Pete Hegseth side by side in Senate hearing with Joint Chiefs General who spoke truth to power! Hegseth looked stupid. Who knew?

Donald Trump’s top general- Joint Chiefs General just undercut his ‘invasion’ claims. Echo report published in CNN by Aaron Blake. 


One of the problems with making a series of brazen and hyperbolic claims is that it can be hard to keep everyone on your team on the same page. 

And few of Donald Trump Republicann administration claims have been as brazen as the idea that the Venezuelan government has engineered an invasion of gang members into the United States. This claim forms the basis of the administration’s controversial efforts to rapidly deport a bunch of people- that it claimed were members of the gang Tren de Aragua – without due process. IOW, without proof. 

But one of the central figures responsible for warding off such invasions apparently didn’t get the memo.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine testifies during a Senate Appropriations Committee

At a Senate hearing Wednesday June 11, 2025, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman retired Lt. General Dan Caine acknowledged that the United States isn’t currently facing such a threat.

“I think at this point in time, I don’t see any foreign state-sponsored folks invading,” Caine said in response to Democratic questioning.

This might sound like common sense; of course the United States isn’t currently under invasion by a foreign government. You’d probably have heard something about that on the news.

But the administration has said – repeatedly and in court – that it has been.

When Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport innocent migrants, without due process, that law required such a foreign “invasion” or “predatory incursion” to make his move legal. And Trump said that’s what was happening.

“The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States,” reads the proclamation from Trump.

It added that Tren de Aragua’s actions came “both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.”

So the White House said Tren de Aragua was acting in concert with the Maduro regime to invade; Caine now says “state-sponsored folks” aren’t invading.

Some flagged Caine’s comment as undermining Trump’s claims of a foreign “invasion” in Los Angeles. Trump has regularly applied that word to undocumented migrants.

But the inconsistency is arguably more significant when it comes to Trump’s claims about the Venezuelan migrants.

Perhaps the administration would argue that Trump has halted the invasion and it is no longer happening; Caine was speaking in the present tense.

Caine did go on to cite others who might have different views.

“But I’ll be mindful of the fact that there has been some border issues throughout time, and defer to DHS who handles the border along the nation’s contiguous outline,” he said.

But, if an invasion had been happening recently, it seems weird not to mention that. And if the invasion is over, that would seem to undercut the need to keep trying to use the Alien Enemies Act.

The Department of Homeland Security is certainly not in the camp of no invasion. (IOW Fake News❗)

On Wednesday, DHS posted on Facebook an image with Uncle Sam that reads: “Report all foreign invaders” with a phone number for ICE.

When asked about the image and whether the use of the term “foreign invaders” had been used previously, DHS pointed CNN to a number of posts from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller using terms like “invade” or “invaders” when referring to undocumented immigrants.

Plenty of Trump administration figures have gone to bat for this (false❗)claim.

White House press secretary (3-D printer Barbie) Karoline Leavitt said soon after Trump’s proclamation that Tren de Aragua gang members “have been sent here by the hostile Maduro regime in Venezuela.”

Then-national security adviser Michael Waltz claimed Maduro was emptying his prisons “in a proxy manner to influence and attack the United States.”

But, of course, CNN soon learned that the intelligence community had concluded Venezuela had not directed the gang. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood by Trump’s claim.

“Yes, that’s their assessment,” Rubio said last month about the intelligence community. “They’re wrong.” #IDTS❗ 🙄🤥

Trump administration border czar Tom Homan has said the gang was an “arm of the Maduro regime,” and that Maduro’s regime was “involved with sending thousands of Venezuelans to this country to unsettle it.”

The question of Venezuela’s purported involvement actually hasn’t been dealt with much by the courts. A series of judges have moved to block the administration’s Alien Enemies Act gambit, but they’ve generally ruled that way because of the lack of an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” – without delving much into the more complex issue of whether such a thing might somehow have ties to Maduro’s government.

