Harping on Natalie

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

 Jonathan Lemire at The Atlantic:

You are reading this story only because the White House didn’t want you to.

I’ll explain. This past Sunday, Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia—who has become quite good at delivering viral campaign sound bites, slickly filmed by multiple cameras—unleashed a blistering indictment of President Trump’s leadership. Ossoff, a former documentary filmmaker who is generating 2028 buzz, denounced Trump’s handling of the Iran war this way: “While he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

It was a pithy and well-structured attack, but not so different from the broadsides delivered daily by Democrats on the campaign trail or on MS NOW. But one new word stood out: Natalie.

The line got a knowing laugh from a handful of observers in the room, and it electrified a subset of political obsessives on social media, who took to their favorite platforms and group chats with some version of “Oh, he went there!” or “I can’t believe he did that!” But although Ossoff’s aside resonated with the junkies, the majority of Americans likely had no idea who this Natalie woman was, and might never have given it another thought.

But then the West Wing lost its mind. And Trump did too. Their pushback was so overwhelming, so obviously coordinated, so ugly and personal that it became a story. The White House inadvertently created news, as well as a permission structure for even the most cautious, fact-based media organizations to take on the topic. Which is why the name Natalie Harp is now everywhere.

And the resulting stories have not benefited the Trump White House.

 

SCOOP: Trump aide Natalie Harp worked at White House without security clearance for a year

Both people said Harp’s reasoning for failing to complete the process was unknown. After concerns mounted among the White House counsel’s office and security officials, the president…

— Jake Traylor (@jake__traylor) August 19, 2026

Maggie Haberman shares new details about Trump aide Natalie Harp and her rise inside the White House: “She is a channel by which… foreign leaders try to reach him.” pic.twitter.com/ggzoV0DPk2

— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) August 20, 2026

Trump's Election Speech: Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

David E. Sanger and Dustin Volz:

For years, President Trump has offered a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories and baseless charges to support his falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and that America’s election system was hijacked by a combination of outside powers and “deep state” insiders.

But when he declassified a raft of intelligence reports, hastily drafted emails between officials at the F.B.I. and other agencies, and formal “assessments” late Thursday, he was unable to prove his case.

An examination of the more than 270 pages of evidence released by the White House supports the broad conclusions already announced in 2020 and 2021, albeit with some finer details. For example, China considered modest attempts to influence opinion in the United States, and downloaded publicly available voter rolls from several states, but never manipulated a single voting machine or ballot.

Even new assertions, such as a document from the Department of Homeland Security claiming to have found more than 250,000 noncitizens registered in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania, came devoid of supporting evidence and immediately was met with pushback from state officials.

 

The documents are so damning in refuting Trump's own case that I wonder if anyone in the White House actually read them (or understood what they were looking at) https://t.co/8jUP0zVMTp

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 17, 2026

Trump v. Republicans in Congress

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional,  state, and local elections.

Trump is acting without regard for the political needs of Republicans in Congress.  An unpopular war is just part of it. Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Axios:

• The big picture: Trump has spent his second term steamrolling his own party, confident the lawmakers he humiliates will keep voting his way. You see it everywhere:He canceled the signing of a landmark bipartisan housing bill just hours before the ceremony — trying to strong-arm the Senate into passing the SAVE America Act, a sweeping voter ID bill with no realistic path to 60 (or even 50) votes.
• He dismissed the housing bill — which his own White House had called "one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history" — as "of minor importance."
• He berated the "Four Republican Losers" in the Senate who voted this week to rein in his Iran war powers, calling the rebuke "poorly timed and meaningless." (Hours after his barrage, Republicans passed a symbolic reversal.)
• He blew up a bipartisan scramble aimed at renewing the government's FISA surveillance powers, demanding the SAVE Act on voting rules be bolted on. He let the authority lapse rather than back down.
• He yanked his own intelligence nominee, Jay Clayton, from a confirmation hearing hours before it began, leaving the nation's spy agencies under an acting director both parties distrust.
• He refused to brief Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other senators on his Iran deal until after the text was finally released, leaving them to defend terms they hadn't seen.
• He blindsided senators by proposing a $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund just as they moved a $70 billion immigration package, defending Jan. 6 rioters who attacked the building where the senators work.

