Same channel, minutes apart:
Mike Johnson on CNBC claims that Democrats "put it in writing" during their meeting yesterday that they want health insurance for undocumented migrants as a demand for averting a shutdown
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 30, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Johnson claims there’s written evidence to support his assertion.
CNBC: Is it true that you want to restore American taxpayer benefits to illegal immigrants.
JEFFRIES: This is also an outright lie. Federal law prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars to provide medical coverage to undocumented individuals. That's the law.
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 30, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Jeffries says Johnson’s claim is an “outright lie.”
If only there were some group of professionals whose job it is to look at the evidence and tell folks who’s lying and who’s telling the truth.
Open thread.
Baud
No one will demand that Johnson produce the writing.
Baud
Via reddit, likely Russian psyops on this issue.
BritinChicago
If only….
BritinChicago
If only…
Oops, sorry
Bupalos
The media is more or less able to call lies lies. I mean, journalists do generally have this capacity, and do sometimes exercise it, if in overly couched and defensive ways. What the media seems completely unprepared for – completely bewildered by – are the post-truth barrage of competing claims. When leadership and the president comes out with 5 different and mutually exclusive claims over the course of a few days, evaluating the truth status of each claim becomes somewhat meaningless. The real point of the exercise being not to establish a truth, but to give different constituencies different things to feel, while giving everyone a feeling of confusion.
The only way to actually counter the post-truth barrage is to report on it as a phenomena itself. Journalists are not prepared for this at all.
danielx
I am told Felonious Orange is making an utter ass of himself addressing the assembled flag officers of the US military this morning, but I don’t have time to look.
MattF
Johnson just wants to get the disinformation out there. Truth??… ‘What is truth?’
NotMax
“They snatched the Sharpie right out of the president’s hand.”
//
caphilldcne
Someone’s legal status should not actually impact their ability to access healthcare. Second the exclusions of undocumented immigrants can easily lead to increased infectious diseases. That’s why infectious disease is excluded from the executive order on this topic. This clown show of hatred from the regime literally endangers everyone.
TaMara
@danielx: Good choice. Why would you want to ruin your day like that, anyway?
We all know he’s a babbling idiot, why torture ourselves (especially when Aaron Rupar will endure the torture for us)?
Personally, I’m going to walk the dogs, and I’ll catch the recaps later. 😉
NotMax
“Nick Endanger, MAGA investigator.”
//
Belafon
@Bupalos: The answer to that is to establish the truth and use that as the baseline. “Here’s what really happened. Why do you keep trying to find a different lie that you think will stick?”
Baud
@TaMara:
He deserves a medal.
Belafon
@Belafon: In other words, don’t play the game.
MattF
@danielx: WaPo, so far:
Whaaaaat dooooes theeeeee yellllllow liiiiiiight meeeeeeeean?
NotMax
Whoopsie. Reply fix.
@caphilldcne
“Nick Endanger, MAGA investigator.”
//
Shalimar
I care a lot more about the shutdown than I do about the military gathering, but I remain fascinated that Secretary Doesn’t-Wash-His-Fucking-Hands was planning to lecture generals and admirals about personal grooming. Does anyone know what he actually said along those lines? If they all have to shake his hand, will most of our top military leadership die of dysentery too?
Belafon
@Baud: He should never have to buy a meal or drink.
WTFGhost
@Baud: it also begs the question, who would put something “in writing” in a face to face, let’s discuss things, meeting? It’s not quite as dumb as taking notes on a criminal effing conspiracy, but no one would make the mistake of handing Trump something, and expecting it to be *read* of all things.
mrmoshpotato
@danielx:
But his soaring oration at the UN was one of the bigliest, bestliest, most tremendousliest speeches of all time!
ETA – 🖕redis error! Nice try!
Baud
I have seen media claim a Dem flip flopped when they changed their position from “I haven’t yet made a decision” at time X to “here is my decision” at later time Y.
The media knows how to call this out. They just don’t want to fight Republicans.
NotMax
@MattF
“I’m really good at this stuff. Now let me tell you about the strawberries.”
Shakti
“A lie is whatever shit I don’t want to believe and makes me looks bad.”
Melted superonline Galaxy brain: They actually want large numbers of illegal immigrants, otherwise law abiding, who pay taxes but are barred from government programs because they have MBA brain and people who pay taxes but get nothing from them are surplus revenue centers.
And if some people are rendered illegal, all the better. The humane alternative is to let them spend lots of money to rectify that situation, stretching into decades.
They won’t complain because this is a much less scary alternative than getting the full Miller now or in the recent past when they’ll run this again.
Hence the kayfabe.
Also nobody in the United States can do basic math or has a memory lasting any longer than 3 months.
Jeffro
I was following the reactions to Hegseth and trumpov on BlueSky…I can only imagine what those generals and admirals were thinking.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: “Because I have the bestliest ah-brain.”
Jackie
So happy there’s a full day/night of playoffs baseball on the teevee today! And tomorrow, and the next day!
prostratedragon
@Baud: Today, the highest. 🤡 has hit his sassy mode, where he stands in some kind of twisted counterpoise.
