disinformation about a pandemic; and never, ever blamed their own bad conduct on a hungry brain worm. He has prospered and risen the same way he avoided prison and got the medical care he needed, strictly by accident of birth.

The more we learn about Kennedy, who has veered further and further away from his once-illustrious career as an environmental advocate, the less there is to admire. Were his story not so sad, Bobby Junior would be a classic caricature -- the buffoonish nob whose inherited wealth and status catapulted him into a position for which he lacks essential knowledge, experience, and character.

Now he has showed us again how Trump cheated the nation by elevating him to this position of trust, at the expense of vulnerable children and their families.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. He is the author of several books, including The Raw Deal: How The Bush Republicans Plan To Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Brilliant Tariff Strategy Or Market Manipulation? We Report, You Decide

Brilliant Tariff Strategy Or Market Manipulation? We Report, You Decide

Does anyone believe that Donald Trump brilliantly planned the abrupt reversal of his “recriprocal” tariff barrage? Leaving aside the most zombified MAGA cultists, and those who are paid or otherwise induced to pretend to believe whatever the president says, the answer is no.

But that may not be the right question to ask in the wake of his vaunted policy’s overnight collapse.

The most obvious tell was dropped by Trump himself, who often says the quiet part very loud while his minions and publicists play deaf. When a reporter asked yesterday afternoon whether the scary drop in the market for US Treasury bonds had affected his tariff policies, he replied: “I was watching the bond market. It's very tricky. If you look at it now, it's beautiful. The bond market right now is beautiful. But I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.” People, he admitted, “were getting yippy," meaning terrified.

Indeed Trump was watching the bond market as prices spiked sharply upward, a signal that traders were losing faith in what has traditionally been viewed as the world’s safest investment. The danger that would represent for the US dollar, the nation’s economic stability, and even the world economy were far too profound to ignore – even for Trump.

Telltale signs of what actually happened in the White House are not difficult to see. Several days ago, as the chaotic tariff schemes driven by Trump and his wayward adviser Peter Navarro dominated the news, a story spread on cable news that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent -- whose advice they had reportedly ignored and whose personal credibility had cratered -- was “looking for an exit.” Whether that was accurate or not, the possible resignation of the treasury secretary threatened a ruinous blow to the administration.

On Wednesday, Bessent had been scheduled to speak behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, addressing the House Republican Study Committee – an appearance he canceled. He sent his deputy instead, according to Politico, because he was “called into a meeting with Trump.”

And soon enough, instead of quitting, Bessent went before the cameras, accompanied by the ever- belligerent White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, to announce the tariff turnabout. He dutifully recited the rehearsed claim that this shift had been “the president’s strategy all along,” presumably even while stooges like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were sent forth to proclaim that trade is “a national security issue” and no way would he drop the new import duties.

Among those who expressly reject the latest MAGA fairy tale is Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino, who told viewers yesterday that market conditions had dictated Trump’s actions, not “the art of the deal.” His analysis was direct and unsparing:

“I mean, let's be clear what happened, who capitulated here, and why? And, you know, I don't want to say this, because I am a patriot, I'm an American, but it is the White House who capitulated, based on everything I hear, and all of my sources. And the reason why is because of the bond market and what happened last night.

“You know, Bessent knows this better than anybody, when you have yields on the 10-year rising to five percent, stuff starts shutting down, when you have the lending market screwed up. By the way, who's dumping the bonds? Somebody asked him if it was China, right? It wasn't, it was Japan. While he was negotiating with Japan, Japan, according to my sources, were running major money management firms that are involved in the bond market, without giving up names. Japan was dumping bonds because they believed this was not a great place to do business. That forced their hands.”

When one of the MAGA bootlickers on Fox, longtime correspondent David Asman, claimed that Trump had calculated the pullback “right up to the edge,” Gasparino corrected him with blunt certainty.

“David, he had no choice, he had no choice. Unfortunately, no choice…the gun was at his head. What happened last night was very bad.”

The real question is whether Trump or anyone acting on his behalf – or others inside the White House privy to his decisions, such as Lutnick or Bessent – made a killing in the stock market by shorting stocks -- or going long when the market was way down. Despite the sharp rise in stock values late on April 9, the recovery on Wall Street hasn't come close to erasing the losses of recent weeks, except for those who might have known what Trump was about to do and acted illicitly to exploit that information.

But we can hardly expect the compliant Attorney General Pam Bondi to open an insider trading investigation of this crooked White House. She’s too busy abusing her powers to harass Trump’s critics.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. He is the author of several books, including The Raw Deal: How The Bush Republicans Plan To Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

In Trump's Hands, Absolute Power Brings Inevitable Catastrophe

In Trump's Hands, Absolute Power Brings Inevitable Catastrophe

Everyone should have known what was about to happen when Donald Trump announced huge global tariffs under the slogan "Make America Wealthy Again." Like "Make America Healthy Again," which accompanied the return of deadly measles, the cheery tagline for Trump's trade war foretold ruin — which has arrived at warp speed.

Within hours, the global markets wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth from the balance sheets of retirement accounts and pension plans as well as banks and corporations. What looms ahead is not the "boom" that Trump has predicted but rather a shrinking economy with both stagnating employment and rising prices. Which is precisely the opposite of what he promised voters last year.

Over the weekend, as markets continued to plunge both here and abroad, the president told reporters that tariffs are "a very beautiful thing" while observing that "sometimes you have to take medicine." Or inject a fatal dose of bleach into your veins.

To anyone who has observed Trump closely over the course of his career, this catastrophe was predictable as soon as he gained the unchecked sway he now wields in Washington. He is not a "stable genius" with superior genetic endowment, but a spoiled scion of middling intelligence at best. He is not a brilliant negotiator who can conclude the Ukraine war in a single day or bring the Chinese government to heel, but a failed businessman who wrecked his father's real estate company with bad deals and excessive debt.

Having escaped any accountability for the national destruction incurred during his first presidential term — from the mismanaged pandemic that cost a million lives to the violent coup attempt of January 6, 2021 — he has returned to the White House with even greater arrogance, courtesy of the Supreme Court. Secure in power, he is delivering an extremely painful lesson in the consequences of ignorance and incompetence run amok.

