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Posted

I'm sure there will be a Congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this. Lock them up! Lock them up!

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Posted
6 hours ago, Mole said:

Blaming the reporter; another example of that conservative personal responsibility they love to crow about. Obviously our country has a stupidity problem, but it goes hand in hand with the run away character problem.

Yeah, you knew when you started reading that thread that it would devolve into "it's the reporter's fault". Completely on brand. Also on brand is Hillary's emails. Then Bill for his relationship with Epstein while ignoring their orange god flying around in Epstein's plane.

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Posted
11 hours ago, Firemans4Horn said:

Six Short Thoughts on the Most Insane Trump Story of All Time

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Trump's "Team of Amateurs" Screwed Up in the Most Hilarious (and Troublesome) Way

This afternoon, just before 1 pm ET, The Atlantic posted what is, hands down, the wildest and most insane story I have ever read about US national security: The White House National Security Advisor added the editor of The Atlanticto a group chat with nation’s most senior leaders — including the vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, director of national intelligence, and CIA director — to discuss classified war plans and a weekend military operation targeting the Houthis in Yemen. 

Read the article yourself. 

No, really — if you haven’t — please stop here and just go read the article. I promise you the headline and whatever summary you’ve heard is way less weird, way less troubling, and way less eye-popping than the reality. 

Please go read it and then come back here. 

An actual screenshot from The Atlantic editor’s Jeffrey Goldberg’s accidental group chat 

Now that you’ve read the whole piece (you did, right?), I wanted to share six quick reactions worth thinking about: 

1) Imagine the other foot. I know it’s exhausting to think about the “but her emails!” comparisons, but I’d like you to imagine for a minute what would have happened if Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had accidentally added Tucker Carlson to a group chat about classified war plans? It’s impossible to imagine Sullivan lasting a single hour in office before resigning — this would be the biggest scandal of the Biden administration full stop. There would be Republican congressional hearings, the ole flurry of subpoenas, and calls across Capitol Hill for multiple officials to resign. And here’s the thing: They would all be right. Here’s a whole thread that Matthew Gertz pulled together of all the same officials from the group chat previously damning the mishandling of classified intel. And yet it seems all but impossible to imagine any of the Trump officials facing any punishment for this egregious violation of multiple federal laws. There is no shame in this administration — and that, in and of itself, should deeply deeply concern us as citizens. A functioning democracy requires public officials capable of shame and embarrassment and accountability. 

2) Our allies are watching. It’s worth also considering how our allies will read this story too. The first Trump administration had plenty of its own problems protecting valuable national security information — remember Trump telling the Russian foreign minister about a classified Israeli operation? — and Trump out of office famously kept all manner of classified intel in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. Now add to that troubled record the worrisome appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. Now add to that the recent Trump rhetoric raising concerns about US reliability as an ally or defense partner. Now add to all of that two new stories from just the last 100 hours: The idea that Elon Musk was going to be briefed on secret China war plans and now, the very next business day, a stunning example of the Trump principals mishandling sensitive operational war plans. Put all of that together and ask yourself: Is this a government and group of people you’d want to share your own sensitive intelligence with? Is this a government and group of people you’d be willing to share intelligence that put lives of your operatives or agents at risk? The CIA director posted an active undercover intelligence officer’s name in the group chat for pete’s sake. There are already moves to isolate the US from international intelligence sharing — and surely this story will only accelerate those conversations, to our detriment and our allies’ detriment. 

3) The White House just doesn’t believe the rules apply to it (Part 1). 18 U.S.C. § 793(f) makes it a federal crime for people entrusted with information related to the national defense to, “through gross negligence permit [classified intelligence] to be … delivered to anyone in violation of [that] trust.” 

If the test for a criminal investigation is “gross negligence,” I guess it would be slightly more grossly negligent to add Dmitry Peskov or Vladimir Putin himself to a principals’ committee Signal chat about classified war plans, but only barely. In fact, there are two separate but important parts of this mishandling that would be worthy of follow-up investigation: Waltz’s original action adding Jeffrey Goldberg to the group chat, but then, after Goldberg left the chat, no one bothered to see who “JG” was in the chat group in the first place. It doesn’t appear that the Trump administration even realized Goldberg had been in the chat until he went to the National Security Council for comment. Did anyone realize that Goldberg was in the chat? If so, that’s a separate violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(f), which requires anyone “having knowledge that [classified intelligence] has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust … fails to make prompt report of such loss.” If no one is monitoring who is leaving these group chats nor paying attention to who is added and who is in one conversation vs. another, that’s a recipe for even more counterintelligence failures going forward. 