Miscalculation

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

Mark Mazzetti, Tyler Pager and Edward Wong at NYT:

On Feb. 18, as President Trump weighed whether to launch military attacks on Iran, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, told an interviewer he was not concerned that the looming war might disrupt oil supplies in the Middle East and wreak havoc in energy markets.

Even during the Israeli and U.S. strikes against Iran last June, Mr. Wright said, there had been little disruption in the markets. “Oil prices blipped up and then went back down,” he said. Some of Mr. Trump’s other advisers shared similar views in private, dismissing warnings that — the second time around — Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.

The extent of that miscalculation was laid bare in recent days, as Iran threatened to fire at commercial oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which all ships must pass on their way out of the Persian Gulf. In response to the Iranian threats, commercial shipping has come to a standstill in the Gulf, oil prices have spiked, and the Trump administration has scrambled to find ways to tamp down an economic crisis that has triggered higher gasoline prices for Americans.

The episode is emblematic of how much Mr. Trump and his advisers misjudged how Iran would respond to a conflict that the government in Tehran sees as an existential threat. Iran has responded far more aggressively than it did during last June’s 12-day war, firing barrages of missiles and drones at U.S. military bases, cities in Arab nations across the Middle East, and on Israeli population centers.

Ominous Week

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration is full of ominous news

. 

Another career trashed for not reaching the conclusions the White House wanted.

Hegseth fires head of Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse https://t.co/pzYhipw7Vs

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) August 22, 2025

Trump and Vance “admitting” the criminal investigation of Bolton is coming from the White House isn’t a mistake. They want critics to understand if they cross Trump, they can be subject to criminal investigation. They want people to know that law enforcement has been politicized. https://t.co/AOeQsqC9io

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) August 22, 2025

In calling the interview "my" proffer of Maxwell, Blanche gives himself away. A codefendant interview isn't the prosecutor's proffer; it's the witness's. In calling it "my proffer," Blanche is admitting he did this interview so he could proffer Maxwell's testimony to help Trump. https://t.co/iMznjAKVEm

— Elizabeth de la Vega 🇺🇸🦅 (@Delavegalaw) August 23, 2025

Trump's War on Facts

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Peter Baker at NYT:

An old rule in Washington holds that you are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts. President Trump seems determined to prove that wrong.

Don’t like an intelligence report that contradicts your view? Go after the analysts. Don’t like cost estimates for your tax plan? Invent your own. Don’t like a predecessor’s climate policies? Scrub government websites of underlying data. Don’t like a museum exhibit that cites your impeachments? Delete any mention of them.

Mr. Trump’s war on facts reached new heights on Friday when he angrily fired the Labor Department official in charge of compiling statistics on employment in America because he did not like the latest jobs report showing that the economy isn’t doing as well as he claims it is. Mr. Trump declared that her numbers were “phony.” His proof? It was “my opinion.” And the story he told supposedly proving she was politically biased? It had no basis in fact itself.

The message, however, was unmistakable: Government officials who deal in data now fear they have to toe the line or risk losing their jobs. Career scientists, longtime intelligence analysts and nonpartisan statisticians who serve every president regardless of political party with neutral information on countless matters, such as weather patterns and vaccine efficacy, now face pressure as never before to conform to the alternative reality enforced by the president and his team.

Mr. Trump has never been especially wedded to facts, routinely making up his own numbers, repeating falsehoods and conspiracy theories even after they are debunked and denigrating the very concept of independent fact-checking. But his efforts since reclaiming the White House to make the rest of government adopt his versions of the truth have gone further than in his first term and increasingly remind scholars of the way authoritarian leaders in other countries have sought to control information.

Russiagate Redux

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Trump is using wild conspiracy theories to distract from the mounting Epstein scandal.

Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman at NYT:

The Trump-era special counsel who scoured the Russia investigation for wrongdoing gathered evidence that undermines a theory pushed by some Republicans that Hillary Clinton’s campaign conspired to frame Donald J. Trump for colluding with Moscow in the 2016 election, information declassified on Thursday shows.

The information, a 29-page annex to the special counsel’s 2023 report, reveals that a foundational document for that theory was most likely stitched together by Russian spies. The document is a purported email from July 27, 2016, that said Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign proposal to tie Mr. Trump to Russia to distract from the scandal over her use of a private email server.

The release of the annex adds new details to the public’s understanding of a complex trove of 2016 Russian intelligence reports analyzing purported emails that Russian hackers stole from Americans. It also shows how the special counsel, John H. Durham, went to great lengths to try to prove that several of the emails were real, only to ultimately conclude otherwise.

The declassification is the latest disclosure in recent weeks concerning the Russia investigation. The wave has come as the administration is seeking to change the subject from its broken promise to release files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Even as the releases shed more light on a seismic political period nearly a decade ago, Mr. Trump and his allies have wildly overstated what the documents show, accusing former President Barack Obama of “treason.”

The release of the annex was no exception. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, said in a statement that the materials proved that suspicions of Russian collusion stemmed from “a coordinated plan to prevent and destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.”

And Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, who has a long history of pushing false claims about the Russia investigation, declared on social media that the annex revealed “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.”


In reality, the annex shows the opposite, indicating that a key piece of supposed evidence for the claim that Mrs. Clinton approved a plan to tie Mr. Trump to Russia is not credible: Mr. Durham concluded that the email from July 27, 2016, and a related one dated two days earlier were probably manufactured.

Re those Hillary conspiracy emails: if a native English speaker wrote this, I'll eat Kash Patel's MAGA hat
("pour oil into the fire" is literal translation from Russian idiom, dumbasses: "podlit' masla v ogon'") pic.twitter.com/Ym0bJ2jK8v

— Cathy Young 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇪 (@CathyYoung63) August 1, 2025

Gabbard Lies to Divert Attention from the Epstein Scandal

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Trump is using wild conspiracy theories to distract from the mounting Epstein scandal.

Dan De Luce at NBC:

The former senior CIA officer who helped oversee the 2017 intelligence assessment on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election says Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the White House are “lying” when they claim that it was an attempt to sabotage President Donald Trump.

Susan Miller, a retired CIA officer who helped lead the team that produced the report about Russia’s actions during the 2016 campaign, told NBC News it was based on credible information that showed Moscow sought to help Trump win the election, but that there was no sign of a conspiracy between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

“The director of national intelligence and the White House are lying, again,” Miller said. “We definitely had the intel to show with high probability that the specific goal of the Russians was to get Trump elected.”

She added: “At the same time, we found no two-way collusion between Trump or his team with the Russians at that time.”Miller spoke to NBC News after Gabbard alleged Wednesday that the 2017 intelligence assessment was based on “manufactured” information as part of a “treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration to undermine Trump and tarnish his electoral victory. Gabbard cited a 2020 report from Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which she declassified and released this week, that asserted there was insufficient information to conclude Russia had been trying to tip the scales in favor of Trump.

More details at AP 

Tulsi Under the Bus

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start

Politico Playbook:

This is a president who campaigned for years on ending American involvement in overseas wars; a man who, in 2011 and 2012, mockingly claimed then-President Barack Obama was about to start a war with Iran just to distract from his own failings. Only a couple of months ago, his own director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said Iran is “not building a nuclear weapon.” And this is the self-styled “dealmaker-in-chief.” Is he really going to flip it all around with a Middle East bombing campaign

Q: "Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon."

President Trump: "I don't care what she said. I think they were very close to having one." pic.twitter.com/6KTye52xP9

— CSPAN (@cspan) June 17, 2025

Hot Mess Hegseth

  Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

The Trump administration's incompetence extends across the river into the Pentagon.

Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt and Maggie Haberman  at NYT:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.

Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

John Ullyot, former chief Pentagon spokesman, at POLITICO:

The last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon — and it’s becoming a real problem for the administration.

First there was Signalgate, where the secretary shared detailed operational plans, including timelines and specifics, about an impending military strike on the Houthis in Yemen over an unclassified Signal chat group that happened to include a member of the news media.

Once the Signalgate story broke, Hegseth followed horrible crisis-communications advice from his new public affairs team, who somehow convinced him to try to debunk the reporting through a vague, Clinton-esque non-denial denial that “nobody was texting war plans.” This was a violation of PR rule number one — get the bad news out right away.

His nebulous disavowal prompted the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg, to release Hegseth’s full chat string with the detailed operational plans two days later, turning an already-big story into a multi-week embarrassment for the president’s national security team. Hegseth now faces an inspector general investigation into a possible leak of classified information and violation of records retention protocols.

That was just the beginning of the Month from Hell. The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported that Hegseth “brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed.”

Next, the Pentagon set up a top-secret briefing by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on China for Elon Musk, who still has extensive business interests in China. After learning about it, the White House canceled that meeting.

Then came the purges. And the news keeps coming. On Sunday night, The New York Times reported that Hegseth shared details about the Yemen strike in another Signal chat that included his wife and brother.

DoD rapid response amplifies Leavitt's claim that the "entire" Pentagon is working against Hegseth. More than 20,000 people work at the Pentagon, including military personnel and veterans who have served for decades. https://t.co/SlmyZL8exS

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) April 21, 2025

Pete Hegseth: Security Risk

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Warren P. Strobel,Missy Ryan and Hannah Natanson at WP:

The Yemen attack timeline that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted to a Signal chat group would have been so highly classified, under Pentagon guidelines, that the details should have been restricted to a special, compartmented channel with its own code word and with access tightly limited, according to former Defense Department officials.

Hegseth and other senior Trump administration officials have denied that the data they shared in a Signal group, which included the timing of weapons strikes against Yemen’s Houthis and intelligence information shared by Israel on the whereabouts of a top Houthi operative, was classified.

“These are indeed highly detailed operational plans for war,” said one of the former officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. “Twenty-five years, I have never known them not to be classified. And usually this operational level of detail is further restricted to those with a need-to-know.”

Katherine Long et al. at WSJ:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is facing scrutiny over his handling of details of a military strike, brought his wife, a former Fox News producer, to two meetings with foreign military counterparts where sensitive information was discussed, according to multiple people who were present or had knowledge of the discussions.

One of the meetings, a high-level discussion at the Pentagon on March 6 between Hegseth and U.K. Secretary of Defense John Healey, took place at a sensitive moment for the trans-Atlantic alliance, one day after the U.S. said it had cut off military intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The group that met at the Pentagon, which included Adm. Tony Radakin, the head of the U.K.’s armed forces, discussed the U.S. rationale behind that decision, as well as future military collaboration between the two allies, according to people familiar with the meeting.

A secretary can invite anyone to meetings with visiting counterparts, but attendee lists are usually carefully limited to those who need to be there and attendees are typically expected to possess security clearances given the delicate nature of the discussions, according to defense officials and people familiar with the meeting. There is often security near the meeting space to keep away uninvited attendees.

"We Are Currently Clean on OPSEC"

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic tells how a Trump official mistakenly put him on a Signal chat about top secret plans to bomb Houthi targets across Yemen.  The chat took place on Signal, a commercial app.  The case reveals astonishing incompetence and recklessness at the highest levels.

Hegseth denied texting war plans.

He lied.

The Atlantic has just published excerpts from chats:

At 11:44 a.m. eastern time, Hegseth posted in the chat, in all caps, “TEAM UPDATE:”

The text beneath this began, “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.” Centcom, or Central Command, is the military’s combatant command for the Middle East. The Hegseth text continues:
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”
“1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME – also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s)”

Let us pause here for a moment to underscore a point. This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.