Betty Cracker
Saw a few clips of Kegsbreath’s speech to the assembled flag officers a while ago. He said some truly disturbing shit, like no more “woke” rules of engagement (i.e., “war crimes are back on the menu, boys!”), no more “walking on eggshells” around “complainers” (i.e., “feel free to sexually, racially, etc., harass other ‘warfighters'”). For some reason, the hectoring by the weekend Fox News couch ballast who formerly served as a major in the National Guard didn’t include any positive references to the time-honored practice of “fragging.”
sab
I keep getting emails from the Washington Post. I have no interest in reading them. But for some reason my spam filter won’t block them.
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: DAY BASEBALL!
prostratedragon
October 18.
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker: And trump rambling about how Canada called him. They want in.
ffs.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker:
QFT
WTFGhost
@Shalimar: he wants the military to look the way Trump wants them to look, because nothing wins wars like meaningless personal grooming standards. Also, no fatties, and more exercise standards that he will never have to meet. “And if this makes you feel badly, do the honorable thing and resign.”
The real reason for the meeting was so Trump could address them all. The meeting, the speech, they were all theater, so that it wasn’t Trump giving the orders to do something so galactically stupid as gather the perfect mass assassination target, ever, just so Trump could get a war-stiffie standing in front of “his generals and admirals.”
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
“And, playing height challenged stop today….”
:)
Ohio Mom
@TaMara: I sometimes wonder how Aaron Rupar is able to maintain an even disposition, let alone the good cheer he appears to have.
I would be beyond despondent if it had the media diet he subjects himself to.
WTFGhost
Well, he’s likely to appear in “War Ravaged Portland” or whatever “war ravaged” zone Trump creates next, and Trump wants armed troops in these war zones, so, it strikes me as simple self preservation.
caphilldcne
@NotMax: haha I will definitely use this bit in some of my work! All credit to NotMax.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: So a lot of things that are fascist and horrible, but nothing particularly surprising, no “we begin bombing in five minutes” bombshell.
I saw Trump referred to the military mission to “straighten out” the “unsafe” cities as a “war from within”, but it sounds like the same frog-boiling bullshit that’s been going on already.
mrmoshpotato
@prostratedragon: NLCS Game 5 if necessary? Washington@Michigan?
Geminid
@danielx: Someone at Ankara-based Clash Report watches Trump’s speeches so we don’t have to! They’re posting zingers like this one:
Clash Report covered that war intensively, and they did not need to explain to their audience what a load of bullshit this was.
That’s Clash Report‘s practice. They post Trump’s goofy statements without comment. Some more from Trump’s speech:
TaMara
@Jackie: Same!
Baud
@Geminid:
Oh but he so wants to.
princess leia
Check out the HUD website – the “government” is blaming Democrats for the shutdown on the site
Another Scott
@Baud: Reporters know that their employers will likely be sued by 47 if they ask too hard questions.
Most of them are stenographers. Even more than they used to be.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Mai Naem mobile
I used to watch Squawk Box pretty regularly and now rarely watch it. There was an exchange between Becky Quick and Joe Kernen where he said he just accepted all the cookies on any website he went onto and Quick was like nooooo! Anyhoo, makes you wonder how much RW propaganda Kernen bathes in everyday on his phone. Quick’s has a special needs child who apparently needs caregivers. She didn’t want the no taxes on tips legislation because she would lose her kid’s caregivers to tips jobs like waitressing or whatever.
Feckless
Does he have an app so his son can monitor his bearing false witness?
Baud
@Feckless:
Deleted because of the annoying number of notifications.
mrmoshpotato
@Feckless: Only if he’s watching porn while lying his ass off.
Anyway
Think it has to do with medicaid payments to hospitals that treat patients in ERs without checking their status – I THINK. Rs always lie
Trivia Man
@MattF: reminds me of Jerry* on Pluto.
“Pluto is a planet!” Audience goes apeshit.
Trump: I AM ALL POWERFUL WISE AND MASCULINE!
his normal crowd goes apeshit.
Generals: dead silence and an eye roll
*Rick & Morty
Deputinize America
@WTFGhost:
Shit, Space Force is doomed if “no fatties” is the rule…..
Deputinize America
@Betty Cracker:
Kegsbreath undoubtedly thinks that William Calley got a raw deal, and that Hugh Thompson didn’t suffer enough death threats.
iKropoclast
Posers can fool losers, but not the genuine article.
Paul in KY
If only we had a profession that performed that duty, among others. What a great thing that would be!
WTFGhost
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, Trump really does want to be a dicktator, and that means finding a way to declare emergencies and combat zones. I’m surprised he didn’t take out a full page ad the day after Kent State, demanding a higher body count next time, but, I suppose his political aspirations hadn’t hardened by then.
prostratedragon
@mrmoshpotato: The next No Kings.
Betty Cracker
Bouie sums up Trump’s speech to the flag officers:
prostratedragon
@Betty Cracker:
Yes. All else was this:
But the desire for death squads and firing on peaceful citizens and other people was clearly articulated.
trnc
@Baud:
Good, clear answer from Jeffries, but he really missed an opportunity to say “Bring it, bitch.”
trollhattan
One more reason for Donny to want a shutdown.
Related (big “Trust us” vibes).
“Market-driven?”
It could be that shareholders are less sanguine about being kept in the dark.
iKropoclast
Very poor style over a complete lack of substance.
kindness
I wish more Christians (New Testament ones, not the Old Testament ones) would speak out about the anti-christian values flowing from shitheads like Johnson, especially including those who claim some sort of moral superiority because of their ‘relationship with Christ’. No doubt it happens in individual churches but on a larger media scale, crickets….