4) The White House just doesn’t believe the rules apply to it (Part 2). All sorts of corners of the US government use encrypted Signal chats in ways both it should and shouldn’t. But the fact that Mike Waltz “set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four” should raise all sorts of alarms for us as citizens and particularly for us journalists and historians. This is clearly not a Signal thread that anyone had any intention of preserving — as they are legally required to do! — under federal records law. So: How many other Signal group chats are underway right now where people in the Trump White House are ignoring federal law? What decisions are being made right now with no records or future accountability? To be clear, this is itself a violation of federal law — and not only did no one on the group chat object (“Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be having policy discussions on a group chat!”) but they all participated casually and deeply enough to make clear that this is routine SOP in the Trump administration today. 

5) This is not a smoothly functioning government (Part 543,651,690). Lost amid the headline-grabbing insanity of the classified details is what the principals were discussing on the group chat. It doesn’t take reading too deeply between the lines to see that the principals weren’t entirely clear on what Trump had ordered — someone, apparently Stephen Miller, says, “as I heard it, the president was clear: green light” — which raises some troubling questions about how much White House staff and Cabinet leaders are interpreting or reading the tea leaves on vague presidential directives or desires. When the president of the United States commits US military forces to operations overseas there shouldn’t be any “as I heard it” ambiguity. Moreover, the principals here were having notably pointed policy discussions in the group chat — which, under a normal functioning government, would be handled at the interagency level by staff and sorted out long before it got a point where the vice president and defense secretary are texting back and forth. The idea that the highest-ranking officials of the US government are just texting each other in the same group chat you use with your college roommates from a decade ago should raise dizzying questions about how policy is being thoughtfully decided and road-tested inside the federal government right now. This is what happens when you fill a government with all of the most unqualified people ever to hold their roles — the most unqualified vice president, the most unqualified secretary of defense, the most unqualified director of national intelligence, the most unqualified FBI director, and on and on and on. This will surely not be the last time we see Trump’s “Team of Amateurs” stumble into messes. 

6) Democrats are still not up for this moment. Criticizing the Trump administration for this spectacular foul-up should be one of the easiest calls for Dems on Capitol Hill. And while there were plenty of snide social mediacomments from Democratic members of Congress, notably missing was, you know, the actual outrage. Senators went with memes: 

Where were the calls for a special prosecutor? Where were the calls for resignations? Where were the calls for impeachments? If Democrats can’t muster the energy to be outraged about this — the world’s easiest outrage! — how are they possible up to this political moment? Every Dem should be hanging this albatross about the Trump administration and forcing every GOP member of Congress to defend or condemn this clown show of amateurs. 

Really, if you’ve made it this far and not read the underlying article, I beg you: Go read it. 

As I said to a friend this afternoon — here’s the crazy part: This would be an epochal career-ending scandal in any other modern presidential administration. It broke at 1 pm on a Monday, though, and so I’m not even sure it’ll be the biggest Trump scandal of today or this week….

 

Thank you and rep for the supplementary article on The Atlantic story. I've been a supporter of the Ledge for a long time, but I like how succinctly the writer summed it all up and it has less to do with the absolutely contemptible and horrific racism, misogyny, hate, and  faux piety and more about the dawning realization (for those who weren't already Ledge denizens) that this Administration, led by one of the crassest, tackiest, inept, and yes honestly deplorable "leaders" of our lifetime is going to lead this country to bankruptcy. Thorton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) had real money and a sincere heart (and a helluva lotta luck) in Back To School (1986), but Trump's education both in the halls of academia and the real world has been a con game and a salve for his wounded narcissistic ego for his entire life. Such a deal.

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Posted
13 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

Yeah, you knew when you started reading that thread that it would devolve into "it's the reporter's fault". Completely on brand. Also on brand is Hillary's emails. Then Bill for his relationship with Epstein while ignoring their orange god flying around in Epstein's plane.

Sure.

When you shift blame to the reporter and label them a traitor, it furthers your goal towards eliminating dissenting voices and provides an opportunity to begin the process of deploying the Khashoggi tactics used by your personal friends.

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Posted

While I agree that Goldberg might have disclosed a bit too much of the actual military plans, I absolutely do not blame him for going public with such a huge security gaffe.  But Hillary.

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Posted
18 minutes ago, Firemans4Horn said:

Some of this is old news. But the wanton cruelty/incompetence would bring down just about any other administration besides trump. 
 

 

The last quote by Dudek where he should've added, "I am a petty petty man."

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Posted
That's what is so different this time.  In his 1st term, those people did exist.  Not that they were good people, and they didn't stick around long, but there always seemed to be someone who talked him out of the really stupid shit.  
That doesn't exist now.

Which we were all saying was going to happen.