Those dismal qualities were instantly on display in every aspect of the tariff rollout, as neither the president nor his phalanx of flunkies could offer any plausible rationale of his actions beyond sloganeering.

Why is the United States seeking to punish its traditional allies in Europe? Why are we penalizing our best trading partners in Canada and Mexico? Why are we imposing trade barriers on tiny countries like Lesotho and remote islands uninhabited by human beings? (We may yet see how brilliantly Trump negotiates with penguins.) And how did Trump formulate the cardboard list of nations and tariffs he brandished as a prop at his "Liberation Day" announcement?

The White House could offer no coherent response to these puzzling questions, which drew contradictory answers from everyone around Trump, as well as the president himself, or no answers at all. That list resembles something composed on ChatGPT, like a cheating high schooler's homework.

The true purpose of tariffs, according to one of the president's blustering sons, is to assert a muscular dealmaking stance against every nation that supposedly bullied us in the past.

"I wouldn't want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump," wrote Eric Trump on X. "The first to negotiate will win — the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life..."

What Eric actually has seen over his entire life is Daddy negotiating ignominious bankruptcy deals with bankers, but never mind. At roughly the same moment that he and others uttered those tough reassurances, the White House press secretary declared that "this is not a negotiation" because the tariffs "are part of a national emergency response" to nations that have harmed American workers for decades. Trump himself shows no sign of preparing to negotiate anything.

The "national emergency" lie is what undergirds Trump's legal authority, for he would otherwise need Congress to approve the tariff program. But before rubberstamping this madness, congressional leaders might insist that he explain its ultimate purpose, which only raises another set of baffling contradictions.

You see, sometimes Trump suggests that his aim is to collect trillions of dollars in revenue from imports, supposedly enough money to replace the income tax. Simple math proves that to be impossible — and unlike the income tax, whose impact is progressive, tariffs impose a far greater burden on middle-class and poor families.

At other times, he claims his objective is to rapidly expand domestic production by replacing goods from abroad. That too is futile, because many important crops can't be grown in sufficient quantity in the United States because our industries rely on global supply chains, and because factories take years to build. If we somehow could substitute U.S. products for all our imports, the tariffs wouldn't raise any revenue at all.

Meanwhile, Trump is torching another of his favorite slogans. As investor Steve Rattner explained on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the current projections show our markets plunging faster and our gross domestic product shrinking more than in other developed countries.

So much for "America First."

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. He is the author of several books, including The Raw Deal: How The Bush Republicans Plan To Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators Syndicate.

Why The Trump War Plans Leak Is So Much Worse Than What Hillary Did

Why The Trump War Plans Leak Is So Much Worse Than What Hillary Did

Even in a political environment marked by daily scandal and outrage, the revelation of a reckless and stupid security breach by Trump’s top cabinet members exploded yesterday. The potentially catastrophic leak of a top-secret military operation showed why President Trump’s cabinet choices were so dangerous – as many seasoned experts warned when he named them. Only by sheer luck was a disaster avoided.

It was a simple but stunning story: The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, as reported by him and his staff, had been included by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz in a supposedly secret mid-March group text chat -- along with Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and more than a dozen other high-ranking officials. A Pentagon spokesman confirmed that the chat, convened on the encrypted app Signal, was authentic.

The chat messages conveyed highly sensitive military and diplomatic information, including “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing” that occurred two hours after he received a message on March 15.

Hegseth’s feeble attempt to deny that any “war plans” had been disclosed can only be added to the long roster of lies from him and other administration officials. A former Fox News personality and the target of numerous warnings against his arrogance, drunkenness, and inexperience before his confirmation, the defense secretary ironically assured the group chat that “We are currently clean on OPSEC" -- the military acronym for operational security.

“Under the previous administration, we looked like fools,” Hegseth recently boasted. “Not anymore.” Hegseth, Waltz, and the rest of the participants in those fateful discussions should soon become subjects of a national security investigation, during which they will presumably be wired up to polygraph machines, just as Hegseth has sternly prescribed for all suspected Pentagon leakers.

As soon as she read the news, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took to social media. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” quipped the irrepressible Democrat, daring her critics to bring up the old matter of “her emails” and the alleged scandal that probably cost her the presidency in 2016.

Despite Republican bleats of indignation, and angry posts urging her to “sit down” or worse, it is instructive to contrast what Hegseth and company did with Clinton’s own exhaustively investigated actions.

As reported in this space three years ago – and confirmed in a subsequent investigation by Washington Post reporter and fact-checker Glenn Kessler – Clinton actually disclosed no classified information in those fabled emails or her home server. Her innocence was confirmed not only by the Justice Department and the FBI (under Republican James Comey, who sank her campaign with his own unethical conduct), but in two subsequent State Department probes during the first Trump administration.

Among the Clinton emails that Comey used to tar her before the election, none disclosed national security information or were classified before she sent them. A typical example was a message from an aide, reminding her to send a condolence note to the president of Malawi.

Such innocuous and outdated information contrasts sharply with the real-time disclosure of a bombing mission which, if exposed, could jeopardize its success and the lives of the pilots and other military and intelligence personnel.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, described the Signal chat as “one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”

Joining many other Democrats and some dismayed Republicans, as well as a platoon of retired military and defense experts, Reed said, “Military operations need to be handled with utmost discretion, using approved, secure lines of communication, because American lives are on the line. The carelessness shown by President Trump’s Cabinet is stunning and dangerous.”

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), an Army veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, offered an even more pithy reaction. “If House Republicans won’t hold a hearing on how this happened IMMEDIATELY, I’ll do it my damn self,” he wrote on X. “Only one word for this: FUBAR,” a military acronym that means “fucked up beyond all recognition.”

Which aptly expresses the condition of American national security under Donald Trump and his incompetent and highly suspect minions.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. He is the author of several books, including The Raw Deal: How The Bush Republicans Plan To Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Waste, Fraud And Abuse In Musk's Department Of Gross Errors

Waste, Fraud And Abuse In Musk's Department Of Gross Errors

A deplorable level of waste, abuse and fraud persists in the federal government, as well as in local and state governments run by both parties and in major corporations, too. At the moment, however, America's most prolific source of fraud and waste appears to be the ironically named Department of Government Efficiency.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, of course. When Donald Trump returned to the presidency, he vowed — as he had done many times before — to crack down on all the loafers, crooks and spendthrifts on the government payroll. He would balance the budget, cut taxes, and protect Social Security and Medicare. With a flourish he appointed the obscenely rich Elon Musk, who needs no further introduction, to lead DOGE and its cost-cutting crusade.