One of the judges to rule in that fashion was a Trump appointee, US District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr.

So the intelligence community and a bunch of judges – including a Trump-appointed one – have rebutted the claim the underlies this historic effort to set aside due process.

And now, the man Trump installed as his top general seems to have undercut it too.

Donald Trump is a convicted sexual abuser who was found guilty of raping E. Jean Carroll in New York

Echo report published in The New York Times by Aaron Blake:

After Donald Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll, his legal team and his defenders lodged a frequent talking point.

Despite Carroll’s claims that Trump had raped her, they noted, the jury stopped short of saying he committed that particular offense. Instead, jurors opted for a second option: sexual abuse.

“This was a rape claim, this was a rape case all along, and the jury rejected that — made other findings,” his lawyer, Joe Tacopina, said outside the courthouse.

A judge has now clarified that this is basically a legal distinction without a real-world difference. He says that what the jury found Trump did was in fact rape, as commonly understood.

The filing from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan came as Trump’s attorneys have sought a new trial and have argued that the jury’s $5 million verdict against Trump in the civil suit was excessive. The reason, they argue, is that sexual abuse could be as limited as the “groping” of a victim’s breasts.

Kaplan roundly rejected Trump’s motion Tuesday, calling that argument “entirely unpersuasive.”

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ” Kaplan wrote.

He added: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Kaplan said New York’s legal definition of “rape” is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.”

The former requires forcible, unconsented-to penetration with one’s penis. But he said that the conduct the jury effectively found Trump liable for — forced digital penetration — meets a more common definition of rape. He cited definitions offered by the American Psychological Association and the Justice Department, which in 2012 expanded its definition of rape to include penetration “with any body part or object.”

Kaplan also flatly rejected the Trump team’s suggestion that the conduct Trump was found liable for might have been as limited as groping of the breasts.

The reason? Trump was not accused of that, so the only alleged offense that would have qualified as “sexual abuse” was forced digital penetration. Beyond that, Trump was accused of putting his mouth on Carroll’s mouth and pulling down her tights, which Kaplan noted were not treated as alleged sexual abuse at trial.

“The jury’s finding of sexual abuse therefore necessarily implies that it found that Mr. Trump forcibly penetrated her vagina,” Kaplan wrote, calling it the “only remaining conclusion.”

Kaplan also noted that the verdict form did not ask the jury to decide exactly what conduct Trump had committed, and that neither prosecutors nor Trump’s lawyers had requested it to do so.

“Mr. Trump’s attempt to minimize the sexual abuse finding as perhaps resting on nothing more than groping of Ms. Carroll’s breasts through her clothing is frivolous,” Kaplan wrote.

He added that the jury clearly found that Trump had “ ‘raped’ her in the sense of that term broader than the New York Penal Law definition.”

The motion was a part of Trump’s efforts to appeal the verdict against him. That’s an effort that will apparently continue as he faces a separate defamation lawsuit from Carroll, dealing with claims Trump made about her allegations while he was still president.

But for now, Trump’s effort to push back has led to a rather remarkable clarification that severely undercuts his main talking point.

BUT! As if #sharpiegate were not "bad enough"!....now this: North Carolina stupidity

Echo! Published in The Denver Post, I read this opinion after the stupid #Sharpiegate incident was plastered all over the world's media. Donald Trump violated the tenets for supporting the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast that predicted hurricane Dorian's path, while the devastating storm skipped up the US east coast. 

He warned people living in Alabama about the storm, but (!) it was never predicted to affect that state. So, the #sharpiegate fiasco happened after this opinion essay was published, and before Trump's deliberately stupid and illegal weather blunder.

Blake echo: Donald Trump’s transparent and petty pre-hurricane politicking

He said whaaaa?  "Thank you, Mr. President"?  Senator Thom Tillis, R-NC #SIASD (Thank you for what? For being stupid!)

DENVER POST- On the list of Donald Trump’s political sins, wrongly crediting a GOP ally for getting him to declare a pre-hurricane Dorian federal emergency in North Carolina doesn’t rank particularly high.