Chigail
@Jackie:
Go, Cubs!
prostratedragon
“@Betty Cracker:
Meanwhile, press is getting this email”
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Yep
iKropoclast
Don’t you feel safer already?
WTFGhost
@MattF: SLOW DOWN!
@Anyway: That is a dumb hill to plant a flag on, but, it does fit the way Rs love to lie, with some fact they can reference that “proves” a few pennies on the 10 grand went to undocumented people seen in an ER. And DEMOCRATS ARE OKAY WITH THIS. Uh, sorry – that’s just how I can hear them, in my mind, over those pennies.
Melancholy Jaques
@prostratedragon:
I got a few texts about October 18, one asking me if I can give people rides.
I thought we had agreed to change the name of the rally from No Kings to Fuck Trump.
The Thin Black Duke
@Betty Cracker: I hope Hegseth’s male, white, heterosexual, clean-shaven military enjoys the next war.
mrmoshpotato
@prostratedragon: Ah.
RaflW
@Betty Cracker: WhiskeyPete saying about our service members “…you kill people and break things for a living” is just horrifying.
I admit, I never served (I very much wanted to as a teen, but when I needed eyeglasses in 10th grade, that sunk my deep desire to be a fighter pilot) but the point of the military is to deprive the other side of the ability to prosecute war.
Of course there are casualties, and even death. But that’s the terrible price, not the goddamned goal. Not the job. That man is recklessly immoral (or is he amoral? Whatever). Ghoulishly encouraging our troops to kill is fucked UP.
JoyceH
@Shalimar: Grooming standards refers to the end of the shaving waiver which will separate men for a skin condition that affects sixty percent of blacks and close to zero percent of whites. This is about making the military whiter.
Paul in KY
@prostratedragon: Wonder how they’ll battle the mutant, antifa CHUDs? They feast on depleted uranium and the sweet tears of patriotic white women…
Steve Paradis
Still remember the look on Rumsfeld’s face when a UK interviewer contradicted with evidence one of his statements.
Like M. le Duc being insulted by a lackey.
Which of course is the natural relationship of the DC press corps to the high and mighty.
Shalimar
@iKropoclast: I feel really glad I’m no longer based out of Portland.
RaflW
@The Thin Black Duke: DJT today “San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They’re very unsafe places & we’re gonna straighten them out one by one. This is gonna be a major part for some people in this room.
That’s a war too. It’s war from within.”
Kegbreath’s job is to prep DoD to invade US cities, with lethal force authorized. I think the reach here by Trump & his people is wild and likely to fail terribly. But in the interim the risks are enormous.
cope
This is great. All these career military leaders are learning straight from the horse’s
mouthass: Hegseth, Trump, et al are unqualified, certifiable morons. Let’s hope they spread that message. I feel sorry for them as I expect they will never be able to get the sound of those speeches out of their heads.prostratedragon
@Melancholy Jaques: Hey, whatever. 3 weeks from now that could seem far too genteel.
From a local activist-journalist:
Gin & Tonic
@The Thin Black Duke: As Ukraine has been demonstrating for the last three-plus years, the next war is nothing like the previous wars, and the US is already woefully unprepared.
Eolirin
@The Thin Black Duke: The only war this group of clowns is going to allow our military to get involved in will be against US citizens, unless Canada decides to invade us.
The Thin Black Duke
@RaflW: America was upset when Jimmy Kimmel was fired. How will they feel when they see white people being killed? Dead black bodies are invisible. Seeing someone’s white grandmother shot in the gut is terrible optics.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Next up: “Trump Assministration ask SCOTUS to rule — immediately — that the Posse Comitatus Act does not apply to Republican presidents elected after 2022”
I wish I were 100-percent kidding.
RaflW
@JoyceH: One thing I fall back on, but which I haven’t seen much news or data so far, is that stuff like this, and the huge disrespect towards women in uniform, etc, will impact retention, promotion and recruitment.
Yes WhiskeyPete’s military will be whiter and more male, but I have to imagine it will also be smaller. And his focus today on situps and fitness means even fewer recruits will meet screening, and we’ll have what sized force strength in a year?
One reason Trump makes these serial threats, LA in spring, DC in summer, Portland in fall, is that there’s 350,000,000 of us and something like 1,700,000 across all the active duty and guard troops. Doing all the military jobs around the US and globe.
There just isn’t the sort of ratio of troops to citizens that coincided with the German experience in the 1930s.
iKropoclast
Because of anarcho-communists, I assume?
Eolirin
@Gin & Tonic: No one is going to try to invade us and we’re going full isolationist. We aren’t going to fight in any foreign wars so our military weaknesses won’t really be noticeable or meaningful.
Geminid
@Geminid: It turns out my Atlanta friend watched Trump’s speech. We’d been talking about Trump’s listless disposition yesterday at his press conference with the Israeli PM, so I asked about Trump’s appearance today.
He answered:
iKropoclast
@Eolirin: We aren’t going to fight in any foreign wars so our military weaknesses
won’t really be noticeable or meaningfulwill have to be demonstrated by the US civilian population that Trump is trying to subdue.SFAW
@The Thin Black Duke:
A large percentage of them will say “those libtards had it coming.” Of course, if we replace “libtards” with “n-words,” the approval percentage skyrockets.