The Hegseth text then continued:
“1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets)”
“1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts – also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.”
“MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)”
“We are currently clean on OPSEC”—that is, operational security.
“Godspeed to our Warriors.”

Shortly after, Vice President J. D. Vance texted the group, “I will say a prayer for victory.”

At 1:48 p.m., Waltz sent the following text, containing real-time intelligence about conditions at an attack site, apparently in Sanaa: “VP. Building collapsed. Had multiple positive ID. Pete, Kurilla, the IC, amazing job.” Waltz was referring here to Hegseth; General Michael E. Kurilla, the commander of Central Command; and the intelligence community, or IC. The reference to “multiple positive ID” suggests that U.S. intelligence had ascertained the identities of the Houthi target, or targets, using either human or technical assets.

Six minutes later, the vice president, apparently confused by Waltz’s message, wrote, “What?”

At 2 p.m., Waltz responded: “Typing too fast. The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”

Vance responded a minute later: “Excellent.” Thirty-five minutes after that, Ratcliffe, the CIA director, wrote, “A good start,” which Waltz followed with a text containing a fist emoji, an American-flag emoji, and a fire emoji. The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified.

Later that afternoon, Hegseth posted: “CENTCOM was/is on point.” Notably, he then told the group that attacks would be continuing. “Great job all. More strikes ongoing for hours tonight, and will provide full initial report tomorrow. But on time, on target, and good readouts so far.”

Springtime for Spies

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic tells how a Trump official mistakenly put him on a Signal chat about top secret plans to bomb Houthi targets across Yemen.  The chat took place on Signal, a commercial app.  The case reveals astonishing incompetence and recklessness at the highest levels.

Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt at NYT:

Several Defense Department officials expressed shock that Mr. Hegseth had put American war plans into a commercial chat group. They said that having this type of conversation in a Signal chat group itself could be a violation of the Espionage Act, a law covering the handling of sensitive information.

Revealing operational war plans before planned strikes could also put American troops directly into harm’s way, the officials said. And former F.B.I. officials who worked on leak cases described this as a devastating breach of national security. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive national security matter.

Former national security officials said that if personal cellphones were used in the group chat, the behavior would be even more egregious because of ongoing Chinese hacking efforts.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said that the “story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”

Amy Mackinnon at Politico:

The Trump administration’s rapid slashing of the government workforce creates fertile ground for foreign adversaries to recruit disgruntled staffers who know some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, according to former intelligence officials and national security insiders.

Hundreds of intelligence and national security officials who had access to reams of classified information are among the tens of thousands of federal workers who lost their jobs since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

POLITICO spoke to more than half a dozen people connected to the U.S. intelligence community — former intelligence officials, lawyers who work on national security and experts on insider threats — for this story. All expressed deep concern that the administration’s rapid cuts to the national security workforce will create recruiting openings for other countries.

“What we have done is we have created a ripe set of targets for our adversaries,” said James Lawler, a former CIA operations officer who specialized in recruiting foreign spies for the U.S.

...

Lawler, the former CIA officer who recruited foreign spies, said the administration is creating exactly the kind of vulnerabilities that they sought to exploit.

“I never recruited happy people,” said Lawler, who led the team that dismantled a nuclear smuggling network spearheaded by the Pakistani nuclear physicist A. Q. Khan. “People who were pissed off, people who had axes to grind made it very easy for me to convince them to basically commit espionage.”

Trump and Putin

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  Trump is giving Putin nearly everything he could want.

Andrew Roth and Luke Harding at The Guardian:

Donald Trump has said Vladimir Putin was “doing what anybody would do” after Russia launched a massive missile and drone strike on Ukraine days after the US cut off vital intelligence and military aid to Kyiv.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday Trump said he finds it “easier” to work with Russia than Ukraine and that Putin “wants to end the war”.

“I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don’t have the cards,” Trump said. “In terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with Russia.”

Asked whether the Russian leader was taking advantage of the pause in US intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine, Trump replied: “I actually think he is doing what anybody else would do.”