Having promised initially to cut $2 trillion — or nearly a third of what the United States government spends annually — Musk quickly backed away from that inflated target. The host of engineers, lawyers and right-wing political hacks that he imposed on federal agencies under the aegis of DOGE soon alarmed everyone by demanding access to confidential data and classified information, at great jeopardy to national and personal security.

Leaving aside the dangers posed by DOGE's bumbling invasion, the sum total of its cost-cutting campaign falls far short of the extravagant claims promoted by Musk and Trump. Over the weekend, the DOGE list of budget-slashing achievements was revised sharply downward for the second time in less than a week.

Nearly every day, the billionaire and his aides have cited millions and even billions allegedly recovered by eliminating federal programs, agencies, services and research, often with seemingly ludicrous examples of wasteful spending. Trump echoed many of them in his State of the Union speech, including an alleged study of "transgender mice." That was one of many mistakes served up by Trump and Musk — in that instance, the valuable research they were mocking involved "transgenic" mice, used to assess cancer and chronic illness treatments.

Much of what DOGE has served up so far is misinformation and disinformation of equally dismal quality. Its name should be changed to the Department of Gross Errors. Debunking the howlers tossed out by Musk's arrogant yet plainly incompetent crew is now a regular beat for many news outlets, as the billions in supposed savings routinely shrink by factors of a thousand or more — to an infinitesimal fraction of what the grandiose Musk has asserted.

ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative reporting outlet, found that the cuts imposed on the IRS by DOGE are likely to cost the United States billions of dollars over the coming years. As every tax expert knows, the salaries of the auditors and experts dismissed by the DOGE geniuses are earned back many times over as they claw back taxes owed by wealthy miscreants. Firing these experienced auditors means squandering an investment that would have paid huge dividends for decades. Musk may not like what IRS auditors do — which billionaire does? — but that saves money for people like him, not the honest taxpayers.

And according to a front-page analysis published by the Wall Street Journal — an impeccably right-wing newspaper owned by Fox News boss Rupert Murdoch — DOGE's "wall of receipts" doesn't quite add up either. Musk has boasted about his outfit cutting $55 billion in waste so far, but the canceled contracts posted on its website only came to $9 billion. And the Journal's reporting shows that at least half of those cancellations saved no money at all — which means the real cuts represent less than 10 percent of the advertised amount.

On March 3, the New York Times confirmed confirmed that DOGE's computer geniuses don't know how to do high-school math: "From its start, the list has been full of errors: claims that confused billions with millions, triple-counted the same cancellation, or claimed credit for contracts that had ended years or even decades before."

Shall we call that "fraud," or is it qualify as "abuse"? Considering the time and money spent on DOGE, including its pointless distraction of federal employees who do real work with threats and demands that they draw up lists of their achievements, it is certainly an enormous waste.

Meanwhile, Musk's minions keep busy spreading faked figures about one federal agency after another, as does their billionaire boss.

Evidently, they all harbor deep hostility toward the nation's most popular government program, Social Security — which is why they have accused the Social Security Administration of paying out billions of dollars to people who have been dead for hundreds of years. Trump made a fool of himself with his dramatic repetition of that obviously false indictment before Congress, only to have Musk "apologize" and promise to do better.

But he assuredly will not do better, because his true purpose is not to "reform" the government or conserve its assets. Musk and Trump are waging ideological warfare against the idea and practice of democratic government that is of, by and for the people. They are creating an autocratic administration that extends control by would-be tyrants — and, to judge from the Kremlin's admiring reviews, by tyrants who are already in power.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. He is the author of several books, including The Raw Deal: How The Bush Republicans Plan To Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


State Of The Big Lie: Why Trump Repeated Musk's Myth About Social Security

State Of The Big Lie: Why Trump Repeated Musk's Myth About Social Security

Headlining the long, droning, and absurdly false address spouted by Donald Trump before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was a litany of fantasy aimed at the Social Security system. A perennial target for Republicans since its creation, the nation’s most popular and effective government program has drawn malign attention from Elon Musk, world’s richest right-winger and the president’s designated hit man.

It was Musk who provided and inspired Trump with his latest fraudulent indictment of fraud – in this instance, the already-debunked claim that millions of Americans are still receiving Social Security payments long after death. Following a recitation of silly (and, knowing Musk, not necessarily accurate) federal spending items supposedly revealed by the billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency, Trump first professed his usual warm concern for those who depend on those monthly checks.

“We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on.

“Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don’t know any of them. I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now….” He continued until, with a flourish, he cited “1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229. One person between the age of 240 and 249 — and one person is listed at 360 years of age. More than 100 years — more than 100 years older than our country. But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty.”

The “discovery” of those moldering fraudsters appears to derive from a very basic and embarrassing error by Musk and his DOGEbags – namely their inability to correctly interpret the computer printouts of Social Security Administration records. AsWired magazine magazine and other outlets pointed out a few weeks ago, when Musk first promoted this enormous scandal, those anomalous entries actually represent “a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a a 60 year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from other U.S. government programs.”

Out of routine use for decades, COBOL is likely unfamiliar to Musk and his gang of adolescent engineers. It has a strange dating reference system that commonly uses a reference point of May 20, 1875 -- which can produce some strange and suspicious results for anyone who doesn’t understand the data they’re perusing.

But the “shock” talking points Trump so dramatically enumerated were disproved and debunked weeks ago. Yet he nevertheless featured them in his speech, plainly aiming to undermine confidence in the system that he has promised to protect on many occasions over the past ten years.

Trump didn’t disparage Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” the cliché slur that Musk and so many other far-right critics use when denouncing the program. But the president has allowed his billionaire wingman to begin dismantling it, by firing thousands of its staff, from the top down, which experts say will soon result in denials and delays of benefits.

Musk has seized on his bogus investigation of Social Security payments to declare that the system is insolvent, as Republicans invariably do when they are preparing to slash at its provisions. And it is true that unless Congress acts, payments going out will exceed revenue from Social Security taxes by 2035 – and by law, benefits then will have to be cut.