SiubhanDuinne
@danielx:
Not at all. The flag officers were thrilled that their Commander in Chief told them all about renaming the Gulf of Mexico, complaining about his predecessor’s auto-pen, and informing them that they were perfectly free to walk out on him but if they did, they’d be fired. I mean, who wouldn’t come thousands of miles for that?
RaflW
@The Thin Black Duke: Yup. And I think about the petite Quaker-inspired, white haired, 70-something retired minister from my Unitarian Universalist congregation who said to my partner last November “I’ll lie in the street and be run over if it will save you and your queer friends”.
She was dead serious. And I’m sure she’s not the only one. No one like her has a death wish. But they understand how galvanizing and horrible and effective their sacrifice would be.
All that said, it is wrong that black lives being lost in this struggle don’t have the same effect. George Floyd and the many other losses have shifted the view for some of us, like UUs, but not nearly enough.
iKropoclast
Someone not being paid by the US military, I imagine. Trump’s groupies might pay to be there.
Harrison Wesley
@The Thin Black Duke: Why wouldn’t they? Shooting unarmed American protesters won’t be too challenging.
RaflW
@SiubhanDuinne:
iKropoclast
Technically, perhaps, but emotionally?
I suspect more than a couple people will have a problem with this.
Paul in KY
@cope: I think this was a major step-on-your-dick move by TACO and Secretary Underwear-Model. These O-7s and above are reality based people. They have to be. Seeing this grotesquery right in front of them and also this BS messing with their time and potentially endangering them personally makes them enemies of their childish fantasies.
Or so I hope…
iKropoclast
The voters most decisive to elections say: what’s wrong with the President demanding the loyalty of his generals?
RaflW
@trollhattan: ADP should have their monthly report out some time next week (last month’s was dated Sept. 4).
Some econ data will be suppressed, but lots of non-government data is compiled.
rikyrah
THEN PRODUCE IT IN WRITING, MUTHAPHUCKA.
rikyrah
@prostratedragon:
The local media has been very good in covering the attacks. They’re obvious and unprovoked
RaflW
@iKropoclast: The voters most decisive to the last presidential election said things like “Oh, do we vote on Tuesdays?” or “Trump will protect my access to contraception.”
So, uhh, whatever.
iKropoclast
@RaflW: Yes, which is why it is important to never challenge conventional wisdom and cede all informed arguments to the spurious.
rikyrah
The Associated Press
@AP
BREAKING: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he’s loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections at rare meeting of top military leaders.
x.com/AP/status/1973009434734469630
Hope you understand this means the rules that have been put in place to protect female military personnel from sexual assault will also be lessened.
iKropoclast
@rikyrah: Yes, and to push out men who aren’t down with the hazing culture which I’m sure will not be the least bit homoerotic especially due to the administration’s antipathy to queer issues.
Paul in KY
@RaflW: See good ole soonergrunt got there before me!
Nettoyeur
@Matt McIrvin: I remember the multi million dollar, low energy Trump birthday parade. Trump was bored because the troops were ambling, not goose stepping.
prostratedragon
@iKropoclast: I have read that a big reason for the Nazis’ industrialized death camps was that having ordinary soldiers do mass shootings of civilians was harming their morale.
Paul in KY
@iKropoclast: There’s a scene in Animal House that Kegsbreath watches over and over again…
iKropoclast
Stands to reason. Three sociopaths can do the slaughter of a hundred snivelling boys .
Sorry I saw that movie once maybe 15 years ago, help me out?
Matt McIrvin
@prostratedragon: Yeah, there’s actually a limit to how many civilians you can order soldiers to shoot.
The science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem was for some time a prisoner of the Nazis and saw some of this firsthand, and wrote hauntingly about it in lightly fictionalized form in his novel His Master’s Voice. (Which is mostly about a secret project to decipher a mysterious alien transmission, but has a Holocaust-survivor character, and this thread does touch on broader themes in the book.) A thing he said was that a lot of the institutionalized cruelty of Nazi guards toward their prisoners was intended to maintain in the guards the conviction that their victims were subhuman. I think about that a lot these days–it seems to be some of what’s going on with ICE.
Gloria DryGarden
@sab: if you had yahoo email, with its new storage limits, you’d unsubscribe, and then delete all of them. I’ve been ruthlessly deleting emails for days.
I haven’t read my wapo 5-minute fix emails; maybe I should delete them. Is everything they write utterly unworthy?
Harrison Wesley
It must have been a special treat for the military hierarchy to be exhorted by CIC Bone Spurs and SecDef Captain Morgan.
rikyrah
@Shalimar:
You do know that part of this is his plan to eliminate large numbers of BLACK SOLDIERS who have issues with razor bumps irritating their skin. They rescinded a previous policy that theoretically helped all soldiers, but, in particular helped BLACK soldiers. Part of another way to MAKE THE AMERICAN MILITARY WHITE AGAIN.
tam1MI
@iKropoclast: “THANK YOU SIR MAY I HAVE ANOTHER!”