 Mark Mazzetti at NYT:

In early 2017, American intelligence agencies delivered an unequivocal judgment about why President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had ordered a sprawling effort to sabotage the recent American presidential election.

Mr. Putin wanted to cripple the faith Americans have in their own elections, they found, and to undermine a United States-led “liberal world order” that the Russians see as a threat to their security. As a way to achieve this goal, the assessment found, Russia worked to help Donald J. Trump win the election.

Eight years later, Mr. Trump sat in the Oval Office for a blustery meeting with President Voldymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and rendered, once again, his own judgment on that period. There was no Russian sabotage, just a “phony witch hunt” of which both he and Mr. Putin were victims.

“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” he said.

The statement was a tell. The president sees common cause with Mr. Putin, a merging of interests forged through battles against those he believes are his and Mr. Putin’s mutual adversaries — including Democratic lawmakers, European leaders and a spectral “deep state” inside the U.S. government.

...

This is a world turned upside down for Susan Miller, the former head of counterintelligence at the C.I.A., who led the agency’s 2017 intelligence assessment on Russian election interference.

Ms. Miller said in an interview that she thinks Mr. Trump’s affinity for the Russian president boils down to “autocrat envy”— that he covets the power Mr. Putin has to make decisions in Russia without any constraints.

“Trump likes Putin because Putin has control over his country,” she said. “And Trump wants control over his country.”

If Trump and Company Were Russian Assets...

 ...would they be doing anything differently?

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Hewgseth weakens our defenses against Russia just as Gabbard repeats Russian talking points.  

Counterintelligence catastrophe: all the DoD’s operations, for every single employee at a granular level, collected at one time, at one email address. It would take billions of dollars and many years for an adversary to get this information, if even possible, through espionage. pic.twitter.com/QoBvAJttlm

— John Jackson (@hissgoescobra) March 2, 2025

Pete Hegseth just reportedly ordered the US military’s Cyber Command to “stand down” from all planning against Russia. Analysts have been ordered not to follow or report on Russian threats.

One inside source said, “Putin is on the inside now.” pic.twitter.com/2vnNoL6FcK

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) March 2, 2025

The Washington Post confirms The Guardian's reporting (denied by DHS) that some CISA cyber-threat analysts have been told to "focus on adversaries other than Russia": https://t.co/pWUAFkF1qC

— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) March 2, 2025

"Churches are closing in Ukraine, elections are canceled, and the government fully controls the media" — U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard talking about 'values'.

This is exactly what Russian propaganda shows and the Kremlin are constantly spewing. pic.twitter.com/HVWbyWNP6w

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) March 3, 2025

Brazen

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.

Peter Baker at NYT:

Mr. Trump’s announcement that he intends to seize control of Gaza, displace the Palestinian population and turn the coastal enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East” was the kind of thing he might have said to get a rise on “The Howard Stern Show” a decade or two ago. Provocative, intriguing, outlandish, outrageous — and not at all presidential.

But now in his sequel term in the White House, Mr. Trump is advancing ever-more brazen ideas about redrawing the map of the world in the tradition of 19th-century imperialism. First there was buying Greenland, then annexing Canada, reclaiming the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. And now he envisions taking over a devastated war zone in the Middle East that no other American president would want.

Never mind that he could name no legal authority that would permit the United States to unilaterally assert control over someone else’s territory or that the forcible removal of an entire population would be a violation of international law. Never mind that resettling two million Palestinians would be a gargantuan logistical and financial challenge, not to mention politically explosive. Never mind that it would surely require many thousands of U.S. troops and possibly trigger more violent conflict.

Hannah Knowles, Colby Itkowitz and Liz Goodwin at WP:

President Donald Trump’s administration launched one of its most brazen challenges yet to Congress’s authority this week when officials led by billionaire Elon Musk gutted and threatened to abolish the U.S. Agency for International Development and suggested that other agencies should brace for overhauls.

But Republican lawmakers have raised few objections about the push to ax USAID, alarming Democrats who say the GOP is ceding power to the White House.