But what neither Musk nor Trump ever mention is the obvious and equitable solution to this looming crisis. They never mention that solution because Republicans so strongly prefer to resolve the problem on the backs of the elderly and disabled, so many of whom languished in poverty until Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the program during the New Deal.

Few economists have studied Social Security with as much rigor or dedication as Stephanie Kelton, who recently published a powerful response to Musk in DCReport, the excellent publication edited by Trump biographer and critic David Cay Johnston. In its headline and text, Kelton explains why Musk himself, as a symbol of grotesque inequality, represents the real reason that Social Security is “running out of money.”

As national income has increasingly skewed to the top of the scale, less and less has been subject to the Social Security tax – which in 2024 exempted all income above $168,500! In other words, the astronomical levels of annual income enjoyed by Musk himself, Trump, and all their billionaire pals, go untaxed by the system. And they’d like to keep it that way forever.

But we have known for more than 20 years – according to one commission study after another – that the simplest and fairest way to eliminate the Social Security deficit for all time is to raise or eliminate the cap on taxable income. Conservatives would much rather reduce or eliminate benefits, even though their MAGA supporters would suffer terribly. The real fraud isn’t Social Security, but the promise by Trump and his Republican allies to protect those families.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. He is the author of several books, including The Raw Deal: How The Bush Republicans Plan To Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Trump's Ukraine Betrayal Puts Him First -- And America Last

Trump's Ukraine Betrayal Puts Him First -- And America Last

When Donald Trump and JD Vance roughed up Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, their back-alley bullying was ... unpresidential, to put it politely. Tony Soprano would have displayed more diplomatic finesse than Trump, and the mobster's henchmen always had more dignity than Vance.

To vilify an American ally so publicly while spewing Russian propaganda points was a stunningly coarse betrayal.

But make no mistake in understanding what lies behind that contemptible episode, which represents the abandonment of American values and commitments under the banner of "America First." At this moment of national peril, let's not forget where the Trump gang found their foreign-policy slogan.

An organization purporting to represent the national interests of this country in the years before the Second World War, "America First" in fact served as a front for a hostile foreign power that sought to impose an authoritarian order on Europe and the world, with tactics designed to divide and deceive the American people.

In many ways, "America First" resembled the MAGA movement that undermines democratic institutions at home and promotes autocratic regimes abroad. And just as "America First" was subsidized and sometimes directed by agents of Hitler's Germany, MAGA now appears to be the Western front for Russia's ongoing subversion of democracies around the world.

Does that mean Trump himself has adopted the authoritarian outlook of the Kremlin's pet political philosophers? He doesn't seem capable of geopolitical thought beyond the most superficial. But it doesn't have to be complicated to work for Trump. Russia constantly offers big inducements to him, such as the secret election assistance its agents flashed at his campaign in 2016 (an invitation eagerly embraced by Donald Trump Jr. and later by campaign manager Paul Manafort).

Whatever his motive, Trump's subservience to Vladimir Putin is now beyond dispute, as he openly lies about the Russian dictator's invasion of Ukraine, while threatening and undermining Zelensky. He may well believe that a "peace deal" would bring his long-coveted plans for Trump Tower Moscow to fruition, not to mention all the other corrupt emoluments that Putin's oligarchs could lay before him. (Russians have already "invested" in his Truth Social money pit and must be snapping up pricey Don and Melania cryptocurrency meme coins by the thousand.)

And let's not forget the perpetually insecure Trump's insatiable need for flattery. In his sordid way, he has repeatedly nominated himself for the Nobel Peace Prize, proclaiming on many occasions that he "deserves" the Norwegian honor more than others who received it, and obliging his sycophants to utter the same nonsense. Watching the prize slip away as Zelensky insisted on security guarantees surely frustrated him — and led to that juvenile outburst in the Oval Office.

His relentless pursuit of financial and personal gain doesn't serve American interests in any way. Trump's campaign to wreck NATO and alienate our military allies in Europe and Canada only renders us less secure in an extremely dangerous world. Those reliable allies had our back after 9/11, the only instance when NATO's mutual defense pact has ever been activated. Trump and his idiot advisers have yet to explain how they will replace the defense and intelligence assets that help to protect us and our allies together, not only in NATO but across the Pacific as well.

Should Trump withdraw military and intelligence support from Kiev, as he menacingly warned Zelenskyy he would, he will shift the massive power of the United States into a de facto alliance with our longtime adversaries — not only Russia, whose media and government organs constantly declare their anti-American hostility, but China and North Korea, both of which have joined the Kremlin's assault on Ukraine.

It will be fascinating to hear how Trump's Republican supporters in Congress, who often complain about the growing military and economic power of China, try to justify what their dear leader is doing in Europe. Whatever excuses they may present, we already know that they know that he is putting himself first — and America last.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

In White House Opposition To Congestion Toll, A Glaring Conflict Of Interest

In White House Opposition To Congestion Toll, A Glaring Conflict Of Interest

Congestion pricing in New York City – the program that tolls cars entering Manhattan’s central business district to raise money for mass transit – appears already to be an enormous success. During its first month the plan has raised nearly $50 million for the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which operates the system. The city’s nightmarish gridlock has begun to come untangled, with increased traffic speeds, far fewer automobile accidents, and reduced commuting times for those who continue to drive.

So why is the Trump administration hellbent on killing the program? After Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy informed New York Gov. Kathy Hochul that his department had withdrawn its approval for the plan, the president himself issued a gloating victory proclamation on his social media app.

"CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"

While the program is not quite dead – and continues to operate while both the MTA and the DOT prepare for a court battle – there can be little doubt about Trump’s furious opposition, which appears to be rooted in the same anti-environmental animus as his hatred of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles, and his worship of coal and oil.

To enforce his edict against congestion pricing, a plan that has worked successfully in cities around the world for more than two decades, Trump has dispatched Alina Habba, his former personal defense attorney who now serves as a counselor to the president. Habba has appeared frequently on right-wing media to trash the program. She also showed up at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, where she said:

“Congestion pricing in New York is ruining tourism, it’s stopping people that work there from driving to work, their subways are not safe. These people [referring to New York political leaders like Gov. Kathy Hochul] are caring more about their next election, they’re caring more about their face on TV than they do the people they’re supposed to represent, the constituents that sent them to do the work…Unfortunately, they’ve taken us to court. We’ve seen it, we’ve won, we always win and keep winning…”

As always, Habba’s MAGA rhetoric was heavy with falsehood and bluster. She didn’t explain why the White House has cast aside the conservative values of home rule and states’ rights to intervene in local affairs.

