Trump+Musk; the DOGE and Pony show continues -Trump thread #140

[Spandauer]

Trump, as out of control as a faulty Tesla, takes an ICE pick to the Constitution.

Thanks to @AcrossthePond55 and @Jaichangecentfoisdenom for the thread title and sub-title 😊

Photocollage: Cold War Steve
Map illustration: Barry Blitt

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5286872-the-orange-man-and-the-state-of-his-union-trump-thread-139

The BBC have picked this up now. I really hope this story doesn’t die and that at least one of them will be fired

They’re reporting that Trump has “full confidence in his national security team”. If so he has some seriously low expectations.

Isn't that why he appointed them?

He looks like a fat Tim Brooke Taylor (RIP)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/trump-colorado-portrait-painting

It's exploding

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-trump-yemen-war-chat-reaction

And so it should! Seems the journalist actually left the chat himself once he realised what it was, who knows how long he could have stayed on there otherwise.

The other question I haven’t seen answered is who else managed to sneak in…..

I think Goldberg identified all the other members

In an old job we were told not to talk about detailed work stuff over messaging services because the risk of adding the wrong number is too great. So we had a what’s app group for general stuff like, I’m at a in person meeting today if you need me I’m offline until 12. But if we were discussing an actual strategy ect… it was to be done by email.

Towards the bottom of this article there is quoted text from Vance, Hesgeth and others disparaging Europe.
They sound like bullies loving their jobs too much

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-trump-yemen-war-chat

On Signal you get a full list of members of a chat

He should probably be thankful he didn’t end up in the chat where they share their tiny little tadgers 🤢

I’d like to say I’m surprised re the messaging app, but idiots gonna idiot.

Vance clearly hates Europe and presumably (all) Europeans (apart from AfD that is).We shouldn't trust him as far as we can throw him. Greenland should tell Usha Vance to eff off back to her hillbilly.

.

I reads like he was only aware of people once they talked in the chat though. Which is presumably why they didn’t know here was there until he left and a message will have popped up.

Not inconceivable that others might have been added by mistake and they didn’t make themselves known.

They won’t care one jot. They knowingly break the rules all the time, and there’s virtually nothing anyone can do about it. Sadly.

This is interesting to see. Hegseth having a meltdown about what happened, followed by Goldberg calm and collected explaining in detail what actually did happen without disclosing anything he shouldn't.

bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3ll6g36imrs2k

I do wonder if Hegseth is in panic mode about potentially being a fall guy for this.

The defence secretary also defended the military operation discussed in the chat, citing its success. When pressed by reporters, Hegseth criticised Goldberg as a "deceitful and highly discredited" journalist and resisted questions about the content of the messages.
House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said the breach had been a mistake, but argued that the chat showed "top level officials doing their job, doing it well".

I wonder how the White House Press Secretary will spin this?

Deny
Attack
Change subject

It's a cult

I learned about abusers' tactics here on Mumsnet.

It is very depressing to see how effectively DT and his crew have implemented the abuser playbook on a national scale. Any normal person who treats others fairly and applies rules the same across the board just gets creamed when faced with this, because most people apparently are too stupid to see or care about the inconsistencies.

"But her emails" ---> "We used an unauthorized chat platform and copied in random people? Nbd and actually that journalist is shit."

Maddening.

I’m sure she’ll manage to make some suitably smarmy comments. Probably trying to discredit the journalist.

Isn’t it more embarrassing to have accidentally sent highly sensitive information to a “shit” journalist, especially given that journalist somehow managed to inform the world?

In the interview I linked above, the journalist sounded very professional and did not divulge anything he should not have done