But!

This is a remarkably transparent political gambit even for Trump, to whom so little is holy, coming as it does on the eve of a natural disaster that has threatened the southeastern United States and devastated the Bahamas.

On Tuesday night September 3, Trump credited Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., for his decision to declare a federal emergency in the state ahead of Hurricane Dorian’s arrival. “At the request of Senator Thom Tillis, I am getting the North Carolina Emergency Declaration completed and signed tonight,” Trump tweeted. “Hope you won’t need it!”

The first problem with that is that senators don’t formally request states of emergency. Under federal law, that’s left to governors.

In North Carolina’s case, that governor is Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Cooper declared a state emergency Friday and formally requested the federal one Monday. Trump didn’t mention him in the tweet.

The second problem is that it’s clear that this was political payback, and there’s virtually nothing subtle about it. Tillis, as Wagner notes, is up for reelection in 2020, and he faces a difficult general-election contest and a well-funded primary foe, businessman Garland Tucker. He appears to have earned plenty of goodwill from Trump after his flip-flop on Trump’s border-wall national emergency, which he eventually supported after writing a Washington Post commentary against it.

And Tillis was clearly angling for some credit here, repeatedly tweeting about his talks with Trump about the federal emergency.

“Just got off the phone with President @realDonaldTrump,” Tillis tweeted Monday evening, saying Trump would be issuing the federal emergency. “Just spoke with President @realDonaldTrump again & he said an emergency declaration for NC would be made later tonight,” he tweeted Tuesday. When Trump tweeted his credit to Tillis, the senator retweeted it without correcting Trump or mentioning Cooper’s role.

“Thank you, Mr. President!” he said.

Fine. Tillis can certainly play a role in that process, too — even if he doesn’t formally make the request. 

And there’s nothing wrong with letting people you work for know you’re engaged and talking to the president.

But !

Even if we set aside all of that: Was Trump really not going to declare a federal emergency in one of two states that are most directly in Dorian’s path, along with South Carolina? 

That state had already gotten one, as had Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which appear to have escaped the worst effects of the hurricane. As you can see from this long list of hurricane-related federal emergency declarations, this is a matter of course. Many recent declarations were for storms whose names you’ve probably already forgotten.

Whether someone is politicizing a natural disaster is difficult to pin down; one person’s politicization is another’s raising of an important issue. Republicans accuse Democrats of politicizing hurricanes by citing climate change, for example, when Democrats and climate scientists think that’s pretty important.

Orange man Trumpzi stupidity!

But! Even accounting for that subjectivity, Trump’s pre-hurricane gambits have been pretty obvious.

There was the time he pardoned Joe Arpaio, a former sheriff in Arizona, as Hurricane Harvey was hitting Texas — and acknowledged that he did so with the hurricane in mind. “A lot of people think it was the right thing to do,” Trump said. “Actually, in the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they were normally.”There was the time he lodged a conspiracy theory that Democrats had inflated the Hurricane Maria death toll in Puerto Rico . . . less than 24 hours before Hurricane Florence was set to hit the Carolinas. (Even Florida Republicans disowned that Trump theory.)

Just last week, Trump called Puerto Rico corrupt and wrongly inflated the amount of Maria-related aid the U.S. territory received, even as it faced another blow from Dorian.

And before he was president, Trump previewed Hurricane Sandy in 2012 by arguing that President Barack Obama would use it to his advantage for his reelection bid.

“Hurricane is good luck for Obama again- he will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars,” Trump tweeted.

Trump even used the occasion to extend the deadline for his offer of $5 million for Obama’s birth certificate.

“Because of the hurricane, I am extending my 5 million dollar offer for President Obama’s favorite charity until 12PM on Thursday,” Trump said.  (Cruel, OMG!)

It has become pretty clear what’s on Trump’s mind when a hurricane is about to hit.