Far from ruining tourism, congestion pricing seems to have increased the number of visitors and the amount of revenue since the program took effect. (It’s hard to spend money when you’re waiting for hours in a car, waiting to cross into Manhattan by bridge or tunnel.) Broadway ticket sales – a reliable measure of the tourist sector’s prosperity – were much higher this past January than a year ago.

The Broadway League, a trade group for the theatre industry, reported over $32 million in sales for the week ending January 12 this year, eight days after congestion pricing took effect – an increase of nearly $5 million over the same week last year. The following week, ending January 19, saw well over $33 million in sales, up from about $23 million during the same week in 2024. And during the last week of January, ticket sales were still up almost exactly $5 million over last year. Someone might say those are HUGE numbers – and certainly no sign of “ruined tourism.”

Although many more people have left cars at home, there’s no sign that New Yorkers (or commuters from New Jersey) have stopped going to work. Subway crime, contrary to Habba’s claims, is lower than it was a year ago and much lower than before the pandemic. Chances of becoming a crime victim, especially of homicide, are far lower in the subway than above ground.

A recent Morning Consult poll showed strong majorities in favor of the new system among both city and suburban voters, as well as broad agreement among commuters that it is working as advertised. They want the federal government to leave it alone.

The dispute between Trump and Hochul will ultimately be decided in federal court, as Habba indicated. But her assertion that “we always win” is comical. Anyone familiar with her own dismal record as Trump’s attorney – replete with embarrassing errors, dismissals, fines and yes, losses to E. Jean Harris and the New York Times, among others – will regard her boast with due skepticism.

Yet there is something to be learned from Habba’s passionate public attack on congestion pricing – namely that in this Trump White House, as legal experts have warned, there are again no ethical boundaries. She has a direct financial interest in canceling the Manhattan tolls that goes well beyond her status as a New Jersey resident.

Habba’s husband Gregg Reuben is chief executive of Centerpark, a parking garage company that owns 28 garages in New York City, most of which are in Manhattan’s congestion pricing zone, according to Streetsblog. Reuben has a long career in parking that dates back to 1991. He is former vice president of ABM Industries, one of the largest parking management companies in the United States. Habba formerly served as Centerpark’s general counsel -- and doesn’t appear to have fully relinquished that commitment in her new position.

Their family wealth is sure to be affected by congestion pricing, which has reduced the number of cars entering that zone so far by over a million every month. There are and will be far fewer customers (suckers?) for her husband’s exorbitantly priced spaces: Centerpark charges $45 per day or more, a far more daunting deterrent to tourism than the $9 congestion toll.

If Habba is worried about the entertainment and restaurant industries, maybe she should urge him to drop those absurd prices.

And maybe the next time she pops up on television to whine about the congestion toll, someone should ask her about her husband’s business – which she somehow never remembers to mention. As John Kaehny, a nonpartisan ethics expert in Albany, told Streetsblog, “It’s an absolute and complete conflict of interest. If she was a New York official, we’d be calling on the Conflict of Interest Board to investigate.”

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

There's One Word To Describe What Trump Is Doing

There's One Word To Describe What Trump Is Doing

As Americans struggle to grasp President Donald Trump's reversal of American foreign policy, which abruptly overturned decades of cooperation with other democracies to contain authoritarian aggression, many observers have faltered.

Describing what Trump has done strains the usual vocabulary of analysts, who are still not fully prepared to confront this administration's insidious purposes

Yet there is a word familiar from Trump's first term that now defines precisely what he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are up to. That word is "collusion."

For most of the past decade, nothing provoked more anger in Trump and his associate than that word, which evoked a sinister and secretive connection dating back to his first presidential campaign or in some versions much earlier. Rumors circulated widely about his alleged status as a longtime asset of Russian security services, beginning in the Soviet era, or his supposed vulnerability to gamy blackmail by those same agencies, or his desire, eventually well documented, to build a "Trump Tower" in Moscow.

And during that 2016 campaign, copious evidence emerged that not only had the Kremlin wanted Trump to defeat its nemesis Hillary Clinton, but its leadership had enacted a whole series of "active measures" to ensure that result.

Under Putin's direct orders, Russian agencies pursued a broad strategy of online hacking and disinformation. Based in Putin's hometown of Saint Petersburg, the Internet Research Agency launched a barrage of social media designed to promote Trump and denigrate Clinton, influencing millions of Americans during the election cycle with fabricated stories. Hackers working for Russian military intelligence invaded the databases of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, releasing reams of stolen files and emails through WikiLeaks and other outlets to create embarrassment and distraction.

It could not have been more obvious that the Trump campaign welcomed and encouraged Putin's election interference. Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and numerous other campaign aides met or contacted the Russians on as many as 200 occasions to pursue their shared objective. Even the sycophantic campaign chair Steve Bannon blurted that this pattern of behavior struck him as "treasonous."

Whether all this activity amounted to treason or not, the FBI and congressional investigating committees found enough evidence of espionage and other crimes to justify the appointment in May 2017 of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate "Russiagate."

In addition to firing former FBI Director James Comey, Trump did everything in his power to thwart the Mueller probe, including the abuse of his pardon power to silence Manafort, former adviser Roger Stone and others. As Mueller reported in 2019, Trump's manipulations helped forestall indictments charging conspiracy between the Trump campaign and its friends from Russia, although Mueller indicted three Russian organizations and 26 individual Russians.

The inability to charge Trump or his associates for conspiring with the Russians to influence the election in no way mitigated Mueller's finding that the Trump campaign had welcomed the Kremlin efforts and expected to benefit from them — a finding corroborated by the Republican-led Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's five-volume report on the same matter, released in July 2019.

Nevertheless, Trump and his minions in the Republican propaganda machine obscured all the damning details to proclaim full exoneration — and Trump himself constantly repeated the phrase "no collusion," usually in all capital letters and punctuated as an exclamation, to insist that "Russia, Russia, Russia" was nothing more than "a hoax." Ever since then, he and his apologists have frequently and ludicrously declared that he was in fact history's toughest negotiator with the Kremlin, without a blush.

