"A sickening moral slum of an administration"
George Will's verdict.
There is a temptation to describe what happened yesterday as somehow a “new low.” Our somnolent, gibbering, incoherent, deeply corrupt President, surrounded by his fawning toadies, unleashed a torrent of dehumanizing racist bile, disinformation, and threats.
But it’s not a new low. It’s the same old low. A scene we’ve seen repeated so often there is a kind of numbness to it. Outrage did not ensue. This is what I meant when I wrote earlier this week that all the canaries in the coal mine are dead, departed, and bleeding demised.
During an open cabinet meeting yesterday, Trump called Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., “garbage” and said Somalis should “go back to where they came from.
“I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason.”
If we define “news” only as what is novel rather than what is right in front of our eyes, this is not particularly newsworthy. Trump has been attacking racial and ethnic groups for his entire political career: Mexicans, Muslims, Haitians, Afghans, Africans in general, along with migrants from what he memorably called “shithole” countries.
That was not, of course all Trump said. He dismissed concerns about affordability as something that “doesn’t mean anything to anybody”; seemed to double down on his willingness to commit war crimes as part of his fake war on drugs; lied once again about the 2020 election, and blithered on about, well, God knows what.
I mean, really, WTAF was this apparent reference to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg?
“Under Boot Edge Edge -- another grossly incompetent. Get on his bicycle, ride to work. He was just terrible. What they do is they take the fiber optics and they take fiber, try to hook it into copper. And fiber and copper don’t mix. You can’t do it. But people knew that for the last 30 years since they started doing the fiber. And uhhh, they spent billions of dollars and it didn’t work. And you saw that by the helicopter crash. You saw that into the plane. You saw that by a lot of things.”
Meanwhile, he posted a demand that a military tribunal to try Barack Obama for TREASON.
**
And then there was Pete Hegseth…
Happy Wednesday.
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Will’s Verdict
In the Before Times, George Will was the dean of conservative letters, so attention ought to be paid to his latest column: “Trump, Hegseth and a sickening moral slum of an administration” - The Washington Post
Writes Will: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.”
Indeed, despite the attempts to shift blame, what happened is not a mystery.
No operational necessity justified Hegseth’s de facto order to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage of one of the supposed drug boats obliterated by U.S. forces near Venezuela. His order was reported by The Post from two sources (“The order was to kill everybody,” one said) and has not been explicitly denied by Hegseth. President Donald Trump says Hegseth told him that he (Hegseth) “said he did not say that.” If Trump is telling the truth about Hegseth, and Hegseth is telling the truth to Trump, it is strange that (per the Post report) the commander of the boat-destroying operation said he ordered the attack on the survivors to comply with Hegseth’s order.
Forty-four days after the survivors were killed, the four-star admiral who headed the U.S. Southern Command announced he would be leaving that position just a year into what is usually a three-year stint. He did not say why. Inferences are, however, permitted.
Will focuses on what the story tells us about the moral swamp of the Administration.
The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated.
Thoughts on TN-07
First the obvious: The results in last night’s special election are a clear warning sign for the GOP. In 2024, Trump won the ruby-red district by 22-points. Last night the Republican candidate won by just nine points — a massive shift away from the GOP.
But, if you are up for a somewhat contrarian take, consider Liam Kerr’s analysis of lessons that Dems might learn from the near-miss:
Special elections are a chance to try new models, and re-learn old lessons.
That is surely the case in Tennessee’s 7th congressional district, where Democratic Socialist state legislator Aftyn Behn just lost a high-profile race in a district Donald Trump won by 22 points.
Behn focused on affordability, but Republicans focused on her past calls for abolishing the police and video of her stating “I am a radical.” Media amplified her leftist background - and even on the friendly confines of MSNBC Behn did not walk back or condemn her past approval of burning down a police station.
With Democrats in 2025 special elections running an average of more than 20 points ahead of presidential margin, the seat was squarely in play. As recently as 2018, this district was deadlocked in the ticket-topping Senate race, and national Democrats put millions into making sure it was competitive.
Progressive Behn endorsers like AOC1 and far-left groups like DSA, Justice Democrats, and Our Revolution had never flipped a seat from red-to-blue. Breaking that streak in such a red seat would have demonstrated new possibilities.
Data guru Simon Bazelon has a similar take:
“Aftyn Behn was a missed opportunity. Republicans were unusually vulnerable, but the right message isn’t enough with the wrong track record. Democrats in red districts can’t just talk affordability and hope voters don’t notice they walk left on everything else. If candidates don’t match their district, Republicans will make sure the voters know. Despite a well-run race and significant investment, Tennessee voters knew Aftyn Behn did not share their views.”
Simon was a guest on our podcast last month with a similar warning.
Thoughts? Comment below.
Nota Bene
ICYMI: Tom Nichols — Pete Hegseth Needs to Go—Now - The Atlantic (Gift link):
The halls of the Pentagon are apparently strewn with rakes these days, and Hegseth has managed to step on almost all of them, including security blunders, needless fights with the press, and envious, unmanly whining about the medals on the uniform of Senator Mark Kelly, a veteran of higher rank and far greater achievement than Hegseth himself. Like Trump, Hegseth thinks his job is to get even with people he views as enemies: When Hegseth pulled more than 800 senior officers into an auditorium to give them a long and pointless harangue, it was not only disrespectful; it was cringe-inducing, like watching the angriest kid in your high school come back 20 years later as the principal and unload his adolescent gripes on all the teachers in the staff lounge….
Yesterday, the secretary of defense of the United States of America posted a meme on X depicting Franklin, the cartoon turtle who is a beloved children’s-book character, as a Special Forces operator killing people on boats. He added a comment: “For your Christmas wish list…” Just to make the point, the secretary tagged the X account of SOUTHCOM, the Southern Forces Command, which has had to carry out the strikes, as if blowing up boats and killing the survivors was a joke to be shared with a chuckle and a backslap.
Perhaps Hegseth thinks that sinking boats on the high seas is funny. Maybe he just wanted to own the libs and all that. Or maybe he thought he could disrupt the gathering war-crimes narrative, like the school delinquent pulling a fire alarm during an exam. Or maybe he just has poor judgment and even worse impulse control (which would explain a lot of things about Pete Hegseth). No matter the reason, his choice to trivialize the use of American military force reveals both the shallowness of the man’s character and the depth of his contempt for the military as an institution.
BONUS: Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on Hegseth’s spin, Via CNN:
In this sense, it looks to me like they’re trying to pin the blame on somebody else and not them. There’s a very distinct statement [that] was said on Sunday. Secretary Hegseth has said he had no knowledge of this and it did not happen. It was “fake news.” It didn’t happen.
And then the next day, from the podium at the White House, they’re saying it did happen. So either he was lying to us on Sunday or he’s incompetent and didn’t know what had happened. Do we think there’s any chance that on Sunday, the secretary of the defense did not know there had been a second strike?
Wednesday dogs
Christmas boys… from my wife’s Substack.
The chapter in Hegseth's book in which he rails against JAG officers and recounts how he advised troops under his command to ignore them should play an interesting role in his eventual trial.
Trump is the worst President since……Trump.