Kathleen
@trnc: He did have a “c’mon, Bro” directed to Trump in one of his updates
On another note, here’s another take from You Tube on Kegbreath’s and Trump’s speeches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBVCx–U7ns
Leto
@rikyrah: hazing within units, just from my direct knowledge in the Air Force, lead to issues boarding on, and crossing over into, just sheer abuse. We had reporting on this from the 90s and early aughts, the culture that lead to this (what Kegsbreath is proposing to bring back), the systemic harm it caused, and what we were doing to correct it. Also we can look back to the Navy Tailhook scandal, for example n+1, as to why these rituals were eliminated. Just absolute typical conservative retrograde thought.
prostratedragon
My bold.
Kathleen
@Jackie: Yes! Go Reds!!!!! H/T to Brewers for posting congratulatory message to Reds on their scoreboard. Very classy.
iKropoclast
@tam1MI: Oh, ok, I’m starting to get the picture.
Ishiyama
@RaflW:
“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop”
That’s my generation. And yes, most of us are white.
WaterGirl
@Feckless:Does he have an app so his son can monitor his bearing false witness?
Of course! I’m sure they watch it together, just like their porn.
iKropoclast
He had to turn off the notifications. It’s was too distracting with its pings every 30 seconds.
Citizen Alan
@iKropoclast: I assume he refers to the hazing scene at the “bad guy” frat house. The one with Niedermeyer dressed like an Inquisitor and grinning in a sexually-aroused leer while he viciously paddles a terrified pledge (a young Kevin Bacon) bent over in his tighty-whities while plaintively repeating “Thank you, sir. May I have another!” until his voice cracks.
The Thin Black Duke
@SFAW: Yeah, but you and I already know that Trump’s base don’t give a fuck. I’m talking about the normies whose fragile bubbles are being negatively impacted by the ugly white noise coming in from the outside.
Gloria DryGarden
@Belafon: nominated.
I love this: “here’s what happened. Why are you telling lies to see what will stick?”
my tablet lets me copy, but not paste in these comments. So I pasted it in the tag nomination. Unfortunately, my email won’t send or receive until I clear it up. I hope someone else nominates it. It’s a gem.
Lies can be so darned destructive and divisive, and usually for no good reason.
RaflW
@Ohio Mom: I’d be curious what Rupar’s gummies budget looks like.
Gloria DryGarden
@Feckless: I was thinking the same thing.
has he no shame? Does he mind if his son recognizes how much dad is lying, and for what reasons?
Do religious people really believe they only have to “accept Jesus” as their god, and ask god to forgive their sins, and then they can do what they will, harming vast swaths of people? That their actions and lies don’t matter?
p.a.
Well I guess the ball is now in the professional military’s court. Will their response be better than others’?
Is our institutions learning?
RaflW
@iKropoclast: If you think that’s my M.O. we have nothing to discuss.
The Thin Black Duke
@Harrison Wesley: The key word here is “white”. That’s dialing up the authoritarian violence to ‘11’.
MisterForkbeard
@Eolirin: We’re not going full isolationist. Trump wants to be able to attack and invade foreign countries at will. He’s currently posturing in… Brazil, or Venezuela, isn’t he?
Though to be fair, he mostly wants to be able to inflict a bunch of damage. Drones and planes will do most of that – not a bunch of grunts.
Harrison Wesley
@prostratedragon: What kind of woke DEI trans Marxism is this?
Matt McIrvin
@Leto: A thing I’ve always found paradoxical, but that is particularly evident in recent years, is the degree to which the right-wing ideal of badass hypermasculinity includes an element of humiliating and abject submission. Hazing rituals are where it really comes to a point.
iKropoclast
@RaflW: No, not you. D leadership.
Paul in KY
@iKropoclast: Thank you sir! May I have another?
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW:
One possible consequence that worries me is that they’ll start falling back on “shock and awe” airstrikes.
I’m imagining the Philly police vs. MOVE, or maybe the Tulsa massacre, only on a vaster scale with modern tech.
(eta: or Guernica)
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: Yup. That’s it.
Deputinize America
Quoted many times while braced:
“The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army. It is possible to impart instruction and give commands in such a manner and such a tone of voice as to inspire in the soldier no feeling but an intense desire to obey, while the opposite manner and tone of voice cannot fail to excite strong resentment and a desire to disobey.
The one mode or the other in dealing with subordinates springs from a corresponding spirit in the breast of the commander. He who feels the respect which is due to others cannot fail to inspire in them respect for himself; while he who feels, and hence manifests, disrespect toward others, especially his subordinates, cannot fail to inspire hatred against himself.”
– LTG John M. Schofield, 1879
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Christ! If that happens, then anything is on the table. God forbid anything like that happens. Maybe the best thing would be a military coup? Those O-7 and above guys & gals have got to think they’d do a better job running the country than the 2 creepos up there ranting at them.
Harrison Wesley
@Matt McIrvin: And bring back amphetamines for the pilots! A real morale booster!
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: The Washigton Post still does good reporting. I don’t subscribe, but other people I follow (and respect) report on and cite WaPo stories
jonas
@trollhattan: What doomed the Soviet economy almost from the very beginning is that factory managers and other bureaucrats knew that production quotas and other stats had to be politically massaged. So no-one ever knew what was being made, how many people were working, or what was going on in the economy. But the numbers were great!
So this is great news.
At some point the Titans of Industry and Wall Street bigwigs who installed Trump are going to realize that all the chaos and incompetence and corruption aren’t worth even the biggest tax cuts and deregulation. Right now they think they can just ride this wave of crazy and it will eventually settle down. It will not settle down until they stand up and pull the money plug and declare MAGA over. But it just may well be too late by then.