But now, behind the thin scrim of "peacemaking" in Ukraine, we see the noxious flowering of collusion in its fullest form.

From the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House, the direction of U.S. policy is unmistakable: to deprive the Ukrainians of sovereignty and freedom while bringing them under the Russian heel as quickly as possible. Among those advancing Russia's interests is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who boobishly capitulated in advance of the so-called negotiations.

Hegseth was surpassed only by Trump himself, who consulted secretly with his pal Putin while excluding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from the process, then insulted and threatened the Ukraine leader publicly.

This nefarious initiative has expanded in many directions, from Vice President JD Vance's threats against our European allies and his promotion of neo-Nazism in the German election to Elon Musk's use of his Starlink satellite system as an instrument of blackmail against Ukraine. Where it will go is terrifying to contemplate, but we can at least give it an accurate name.

It is nothing less than collusion between an American president and a hostile foreign dictator — and it is the most brazen betrayal in our history.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Elon Musk

'Maximum Transparency': Musk Demands IRS Data, But His Finances Still Secret

Elon Musk, required by federal law to file financial disclosures as he rampages across government, doesn't want anybody else looking at this tax returns. Neither does Donald Trump, the first president or presidential candidate in decades who refused to reveal his tax returns.

But they don't feel the same way about your tax returns, or mine, or the private financial and banking information of hundreds of millions of other Americans. The billionaire and his president are now demanding that the Internal Revenue Service provide access to its highly confidential data systems for Musk's unvetted aides in the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, according to reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times. The DOGE bros supposedly require this unprecedented capacity to invade Americans' privacy in order to curb IRS "waste."

Both newspapers also report that the specific DOGE employee assigned to the IRS is an engineer named Gavin Kliger, who recently gained a measure of infamy when a Reuters article revealed his social media posts endorsing racist and antisemite Nick Fuentes and misogynist and accused rapist Andrew Tate. His Substack account is full of rants about "bureaucracy," COVID-19 restrictions and his heroic decision to join DOGE to "fix" the government. (When the media first revealed his identity as a DOGE employee, Kliger immediately attempted to raise his Substack's subscription price to $1000.)

Naturally IRS officials and independent experts have expressed profound alarm at the notion that Kliger, his boss Musk and others of their ilk would have free-ranging access to innocent citizens' IRS accounts and all the data stored in them -- which is supposed to be kept safe from such malign actors. Those same experts fear that the personal data of millions of Americans may have been compromised already by DOGE employees who gained access to Treasury Department systems that disburse federal funds.

Nina Olson, who served as the IRS internal consumer watchdog for 18 years, offered this warning to the Post: “The information that the IRS has is incredibly personal. Someone with access to it could use it and make it public in a way, or do something with it, or share it with someone else who shares it with someone else, and your rights get violated."

The reckless Musk has already demonstrated on X, the social media platform he owns and controls, that he will misuse personal information for his own vindictive purposes. Last fall, he identified an employee of the US International Development Finance Corporation who works on climate issues, naming her and questioning whether she deserved a federal job. “So many fake jobs,” he wrote, insulting her and provoking an avalanche of abuse after 33 million views. In January, as wildfires raged in Los Angeles, Musk blamed minority and female firefighters for the failure to stop them, posting their names and photographs.

There was no law requiring Trump to disclose his taxes, although some returns were revealed against his will (and showed how he escaped paying his share). At the moment, Musk and the Trump White House are relying on an apparent loophole in federal ethics law that may exempt a "special government employee" like him from its disclosure requirements.

If so, that loophole needs to be closed. Public interest groups and state attorneys general should file litigation to force Musk -- who constantly barks about "maximum transparency" in government -- to disgorge his data. Whatever is good for the ordinary taxpayer should be good for the tax-dodging billionaires too.

Vance In Munich: Like A German Urging Americans To Embrace The Klan

Vance In Munich: Like A German Urging Americans To Embrace The Klan

Few Americans would welcome an elected leader from Germany or France who gave a speech on our soil, urging politicians here to stop shunning the Ku Klux Klan. Yet that isn't so far from the message delivered to European officials by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference on February 14 — which understandably provoked outrage among our allies, just as Vance and his boss, President Donald Trump, must have intended.

Instead of addressing Europe's security concerns, such as Trump's impending abandonment of Ukraine to Russian aggression, Vance lectured his audience on domestic issues such as "free speech," immigration, and the rejection of ultra-right extremism.

Nobody familiar with Vance, a man known for spreading false stories about migrants eating pets in his home state, could have been surprised to learn that he uttered numerous falsehoods in Munich. Warning against infringements on religious speech, for instance, he claimed that Scotland had intimidated its citizens from privately praying in their own homes. Scottish officials instantly rebutted that absurd lie, which referred to a carefully drafted law creating small "buffer zones" for protesters at abortion clinics.

But the thrust of Vance's remarks represented a brazen attempt to interfere in the German national elections that will occur next week, signaling Trump administration support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (or AfD) party.

"Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters," Vance intoned. "There's no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don't." Although he didn't mention the AfD by name, his inference couldn't have been clearer. Every mainstream political party in Germany has quarantined that party's antisemites and Nazi apologists behind a political firewall for decades, symbolizing their nation's commitment to prevent any resurgence of fascism before it can occur.

And immediately after his appearance, greeted with stony silence from the Munich conference delegates, Vance met with AfD leader Alice Weidel. A banker who has defended her party's worst racists and bigots, while pretending that the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was "a communist," Weidel praised Vance's speech as "excellent."

The comparison between the KKK and the AfD is all too appropriate, and not only because the German party echoes the racist rhetoric of thugs in white hoods. Back when Nazi spies in this country spent millions to subvert the United States during the years before World War II, their "German American Bund" forged a firm alliance with the Klan. It was a time when many American politicians, especially in the South, openly described the KKK as a legitimate expression of "the voice of the people." No doubt Vance would have been among them.

Today, the AfD members elected to public office in Germany don't hesitate to exploit anti-immigrant hatred and racial bigotry against both Muslims and Jews. No less an authority than the U.S. State Department — during the first Trump administration — repeatedly reprimanded the vile racism of AfD figures in its annual reports on human rights in Germany.