Yet, ‘murka.
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Posted
I always do that, I always mess up some mundane detail. image.thumb.jpeg.1f515cebbc5aaa3e781466e3a1ca4e10.jpeg

Jesus Christ. As if “texting the wrong person” is even the issue here.
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Posted
16 hours ago, Satchel said:

These people are monsters:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/dhs-sec-noem-says-move-193625920.html

Noem, whose department oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has previously vowed to “get rid of FEMA the way it exists today”; Trump has said he would close the agency entirely, but that would require an act of Congress.

Yes. I'm sure the Roman Senate will depose Augustus Caesar any day now.

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Posted

I just want to go on the record at state that I an shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, that the same president that discussed classified documents, and kept boxes of considered documents in unlocked closets and bathrooms, that his cabinet members and advisors are using a public messaging app to discuss war planning in a group chat that accidentally includes a member of the media. 

SHOCKING also is their outrage at others, I'm going to go calm down now to deal with all the shock

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Posted

That is a great point about the communications. I think I was alive at time when some of the public would care and the major news outlets would pursue the story.

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Posted
3 hours ago, bluto said:

The texags thread on this is something… they can’t figure out if fake news, it doesn’t matter, or intentional leak to show the world what the admin thinks of Europe. 

My Aggie brother managed to make this about Biden today. 

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Posted
9 minutes ago, Da Fino said:

My Aggie brother managed to make this about Biden today. 

Watch out.  Sounds like the kinda brother who might get some ideas from this week's episode of White Lotus.

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Posted
2 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

Screenshot_20250325-080940.png

Jokes on them.  The vast majority of Greenlanders live on the other side of the island.  Given the level of intelligence (or sobriety) of the people involved, I refuse to completely rule out the validity of this document.

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Posted
2 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

That is a great point about the communications. I think I was alive at time when some of the public would care and the major news outlets would pursue the story.

I, too, was alive in 2016. 

Posted
6 minutes ago, Firemans4Horn said:

Tulsi Gabbard is dumber than a bag of hammers. 

That's the great thing about this timeline: with most of these people, it's genuinely impossible to discern where the dumb stops and the evil starts, or vice-versa.  Every one of them is just a pot of dumb and evil all mixed together, like when you piss into your own diarrhea.

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Posted (edited)

Is anyone at all surprised that the collection of least qualified cabinet members ever, managed to do something stupid barely two months on the job?  Anyone?

Is anyone surprised that everyone thus far in the administration has lied about the classification of the information? Or that the real problem is the person reporting the stupidity?  

This is where we are now.  There are not longer public servants, there are chosen sycophants, with loyalty to one individual rather than the American people.  And that is EXACTLY the way Trump wants it.  There will be nothing more than a collective yawn from the GOP.  Trump is lucky, he has the most cowardly, feckless, and lacking of any moral compass Congress this country has ever seen.  So you have a collection of the dumbest making the decision making, wholly supported without question by the GOP cowards of congress.

This level on stupidity is going on constantly now.  And it's not going to change.  Just get used to it.  And when something horrific happens, remember... it will be Biden's fault...

I guess there is a small glimmer of hope with the Supreme Court, but with nobody to enforce the law against the Executive Branch... good luck with that...

Edited by horn4life
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Posted
8 minutes ago, MissingInAction said:

I've reached the point of not holding back when encountering a dotard boot licker.

They are too fucking stupid to understand anything, but it makes me feel better.

No, no ,no. You're supposed to give them flowers and a kiss on the cheek. So when you're being persecuted later by the trump gestapo they can look and say "hey honey, you remember that weirdo who gave me flowers and a kiss on the cheek? That fag was a traitor! Look, he's being deported by the king".

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Posted
2 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

That is a great point about the communications. I think I was alive at time when some of the public would care and the major news outlets would pursue the story.

Shit, if this exact thing, or the previous 100 exact things this administration have done over the last month, would have been done exactly one year ago today? Massive scandal, impeachment with democrats voting for removal, and a landslide victory for trump and this band of shit in November instead of the slim one. 

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Posted
7 minutes ago, horn4life said:

 

I guess there is a small glimmer of hope with the Supreme Court, but with nobody to enforce the law against the Executive Branch... good luck with that...

It's basically going to come down to this clueless admin, or a small group of military leaders who see opportunity and swoop in to kill them and take power for themselves. 

Democracy will not be restored in the US. It is a banana republic/east asian authoritarian shithole country now. Where the only question is will the military overthrow the dictator and how long will civil war last. In a country of 330 million people, every race in existence on the planet represented, and over 400 million guns. 