Trivia Man
@sab: I peeked at the Faux news website… not a peep yet
Matt McIrvin
@Harrison Wesley: Well, maybe they just use drones. But then they have to compete with the CIA.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: Bear in mind, the track record of such actions at achieving reliable political control over a region is, uh, pretty bad.
Bill Arnold
@prostratedragon:
One potentially-big positive; all the assembled, i.e. all the high-ranking US military, had to listen to this. They heard this demented babble and much more similar babble, first hand. They also had to at least pretend to pay attention.
Emily B.
@Eolirin: Americans tend to feel invulnerable from invasion. But Ukraine is successfully using drones to attack targets deep inside Russia. US armed forces pioneered the use of drones overseas—are we prepared to defend against them at home?
Harrison Wesley
@Emily B.: We’ve already used them to kill civilians in international waters.
Jeffro
interesting that trumpov wants outright violence in NYC, LA, San Fran, Chicago…but not in any of Texas’ major cities, or Florida’s, or New Orleans, or Nashville.
if only I could figure out the reason why those cities are different…hmm…
Trivia Man
@Matt McIrvin: still to come: private interviews off the record
NotMax
“War is a racket.”
– Gen. Smedley Butler
.
Mai Naem mobile
@trollhattan: that’s the BLS and GDP equivalent of the ‘don’t test for COVID’ so the numbers stay low. Also, the numbers will still be available to insiders. Carl Quintanilla had a graph up with recent insider trades showing bear/bull insider trade ratios going way higher towards the bears.
Eolirin
@Emily B.: Who’s going to be launching these drones? We’re still a nuclear power. That’d be tantamount to a declaration of war and even if we can’t win a war with conventional forces, we can destroy the whole world several times over with our nuclear arsenal.
So if it’s small non-state even if state-backed terrorist groups we already would struggle to shut that down, and no major nation state, even the North Koreans, show any indication of being that bold.
MattF
WaPo summarizes:
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: I know.
Jackie
@Chigail: GO Mariners!
piratedan
I’m just guessing that we’ll see Jeffries statement in writing at about the same time that the DOJ releases the Epstein Files……
Trivia Man
@Geminid: I had a sudden realization – is this the only example of trump filtering himself consciously? Not even trump is willing to say THAT N word in public.
Is there any other line he won’t cross?
StringOnAStick
@piratedan: Maybe put some quotes around “statement” since it doesn’t actually exist!
cain
@MisterForkbeard:
The idea is to train the troops on… ::check notes:: American cities.
cain
@jonas:
They’ll also realize that having war in American cities is bad for the economy.
Jackie
@RaflW:
Next step: Reactivate the Draft.
Trivia Man
@Chigail: Brewers v Mariners is the goal. I will also welcome Cleveland or San Diego.
cain
@Trivia Man:
He really wants to launch a nuke. He wanted to do it last term too but they stopped him. Hegsleth also wants to launch a nuke. They both think it’ll be a fun big boom. But they might as well declare they the enemy of the entire world.
His evangelical supporters will cheer because it will signal the end of times or some stupid shit like that.
StringOnAStick
In all seriousness, they don’t have to use guns on protesters because there are crowd control weapons developed when Shrub was in office, like directional infrared dishes that make any group of people it is aimed at immediately feel like they are being seriously burned. I remember getting chills reading about it then because I knew it meant that mass protest would no longer be effective if it was deployed; this is so, so much worse than tear gas or pepper spray because it causes actual damage that can’t be ignored. The point is, if they decide to shoot people in order to control them, it’s because they want to. I think this is where the military is going to have to make a choice.
Melancholy Jaques
@trollhattan:
Really surprised not surprised that there is not more pushback against this from Wall Street. Some might say that the need for transparency takes a back seat to the opportunities to exploit the lack thereof.
Trivia Man
@Baud: he forgot portland. If he plans to N Word any city US city he might start there
Matt McIrvin
@jonas:
Which is when the threats kick in. At this point, Trump doesn’t even have to resort to anything messy or violent; he can just threaten huge lawsuits and regulatory harassment, and most of them roll over.
chemiclord
@The Thin Black Duke:
They saw white people being massacred at Kent State and initially cheered.
They met white children being shot up in school with a shrug of indifference.
WaterGirl
@Gloria DryGarden: They think it’s okay if they are lying for god.
Coincidentally, god wants them to lie about whatever the individual person wants to lie about.
Trivia Man
@Kathleen: What an excellent hosting move. Big message on the scoreboard do the team could pose for pictures. Class act.
Gretchen
Cole wrote recently about how Kegbreath’s “grooming standards” (refusal of shaving exemptions) disproportionately affects Black men because they’re more likely to get ingrown hairs and need to stop shaving. So a little more racist selection.
Matt McIrvin
@StringOnAStick: I think it’s interesting that they seem to… *kind of* care about the rulings over the Posse Comitatus Act?
They sent the federalized Guard into LA, there was huge pushback and eventually that was ruled illegal. So now, they’re using Guard troops that were not federalized but voluntarily offered by state governors like Abbott; and unless a governor requests them they’re mostly using them in Washington, DC, and all that does an end run around the precise language of the Posse Comitatus Act and also avoids federal/state conflicts.
None of that restricts ICE, of course.
Kathleen
@Trivia Man: Yes it was!