"While senior [German] government leaders continued to condemn anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment," the State Department noted in 2018, "some members of the federal parliament and state assemblies from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party again made anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim statements."

So typical were the poisonous outbursts from AfD officials that they drew the attention of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, which has described the party as a "radicalized" entity "whose leaders have made antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic" statements.

European leaders offended by Vance reiterated their determination to defend their continent against totalitarians of all varieties — as did Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose rebuke reminded everyone why most Germans will have nothing to do with the AfD. "Never again fascism, never again racism, never again aggressive war," he said. "That is why an overwhelming majority in our country opposes anyone who glorifies or justifies criminal National Socialism."

Glorifying Nazism doesn't seem to trouble Vance, Trump, or their designated hitman Elon Musk, who has publicly endorsed an AfD victory as "the only hope for Germany." But Vance's interference in German politics is more than a token of the Trump administration's fascist inclinations, as if any more were needed.

Like Trump's urge to back Russian aggression against Ukraine in his "peace" initiative, the White House embrace of German fascists again shows the American president promoting the interests of a foreign power hostile to the United States and the West. What Vance said and did enraged our longtime allies in Europe, but his words aligned perfectly with Russian President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin — whose regime's assistance to German fascism defiles the sacrifice of all the Russians and Americans who died to defeat Hitler.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.


Why Would A 'Christian' Destroy The World's Largest Relief Agency?

Why Would A 'Christian' Destroy The World's Largest Relief Agency?

For Christians here and across the world, the ongoing confrontation over the fate of USAID dramatically illustrates the moral degeneration of the politicians who most fervently profess their piety. While Donald Trump wraps himself in the mantle of the Almighty, his assault on the world’s largest relief agency is a modern passion play, with scheming malefactors of great wealth sadistically persecuting sincere people of faith who seek to serve the poor.

Not everyone who works for USAID, a government agency that employs hundreds of private contractors, is motivated by charity or religious conviction. While many are nonprofits, others are profitable companies. But the agency’s single largest contractor is Catholic Relief Services, which has provided billions of dollars in assistance to impoverished communities on every continent.

Nearly every denomination is represented among the recipients of USAID funding, including major evangelical and conservative organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse, the global charity operated by Franklin Graham -- who happens to be among Donald Trump’s most sycophantic admirers. Graham's reputation as a "humanitarian" has surely benefited from his organization's association with US relief efforts, not to mention $90 million in taxpayer support. And he knows that Musk and Trump are lying about USAID.

As Christianity Today reported on February 4:

Most of USAID’s budget goes to grants for specific development projects, including at Samaritan’s Purse, World Vision, World Relief, Catholic Relief Services, and many other faith-based groups. It supports local Christian health clinics in Malawi and groups providing orphan care.

In Kenya, PCEA Chogoria Hospital, a historic mission hospital now run by Kenyan churches, provides comprehensive health care to HIV patients through support from USAID. On January 24 the hospital received a stop-work order for that care and has had no indication of a return of funding despite [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio’s promises that life-saving HIV care could continue. The hospital has 3,162 HIV patients in that USAID-funded program, and 42 staff members caring for those patients…

“It is exceptionally painful to watch all this,” said Kent Hill, a former top official at USAID who also worked at World Vision and in Christian higher education as the president of Eastern Nazarene College. If USAID has specific problems, shutting the whole agency down instead of addressing the problems is a “tremendous overreaction” and “inhumane,” he said.

“Few American investments, if any, bring such a remarkable return,” Hill said. “To talk about shutting USAID down is callous and represents a tremendous a lapse in judgment which ought to call forth bipartisan condemnation.”

What do Rev. Graham and other evangelical leaders on the right think when they hear Elon Musk accuse USAID of corruption, with zero evidence, and denounce it as a “criminal” organization that must “die"?” The foreign-born billionaire boasted about putting the agency “in the wood chipper,” as if the deprivation and suffering that would ensue among the ill and hungry is a funny fratboy joke.

What seems truly amusing, by contrast, is the notion of Donald Trump as a follower of Christ, specially anointed by the Lord. From the beginning of his political career, the former casino owner has cultivated the tawdriest characters in Christianity, from the pants-dropping Jerry Falwell Jr. to TV evangelists Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, and other exponents the “prosperity gospel.” Like Trump, these are individuals whose unbridled avarice leaves little space for good works of any kind. It isn't hard to imagine them mocking the actual Christians who minister to the poor instead of swindling them.

Perhaps to promote sales of Trump-branded Bibles, he played the devout Christian at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 6. “Well, we wanna bring religion back stronger, bigger, better than ever before. It’s very important,” the president declared. “We have to have religion and it suffered greatly over the last few years, but it’s coming back.”

As for Musk, once lionized by libertarians for his atheism, the world’s richest man has taken to proclaiming his belief in “the teachings of Jesus Christ,” notably to “love thy neighbor.” In a late 2022 tweet, he wrote: "Jesus taught love, kindness and forgiveness. I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak and foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom." This alleged attraction to Christian principles accompanied Musk’s turn toward the far right, with its hostility toward racial minorities, immigrants, and all of the destitute and oppressed.

In short, Musk now qualifies as that most MAGA brand of Christian -- a hypocrite who exploits religion to amplify his own power and wealth, with a heavenly license to bully the weak. Somehow ruining the lives of people who depend on USAID for their very sustenance seems much more like the devil’s work.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

If You Get Ebola, Don't Forget To Thank Donald Trump

If You Get Ebola, Don't Forget To Thank Donald Trump

The last time Americans faced the possible spread of Ebola to U.S. territory, in 2014, Donald Trump irresponsibly stoked public fears and barked at Barack Obama while doing nothing useful to protect us. Now the same deadly virus has showed up in the crowded capital of Uganda — where a nurse has died — and is threatening to spread further, which means it could eventually arrive here.

And this time Trump has done something far worse, mindlessly ripping down the shield that has defended us from Ebola and similar menaces. If and when the hemorrhagic virus arrives here to kill Americans, he won't be able to point an accusing finger at Obama or anyone else.

Last August marked the 10th anniversary of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia that the Obama administration stopped through the work of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overseen by White House officials, all working in cooperation with other countries and the World Health Organization.