Aaron Blake is senior political reporter, writing for The Fix. A Minnesota native, he has also written about politics for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Hill newspaper.

Missing him already - Secretary Mattis' departure: leaves "actings" in a hallowed chaotic Trump house

This essay was published on January 22, 2019 in The Week:

What Happened!

Donald Trump headed into the New Year with a makeshift Cabinet featuring six "acting" department heads, after Chief of Staff John Kelly was ousted from the White House and Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned.

Mattis announced his departure a day after Trump ordered the withdrawal of all 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria, a decision opposed by the Pentagon chief.  The outgoing defense secretary forcefully rebuked Trump's foreign policy in his resignation letter, arguing the importance of supporting U.S. allies and of being "unambiguous" in dealing with authoritarian rivals such as Russia and China.

"You have a right," Mattis wrote to Trump, "to have a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects."  Patrick Shanahan, Mattis' deputy and a former Boeing executive, is now (another) "acting" defense secretary.

Mattis and Kelly were viewed by many congressional Republicans and Democrats as the last "adults in the room," experienced public servants and generals who would check Trump's (dangerous) impulses. In an exit interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kelly said he'd done his best to keep Trump informed and that his tenure as chief of staff should be judged by what Trump did not do. Sources said Kelly persuaded Trump not to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea and Afghanistan, and not to pull the U.S. from NATO.  Trump has temporarily replaced Kelly with budget director Mick Mulvaney (another "acting"). The posts of attorney general, Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) administrator, the interior secretary and ambassador to the United Nations are also held by "acting" heads.

What the Editorials said:

"Cabinet officers come and go," said The Wall Street Journal, but Mattis' departure could reverberate in 2020.  

Trump didn't just over-rule the secretary in ordering Syrian withdrawal. He told America's military "that he will act on uninformed impulse," after a phone conversation with a Turkish dictator who's eager to attack our Syrian Kurdish allies. Many of Trump's "deplorables" who are in uniform, or they are veterans. "He has stuck a finger in their eye."

Mattis worked ably "to prevent or blunt" dangerous Trump decisions, said The New York Times. Now that he's left, Congress must assert its national security responsibilities. It should pass legislation requiring that the secretaries of state and defense, and not just the president, have a say in the use of nuclear weapons," and also, requiring congressional approval to leave NATO and other treaties.

What The Columnists Said:

America "should be deeply troubled" by Mattis' letter, said David French in NationalReview.com.  In that missive, "America's most respected warrior" told the nation he doesn't believe the (Trumpzi) president sees our enemies clearly or understand "the necessity of American leadership."  Trump has lost, not only a defense secretary, said Erin Dunne, in Washington Examiner.com, but also national security credibility among key Senate Republicans.  

Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, all voiced distress over Mattis' departure.  Trump will need their help to rally GOP support in the Senate if he's impeached by the Democrat controlled House.  This resignation "could well prove fatal to the administration."

There's a common refrain you hear from Cabinet members who "leap- or are pushed- from the foundering USS Trumpzi", said Dana Milbank in The Washington Post.  "Dont' blame me."

In his Los Angeles Times interview, Kelly absolved himself of guilt for the migrant family separation policy and the travel ban.  

Mattis did the same in his farewell letter, saying he always opposed Trump's attacks on NATO and his sucking up to Russia. It's not enough: "Those who disagreed with the madness had an obligation to resign, or at least to speak out- not to wash their hands of responsibility after the fact."

Trump will soon have a "cabinet full of yes men," said Aaron Blake, also in the Post.  Look at his replacements for other ousted officials. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo parrots "Trump's talking points." The nominee for attorney general, William Barr, attacked special counsel Robert Mueller's probe in a memo to the Justice Department. National security adviser John Bolton tossed his anti Russia views to win favor with his (idiot) boss. 

Mattis' replacement will be cut from the same cloth, because Trump simply won't be told no. (He's a dangerous, spoiled erratic, narcissistic and profane brat!)