Gretchen
@The Thin Black Duke: Utah governor Spencer Cox saw the video of Charlie Kirk being shot and said he couldn’t get the horror of the sight out of his head. For some reason that struck him but he doesn’t have the imagination to see that school shootings look as bad as that but with a bunch of little kids instead of one adult man. Is that why we accept other mass shootings? Because people don’t see videos of the gore?
Melancholy Jaques
@chemiclord:
Although that is also is my recollection, that is not how the event is remembered. Anti-war protesters were never popular, never had majority support.
Baud
I wish I had gotten Moderna.
Mike E
I must push back on this tragedy used in your example… what happened in Phila in 1985 was nothing of that sort. It was a colossal fuck up, an attempt to remove a “rooftop fortification” in order to eliminate a sniper’s spot before officers began storming what was essentially a siege bunker with railroad pilings installed on its interior. The police dropped C4 on the roof which blew off the nest, then ignited containers of gasoline which burned out of control (firefighters were ordered to wait, also) and an entire block of rowhomes (some 58 in total) were destroyed. Nobody was awed by this complete miscalculation of applied force, nor were they cowed by this display of incompetence. I was there, then.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Melancholy Jaques: I recall people declaiming that killing was what the protesters deserved. I was a student at Michigan at the time, so all that hit home.
Peke Daddy
@MattF: I’d take Jim Ignatowski over Trump, ten times out of ten.
Shalimar
@MattF: That is what I was thinking of when he told them that Democrats disrespected them. Seriously? These are all very smart people. I don’t think they believe that bullshit.
Baud
Geminid
@Geminid: In a more serious vein, Clash Report just posted this:
There have been predictions/rumors that another round of fighting between Israel and Iran would happen this Fall, and that the U.S. might take an active role. That may be what this is about.
Also, U.S. and Iranian officials have talked privately since the U.S. strikes in June, about Iran’s Uranian enrichment program. Basically, the U.S. is demanding they give it up and Iran insists it won’t.
Last week, France, Germany and the U.K. suscessfully invoked the “snapback” of U.N. sanctions suspended in 2015 when the JCPOA was implemented. So Iran is under a lot pressure.
Old School
@Baud:
From the article:
“Experts say.”
Baud
@Old School:
Deputinize America
Why we have rules, and why we don’t let junior officers and enlisted cook up their own ROE:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre
Thankfully, Green hung himself in 2014, otherwise, Trump would have pardoned him.
Geminid
@Trivia Man: But if Trump’s filters worked he wouldn’t even bring this up. What’s the point? I just take it as more evidence of decompensation and decline. That’s been piling up lately
Deputinize America
@Melancholy Jaques:
There was, at best, about 30% hard opposition to further war in Vietnam. The rest either supported it or were indifferent – but they didn’t like the draft.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: knowing what trump is.. that tells us about mitt, that he would go for such a request. Mmm.
tam1MI
Even as the cause they were protesting for did. It a lesson the Gazassholes are going to learn the hard way.
TONYG
Miss Bianca
@RaflW: Sooner would know better than I would, so I am glad to see him weigh in with that opinion.
Harrison Wesley
@Gloria DryGarden: Disappointing. I’m no Mitt fan, but I did respect his father.
TONYG
@Deputinize America: I was a young teenager (a little bit too young to be drafted) in a blue-collar town during the last four years of the Vietnam war. The mood among the boys that I knew was basically indifference to the war as long as they weren’t personally drafted and sent over there. I imagine that a lot of them became Reagan/Bush/Trump voters later in life.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: thx.
I was away, deleting emails, so I can get my email to send and receive again. Right now senders get a failure message, unable to deliver.
now I’ll have to consider what to do with the various news summary services I get. Dang.
Trivia Man
@Melancholy Jaques: my father never stopped cheering kent state. “Should have done more and more often. Taught those hippies a lesson, all protests stopped after that.”
(ignores all protests after kent state)
He also hates hippies for giving 1968 to Nixon with their Chicago misbehavior. (Ignores vietnam treason and the mayor Daley/ cop escalation.)
From staunch hubert humprey fan to a cheerleader of pat buchannan then trump his political journey disappoints and disgusts me,
David Collier-Brown
@Paul in KY:
We have such a profession, but they work for owners that really really don’t want that to be true.
Miss Bianca
@Jackie: but only draft white guys? That’ll go over a treat.
Kathleen
@Melancholy Jaques: That is correct about protesters being unpopular. Ironically, I don’t believe the 4 students who were shot were protesting at the time the shots were fired but I would have to double check that.
David Collier-Brown
@RaflW: Reduce the size of the military, increase the size of ICE
Paul in KY
@Mike E: I think he’s also saying this hypothetical assault would be as big a fuckup as the MOVE assault was.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Exactly what the fuck would that have done, except pardon the felon?
David Collier-Brown
@prostratedragon: Even the SS: they had to create special units of volunteers to do the murdering of civilians.
sherparick
@WTFGhost: Yea, those “mobs” with “sticks” outside the ICE facility in Portland really do look intimidating. NOT. katu.com/newsletter-daily/protests-continue-outside-the-portland-ice-facility-amid-uncertainty
Trump basically said he wants to unleash the military on U.S. Citizens are are not MAGA and Hegseth said there are no longer such things as war crimes for the U.S. military.