It was a complex undertaking: Led by Ron Klain, who later became Joe Biden's chief of staff, veteran officials mounted what's known as a "whole of government" effort to confine the outbreak in West Africa and bolster the local response with advanced medicine, protective gear, burial teams and experienced clinicians.

The result they achieved was an enormous success that saved many lives and enhanced American prestige abroad. Hundreds of idiotic carping tweets from Trump, then just a celebrity conspiracy monger, were an ignoble footnote.

Flash forward to our current dark moment, when the Trump administration is abruptly eviscerating all kinds of vital government functions — including our once-unparalleled capacity to suppress a hazard like Ebola before it seriously imperiled our citizens.

Almost as soon as he returned to the Oval Office, the president misused his power to cripple all the agencies whose personnel and expertise are most needed at this moment to guard against the return of Ebola. On his orders, the United States withdrew from the WHO, while his minions took down USAID websites and shut down most CDC functions.

Mark Leon Goldberg, a journalist who superbly covers international organizations and America's "soft power" diplomacy, explained how the system is supposed to work in his Global Dispatches column on Substack:

"Under normal circumstances, there would be no need to panic. Since the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, local health officials in Africa and the international community have become skilled at containing outbreaks before they spread out of control. There have been at least eight separate outbreaks in the region, but all have been contained. None spread internationally, least of all to the United States.

"At the center of these efforts to stop the international spread of Ebola are the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Agency for International Development. These agencies work with local authorities and provide platforms for international cooperation that help develop and deploy vaccines, conduct disease surveillance, and work directly with local health officials to provide capacity where it may be lacking."

He quotes Stephanie Psaki, a former National Security Council official, outlining the "playbook" that those agencies followed to stem countless disease outbreaks — implemented at high speed with international partners, emergency funding and trained health professionals in place.

What's suddenly different, says Goldberg, is that "there's no one left to execute that playbook. Trump fired most of them. ... Simply put, the methods and strategy that have successfully kept Americans safe from eight Ebola outbreaks over the last decade are no longer operational."

The same numbskull who once mouthed off about Ebola has left us more vulnerable to it than we've ever been before. Trump's own former surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, recently warned against the vindictive and stupid assault on the nation's public health infrastructure by his old boss.

"Regardless of how you feel about 'public health,' or 'Fauci,' it's a real bad time to have blocked public communications from CDC, and work with WHO," Adams scolded on social media. "Republicans must understand (that) they're gonna own any and all preventable outbreaks / harm moving forward."

He means the Republicans who are letting Trump run wild. But no worries! When the coffins are lined up, I'm sure they will all send thoughts and prayers.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

GOP Senators Must Ask Patel Why The Kremlin Wants Him To Run The FBI

GOP Senators Must Ask Patel Why The Kremlin Wants Him To Run The FBI

When Kash Patel appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking confirmation as FBI director on January 30, someone will no doubt raise questions about his threats against Donald Trump’s critics, his stated penchant to abuse power, his minimal job qualifications and his embarrassing career as a conspiracy monger.

But in addition to all those pressing issues, and perhaps even more vital, is that Patel be grilled on the boundless enthusiasm for his candidacy among America’s adversaries in the Kremlin. No Senator of either party should leave that hearing room without seeing this video, one of many that have appeared on Russia’s main television channel in the weeks since Election Day.


“When will they bring my Kash to power?” demands Vladimir Solovyov, the most prominent newscaster in Moscow and a close associate of President Vladimir Putin. “I just want to see how Kash Patel turns the FBI into a Museum of Repression on his first day in office.” Solovyov and the panel of commentators in that clip are echoing the Kremlin’s official line, as they do every evening – and their hunger to see Patel take over the premier law enforcement agency in the United States is not a joke.

Solovyov’s quip about what "his Kash" would do to FBI headquarters in Washington echoes remarks that he himself made last November when the likelihood of his nomination by Trump suddenly became real. He promised to shut down the J. Edgar Hoover building in downtown Washington and “open it up the next day as the Museum of the Deep State.”

But Patel went further, vowing to abolish the bureau’s Intelligence Division, which he claims has been “weaponized” against Trump and the MAGA movement. “We have an intel agency. I don’t need it to be redone within the walls of the FBI, ” he said, displaying his ignorance of both national security law and the functions of the CIA, NSA and other US intelligence agencies. “Send those 7,000 agents in the headquarters building downrange to chase down rapists, murderers, and drug traffickers.” Chasing down rapists and murderers (and most drug traffickers) are what local police do, of course, as former prosecutor Patel ought to know. He's just gaslighting the MAGA rubes.

But Patel’s promise to close down the FBI intelligence division – whose actual job is to thwart and capture foreign spies in the United States – is why the Russians are so giddily celebrating the prospect that he will take over the bureau. On an earlier show, Solovyov proclaimed that the elevation of figures like Patel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, would enable the Kremlin to “quickly dismantle the United States.”


- YouTubeyoutu.be


What Patel doesn't know -- and clearly has no interest in understanding -- is that the thousands of agents and officials in Washington have an enormous task in defending the United States against hostile foreign powers, not only the GRU and other Russian outfits but agents employed by China, Iran, and North Korea as well. Just last year, the FBI exposed a Chinese agent secretly nested in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office, part of an enormous network used by Beijing to carry out influence operations and intimidation of dissidents in the Empire State.

The Chinese aren't loudly boasting like the Russians, but they too can only be excited by the destruction of the agency that stands in their way on our soil.

None of this is theoretical. Trump and his minions have been determined to wreck American counterintelligence ever since his connections with Russian intelligence were first exposed in the wake of the 2016 election.

Listen to Dave Troy, who has worked hard to expose this looming existential menace:

"Counterintelligence will be gone; terrorists will not be tracked; expect unjust prosecutions and leaks to support extrajudicial persecution of personal foes and enemies of Putin. Impossible to overstate the danger here."

Vladimir Solovyov worried that Senate Republicans wouldn't confirm Trump's dangerous nominees. But he seems to have overestimated their wisdom and patriotism.

It is indeed impossible to overstate the danger from Patel and whatever lunatics he would bring in to the FBI -- and from Gabbard as well. But it is the FBI nominee who has declared his desire to tear down America's defense against foreign spies. Confirming him to a position where he can do that will give aid and comfort to hostile powers -- and Republican senators should think carefully before they cast that vote.


Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.