The Founding Fathers “set up a Congress. They set up debate,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said Tuesday. “And the American people, mark my words, the American people will not stand for an unelected secret group to run rampant in the executive branch.”

Even as Democrats warned of a “constitutional crisis,” it was business as usual on Republican-controlled Capitol Hill on Tuesday, as two controversial Trump nominees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, cleared Senate committee votes.

David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes:

The C.I.A. sent the White House an unclassified email listing all employees hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal work force, in a move that former officials say risked the list leaking to adversaries.

The list included first names and the first initial of the last name of the new hires, who are still on probation — and thus easy to dismiss. It included a large crop of young analysts and operatives who were hired specifically to focus on China, and whose identities are usually closely guarded because Chinese hackers are constantly seeking to identify them.

The agency normally would prefer not to put these names in an unclassified system. Some former officials said they worried that the list could be passed on to a team of newly hired young software experts working with Elon Musk and his government efficiency team. If that happened, the names of the employees might be more easily targeted by China, Russia or other foreign intelligence services.

One former agency officer called the reporting of the names in an unclassified email a “counterintelligence disaster.”

The Best People

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

Lauren Weber and Caitlin Gilbert:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee for the nation’s top health post, has repeatedly disparaged vaccines, falsely linked them to autism and argued that White and Black people should have separate vaccination schedules, according to a Washington Post review of his public statements from recent years.

In at least 36 appearances, Kennedy linked autism to vaccines, despite overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the use of vaccination to protect people from deadly infectious diseases and refuting any ties to autism, The Post found in a review of more than 400 of Kennedy’s podcast appearances, interviews and public speeches since 2020.

Kennedy, who is scheduled to face a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, criticized vaccines more broadly in at least 114 appearances, calling them dangerous, saying the risks outweigh the benefits and making misleading claims about vaccine safety testing or discrediting vaccine efficacy.

Holy sh*t. Senator Bennet absolutely annihilated RFK Jr. and exposed him for what he really is—an anti-vaxxer crackpot and grifter. In the pre-Trump era, this would have been the end of his nomination, and he would have withdrawn immediately.pic.twitter.com/Mmu6Ic23Vn

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 29, 2025

 

Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s statement to the US Senate on RFKJr’s nomination for HHS Secretary

This is a reading of a letter she just sent to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity,… pic.twitter.com/feysNA0Wwp

— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 28, 2025

Brett Forrest, Caitlin Ostroff and Rebecca Feng at WSJ:

To defend and burnish Tulsi Gabbard’s image as her political star was rising, her congressional campaign hired a public-affairs firm in 2017 that tried to suppress coverage of an alleged pyramid scheme connected to her Hindu sect, according to interviews, emails and Federal Election Commission records.

Gabbard, a former House member who is now President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was raised in the Science of Identity Foundation, a sect tied to a direct-marketing firm accused of running a pyramid scheme in several countries. Neither Gabbard, the sect nor the firm, QI Group, wanted the relationships scrutinized.

Gabbard’s campaign paid Washington, D.C.,-based Potomac Square Group for the PR cleanup, trying to mask the connections. But the operation was directed by a Science of Identity follower—and longtime Gabbard adviser—who sits on the board of a QI subsidiary.

The revelations shed further light on Gabbard’s ties to the religious group—publicly described by some former followers as a cult that demands total loyalty to its founder—and to the Hong Kong-based QI, which has been a target of criminal and civil cases alleging fraud and racketeering in at least seven countries.

...

Gabbard’s relative inexperience in national intelligence, as well as her past support for regimes in Russia and Syria, has raised concern among some national-security officials and lawmakers. Gabbard served two years on the House Homeland Security committee.

Gabbard seemed confused about a key U.S. national-security surveillance power in recent meetings with Senate Republicans. GOP lawmakers are expected to support her nomination.

Gabbard Is Dangerous

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book is about the 2024 election. The consequences of that election are coming into view.  Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's pick for DNI, is a clear and present danger to national security.