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Posted (edited)

This cuntstain ruins fucking everything. This weekend OKST wrestler Wyatt Hendrickson defeated Olympic gold medalist Gable Steveson of Minnesota to win the national heavyweight title, some are referring to it as the biggest upset in college wrestling history. He's a transfer from Air Force and is an officer and will report for service after the school year. Dotard and Elmo were there in Philadelphia for some reason and Hendrickson gave him a salute and got a pat on the back. Ordinarily, it's a pretty cool story, the president is the CIC after all. But this one is a traitor who has betrayed our allies and sided with our enemies, oh and he's a racist piece of shit at that who has removed stories of historical racial milestones in military history, is gutting the VA, berated war hero McCain because he was a political opponent, called soldiers suckers and losers, among all the other shit. There is no respect for the CIC title under these circumstances, and I have zero respect for anyone, including service members, who offer this type of respect, because he doesn't deserve it, period. Granted I don't follow wrestling much but would find some joy in seeing my alma mater have this type of success, but fuck him, and fuck the whole thing. Go to hell dotard, same for any of you who worship this fuckhead. 

 

image.png.344a652aa650fa8f36d33cea6be7519c.png

Edited by 'stache
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Posted

Turned on CNN and the first thing I saw was some bootlicker going “Well it’s not like they all deleted a bunch of emails from a private server!”

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Posted

Hell I am the point where I am just hoping we have elections in two years.  Right now I could completely see a GOP congress in lock step postpone the Federal Elections because of some Declaration of Emergency.  I hope like fuck I am wrong, but tell me what GOP congressman or Senator would stand up and say no? They would actually say... yeah... if we can ever get past this emergency, we will not only have elections but President Trump will release his health and tax records!  If we are just patient... a few more years...

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Posted
6 minutes ago, hornmpa96 said:

That is exactly what should happen. They should bring this up in every hearing on Capital Hill for this year. They should go on TV and ask publicly if Hegseth is drinking again. They should be hammering this message every day.

You know why it's only a damn near 90 year old Bernie Sanders and a single young puerto Rican woman out there? 

Because democrats in Congress aren't the ones being devastated by this lunacy. They're rich too. They're benefiting from the insider trading, bribes, and corruption. Why would they risk pissing the dictator off and getting hate mail and death threats from his army of idiots? Risk getting Kash's FBI or Tulsi's intelligence community, or Pam "We are privileged to serve Donald Trump" Bondi's Justice department sent to attack them?

It's over. The evil stupid have won because the cowards are fleeing

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Posted
1 minute ago, horn4life said:

Hell I am the point where I am just hoping we have elections in two years.  Right now I could completely see a GOP congress in lock step postpone the Federal Elections because of some Declaration of Emergency.  I hope like fuck I am wrong, but tell me what GOP congressman or Senator would stand up and say no? They would actually say... yeah... if we can ever get past this emergency, we will not only have elections but President Trump will release his health and tax records!  If we are just patient... a few more years...

If Trump decides he wants to "postpone" elections, there is not a single elected Republican who would publicly break with him.  

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

You know why it's only a damn near 90 year old Bernie Sanders and a single young puerto Rican woman out there? 

Because democrats in Congress aren't the ones being devastated by this lunacy. They're rich too. They're benefiting from the insider trading, bribes, and corruption. Why would they risk pissing the dictator off and getting hate mail and death threats from his army of idiots? Risk getting Kash's FBI or Tulsi's intelligence community, or Pam "We are privileged to serve Donald Trump" Bondi's Justice department sent to attack them?

It's over. The evil stupid have won because the cowards are fleeing

Nobody should be surprised or ignorant of the fact that the wrestlers that hate each other in the ring when the cameras are on and the crowd is watching, are best of friends in the privacy of the locker room. 

Posted
19 hours ago, 'stache said:

We’re gonna be 9/11’d again real soon, absolutely guaranteed. Probably give it another year or so to let the incompetence really set in but it’s gonna happen. Good luck everyone.

If they're smart, they'll be dressed like this so Trump bombs Toronto instead of Tehran:
Image of

Posted (edited)
28 minutes ago, horn4life said:

Hell I am the point where I am just hoping we have elections in two years.  Right now I could completely see a GOP congress in lock step postpone the Federal Elections because of some Declaration of Emergency...

The few GOP that have bothered to hold town hall type meetings have made that perfectly clear. The derision and disdain they hold for citizens is not disguised at all. They fear their colleagues in DC and the power there, not the electorate. That is a tell. It's pretty much been on the table since the first go round with the clown show, but we got lucky then. Once they got a do-over, that was the chance for them to walk in and sweep the winnings off the table, overturn it, and take over the saloon. Some of them are insanely stupid or lucky or connected and some of them are smart and know how to conceal and hide their actions while letting others provide cover from the potshots that fell the stooge(s) perched upon the windmill. It's not all that different from the movies ya know.

Edited by Mrs Whiggins
grammar
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Posted (edited)
42 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

You know why it's only a damn near 90 year old Bernie Sanders and a single young puerto Rican woman out there? 

Imagine believing those two aren't...

42 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

benefiting from the insider trading, bribes, and corruption

wow. 

Edited by fattyflattie
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