Paul in KY
@David Collier-Brown: So it has come to pass.
Jackie
@Miss Bianca:
LOL I chuckled over the thought of how many white republicans would declare themselves transgender ala Corporal Klinger reporting to the Draft Board in a dress.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@kindness: All of us can speak out in moral terms. All of us. Frankly, that’s necessary.
trollhattan
@TONYG:And the same Nixon, after being elected in a relative squeaker, was reelected by a virtual landslide two years later.
America spoke, loud and clear.
And yet, two years later he was tossed out on his ear by a disgusted nation and congress.
We may now have only one of those two qualities.
iKropoclast
Protect MAGA feelings.
As opposed to ours, which must be fucked.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Bill Arnold: Yes, and officers tend to be GOP. One can only hope that will start to change.
Matt McIrvin
@sherparick: They want the protesters to be young, brown or Black, and scary-looking. Any combination of those things triggers the violent response.
When they get these crowds of elderly white protesters, that’s when you get Stephen Miller chortling about “90-year-old hippies”. The tactic is to just ignore them, make some jokes.
And, yeah, when they can get away with ignoring you you’re not as effective either. But I try to do my bit.
Archon
@SFAW: Only thing white conservatives hate more than black people and their causes are white people who align with black people and their causes.
sherparick
@SFAW: Pretty much. As other replies note below (above, where ever), the “Silent Majority” in 1970 mostly cheered the shootings at Kent State and only wish the Ohio Guard had shot more. The Governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, who was probably the guy most responsible for the shootings, couldn’t run for again for Governor in 1970, but did in 1974 and was reelected that year and again in 1978.
sherparick
@Matt McIrvin: I was just using the picture to point out the evil absurdity of Trump and Miller claiming that Portland is being “destroyed.” Really, have nothing but respect for these folks who are very brave, brave than I am, because incredible violence could descend on them at any moment.
Kathleen
Jeffries and Dem Reps are having a telethon and it’s going to go all night I think. youtube.com/watch?v=2dm-OKjXWU4
They keep repeating their message about Republican shutdown, saving healthcare, Repubs on vacation and every Dem rep is at the Capitol. Jamie Raskin is talking now.
ETA Raskin talking about all the court cases Dems have field on all kinds of issues like mass firings.
Paul in KY
@iKropoclast: I guess that was it. Protecting their widdle fee fees
WTFGhost
@The Thin Black Duke: Especially without us geeks and weirdos wanting to be involved in such an awful place for weirdos.
I’ll say it again and again: show us love and acceptance, tolerate our weirdness, and praise it when it helps – sometimes it does – and you will have some of the most loyal people you’ve ever seen.
@RaflW: It’s an ugly thing to say, but it’s what a soldier might say his or her job is. If you don’t need us to deal death, or break something, you don’t want us doing the job.
Sure, you can capture, instead of kill. Sure, you can leave them unable to move, having bombed a bridge or dam. Maybe you can destroy their airfields, so they are forced to acknowledge they can’t win a shooting battle, without air support. All of those things are true, but, in the end, all of this is killing (or bringing the very real threat of death), or, breaking something.
So I imagine the calm response would be to say “alkie, you just told us why we should never, ever, be sent to US cities to fight crime.”
@WaterGirl: yes. It really puzzles me, because one thing that Jesus frequently said was that God knows all. So, all I can do is imagine God, like a patient parent, Socratically tearing the fecal matter out of the transparent justifications, so they’re forced to admit, “so you did it out of a desire for personal glory, without any concern for what I wanted, is that it?”
Given that this means eternal torment, because there are no back-takesies, I just can’t imagine anyone who believes that crap has a deep spiritual relationship of any sort.
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost: Evangelical Protestants talk a lot about how God told them this or that. They prayed and asked God something, and God responded.
For the most part I don’t think these people are hallucinating; they just identify the workings of their feelings about right and wrong, such as they are, as God talking to them.
But, of course, that means that the thoughts they personally had off the cuff now have the full prophetic weight of divine authority.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: My late friend Chris was a devout Christian, but in his own way. He would poke fun at people who claimed God told them this or that. Chris pointed out that Moses lived for 120 years, and God only spoke to him twice.
Kayla Rudbek
@kindness: it’s the American heresy, as called out by rahaeli on Bluesky
Kayla Rudbek
@The Thin Black Duke: and where are they going to find the NCOs to actually run their Aryan military?
Kayla Rudbek
@Gloria DryGarden: yes, that’s exactly what the Protestants think! Catholic tradition is that you have to do penance for your sins in order to be forgiven (although in practice this did result in the rich buying indulgences, which at least did siphon some money out of their pockets) and that faith without works is dead and empty (all words/talk, no concrete actions)
Kayla Rudbek
@Matt McIrvin: and suddenly I understand why one of the men’s dormitories at my undergrad had both a hazing ritual for the freshmen and then years later, the accusations of rape etc. came out against the dormitory rector…
Kayla Rudbek
@Melancholy Jaques: this goes hand in hand with the meme stocks like Tesla and the various Ai companies, which are attracting a lot of money which should rationally be going into renewable energy, recycling, biomedical research etc
Kayla Rudbek
@kindness:
@Kayla Rudbek: here’s a link to rahaeli’s thread, read it up and down: bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3lor47x66ls2q
Paul in KY
@Kayla Rudbek: ICE!