Tim Snyder on Tulsi Gabbard:

In June 2015, as a congresswoman from Hawai'i, Gabbard visited Syria. During her stay, she was introduced to girls who had been burned from head to toe by a regime air strike. Her reaction to the situation, according to her translator, was to try to persuade the girls that they had been injured not by Syrian forces, but by the resistance. But this was impossible. Only Syria (at the time of her visit) and Russia (beginning weeks later) were flying planes and dropping bombs.

Either Gabbard was catastrophically uninformed about the most basic elements of the theater of war she was visiting, or she was consciously spreading disinformation. Those are the two possibilities. The first is disqualifying; the second is worse.

And if she was spreading disinformation consciously, she was also doing so with a pathological ruthlessness. Anyone who would lie to the child victims of an air strike to their burned faces would lie to anyone about anything. In January 2017, she visited Syria again, this time to speak to Assad. She began thereafter to deny that his regime had used chemical weapons on its own people. That was a very big lie.

... 

As Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard would do enormous harm, unwillingly or willingly. She is not just completely unqualified for this role -- she is anti-qualified. She is just the sort of person enemies of the American republic would want in this job. This is not a hypothetical -- Gabbard is the specific person that actual enemies of the United States do want in the job. The Russian media refers to Tulsi Gabbard as a "Russian agent" and as "girlfriend," with good reason.

Gabbard is worse than unfit. Her public record is as a disinformer and apologist for mass murderers. And there is nothing on the other side of the ledger. There are no positive qualifications. (Yes, she wrote a bestselling book. It became a bestseller because she scammed her followers into donating to a PAC which bought the book in bulk.)

Russia Is Helping Trump

 Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.  As Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, Trump lavished praise on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

Russia is helping Trump in this campaign.

From ODNI:

Today, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released the following statement:

“The IC assesses that Russian actors manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an individual ripping up ballots in Pennsylvania, judging from information available to the IC and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities. Local election officials have already debunked the video’s content.

This Russian activity is part of Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the US election and stoke divisions among Americans, as detailed in prior ODNI election updates. In the lead up to election day and in the weeks and months after, the IC expects Russia to create and release additional media content that seeks to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and divide Americans.”

Shannon Bond at NPR:

The purported Bucks County video shows a person's hands opening envelopes and removing and examining the ballots inside. The person rips up ballots marked for Trump, cursing at the former president, while leaving ballots marked for Vice President Kamala Harris alone. "Vote Harris," the voice says at one point.

But the envelopes and ballots shown are not what the county uses to vote, the Bucks County Board of Elections said.

 ...

The purported Bucks County video shows a person's hands opening envelopes and removing and examining the ballots inside. The person rips up ballots marked for Trump, cursing at the former president, while leaving ballots marked for Vice President Kamala Harris alone. "Vote Harris," the voice says at one point.

But the envelopes and ballots shown are not what the county uses to vote, the Bucks County Board of Elections said.
...
Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, traced the Bucks County video back to a Russian propaganda operation known as "Storm-1516", first identified by Clemson, which is known for its tactic of producing staged videos that it then launders through influencers and phony news outlets.

"The particular video about Bucks County came from an account that we were familiar with," Linvill said. "It has originated Storm-1516 narratives before."

Cliff Watts at Microsoft:

Russian operatives continue to take steps to undermine the Harris-Walz campaign. Russian actors continue to create AI-enhanced deepfake videos about Vice President Harris. In one video, Harris is depicted as allegedly making derogatory comments about former President Donald Trump. In another from a Kremlin-aligned troll farm we track as Storm-1516, Harris is accused of illegal poaching in Zambia. Finally, another video spreads disinformation about Democratic vice president nominee Tim Walz, gaining more than 5 million views on X in the first 24 hours.

While most of these videos received minimal engagement, they underscore Russia’s ongoing use of both traditional and AI-generated content to influence U.S. audiences and stoke political discord. We have also seen some actors shifting their content publishing strategy from Telegram to X to reach U.S. audiences.