Secretary of DEFENSE Pete Hegseth
Hegseth is a Christian nationalist who understands the culture wars as a religious crusade, modeled on the Crusades at the turn of the first millennium and described in his manifesto, “American Crusade” (2020).
Hegseth belongs to a virulently un-American, explicitly anti-Christian, and militantly anti-Catholic sect which he promotes in the chapel at the Pentagon.
His own military career stalled at the rank of major, and now, cosplaying as “Secretary of War,” he is taking revenge on women and men who are better, smarter, and braver than he.
He’s a very dangerous man, driven by insecurity, trapped in addiction, desperately trying to conceal intellectual and moral weaknesses that disqualify him for the position he holds or for any responsible position in government.
And so he thumps his chest, pounds his podium, and worries about his testosterone.
Careful what you believe: Fox spreading its usual bullshit
Careful what you read: FOX News: Dozens of ships bound for “Lake America” have piled up at the entrance to the Welland — NOT TRUE
There are different accounts as to who is the culprit in posting this–but it is
NOT true. I chuckled when I saw it was Fox news!!
FOX News: Dozens of ships bound for “Lake America” have piled up at the entrance to the Welland Canal. Canada is refusing to grant them permission to proceed. Ships that list “Lake Ontario” in their documents are passing through the canal without obstruction.
NOT TRUE.
MEANWHILE, Canadians have a sense of humor that will drive Trump crazier.:
Pete Hegseth is a moron who is destroying the future Army
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotions of four Army officers selected for promotion to one-star rank, a highly unusual move that appears to be targeting officers who worked for generals he does not like, current and former defense officials said.
So far this year Mr. Hegseth has removed at least 45 officers, selected by boards made up of peers, from promotion lists. More than half of those officers have been female or Black.
Mr. Hegseth’s actions appear to violate the rules governing a promotion system that is meant to be apolitical and merit-based.
Some of the Army officers pulled from the latest list appear to have worked recently for Gen. Randy George, the former Army chief of staff, whom Mr. Hegseth fired without explanation in April. The others have ties to Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, the top U.S. Army commander in Europe, who was forced to leave the Army this summer, defense officials said.
Typically, Army one-star promotion lists consist of about three dozen officers.
General George and General Donahue led the Army’s push to adapt to a future battlefield dominated by drones and artificial intelligence and the officers pulled from the recent lists played important roles in shaping their modernization vision.
An officer whose promotion was blocked commanded one of the Army’s first “transformation in contact” brigades, officials said. These 3,000-soldier units were encouraged to experiment with new drone and artificial intelligence technology, even as they trained for war.
The officer developed a new formation that use drones, electronic warfare systems and traditional scouts to see and strike the enemy deep behind the front lines. His idea was adopted by all of the Army’s infantry brigades.
The officer was also targeted, in part, because of an essay he wrote in a graduate program on the implications of political polarization on the Army’s ability to recruit and retain talent, said officials familiar with the list. It is unclear why Mr. Hegseth or members of his team found the essay objectionable.
“Military promotions are given to those who have earned them,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in a statement. “This has always been the case under Secretary Hegseth and will not change.”
Beyond the blocking of officers for promotion to one-star rank and the firing of General George, Mr. Hegseth has fired or forced out a half-dozen senior officers — a generation of the Army’s most combat-hardened leaders — thinning the service’s top ranks for the next several years, officials said.
The personnel turmoil has also left a vacuum at the top of the Army at a moment when it is responsible for defending troops against the threat posed by cheap drones and missiles.
The Army has not had a chief of staff, the service’s top officer, since Mr. Hegseth fired General George in April, and there are no signs that he is close to filling the position, said current and former officials. Mr. Hegseth’s choice to take over as Army chief, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, does not currently have enough support in the Senate to be confirmed, officials said.
General LaNeve, who previously served as Mr. Hegseth’s senior military aide, has expressed frustration with Mr. Hegseth’s decision to block qualified officers for promotions and is concerned this will dilute the Army’s pool of experienced leaders, defense officials said.
Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, the service’s top civilian leader, could leave the administration as soon as next week, officials said. Mr. Hegseth has indicated that he would like to nominate Mr. Parnell to take over for Mr. Driscoll.
Mr. Parnell served as an officer in Afghanistan, but his tenure as the Pentagon’s chief spokesman has been buffeted by controversy. Mr. Parnell recently fired three journalists at Stars and Stripes, a federally funded but independent news organization. The journalists sued the government on Thursday, claiming that the Pentagon fired them in retaliation for writing about the worsening conditions on a Navy aircraft carrier deployed to the Middle East.
Mr. Parnell also led an effort to restrict reporters’ access within the Pentagon. The moves prompted The New York Times to sue the Pentagon on the grounds that the policy violated the First Amendment.
Mr. Parnell withdrew from a Senate race in November 2021 after a judge ruled that his estranged wife should have primary custody of their three children in a case in which she accused him of spousal and child abuse. The order was later vacated and Mr. Parnell has shared custody with his wife for several years, a Pentagon official said.
Mr. Hegseth’s interest in nominating Mr. Parnell was first reported by The Hill.
White House officials are concerned that if Mr. Driscoll leaves that Mr. Parnell will not be able to garner enough Senate votes for confirmation, leaving the Army’s top civilian and uniform military jobs open.
Many of the senior Army officers fired or forced out by Mr. Hegseth gathered Thursday at Fort Bragg, N.C., for General Donahue’s retirement ceremony. The tone at the gathering was somber — one former military official in attendance described it as a “state funeral.”
In what could be one of his last acts as Army secretary, Mr. Driscoll joined the fired officers, all of them combat-tested leaders who had been groomed to lead the Army. Together they said goodbye to General Donahue.
Works for me!!
WARNING: Looking at this graphic may cause you to puke!!!
This is what Natalie Harp and Trump posted online early this morning, likely after she finished . . . well, after she finished . . . well, you know, finished whatever a young, good-looking 35-yr-old blonde and an 80-yr-old philanderer would be doing at 2:00 AM.
NASA greets Trump with silence
There are times when silence speaks very, very loudly.
Donald Trump was met with total silence by NASA scientists as he bragged about his non-existent accomplishments in the space sector.
The president visited the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday to award the Artemis II space crew with the Space Medal of Honor, but he also used the trip to fish for approval from the crowd of NASA scientists. President Trump claimed the agency was “crawling” just before he made it to the White House, claiming that he achieved a lot for them and the nation.
“We had an interlude for four years and it was limping along, and now I’m back. And we’re doing more than limping. Eight years later, these dreams are really coming through at a level that nobody ever imagined,” he said to a completely silent and stone-faced audience.
Dolly Parton died at age 80. She was the wrong 80-yr-old to die.
Lots of truth in pictures
Trump cannot prove bullshit claim of 15,903 noncitizens registered to vote in Nevada
The Department of Homeland Security has been unable to substantiate its claim nearly 16,000 noncitizens registered to vote in Nevada more than one month after it was alleged, the New York Times reported Friday.
The Trump administration claimed exactly 15,903 noncitizens in Nevada were part of a group of 278,000 who were allegedly registered in four states. “But during a meeting last week with state election administrators, Homeland Security officials said they had identified just 185 potential noncitizens in the state so far, according to emails as well as recordings of the meeting obtained by The New York Times,” the newspaper noted.
In the same meeting, “federal officials told Nevada that the nearly 16,000 they had originally identified represented “the ceiling” of potential noncitizens,” the Times also wrote. But the list that officials ultimately shared with the state is “incomplete” and is “nearly impossible to verify” because it has no names on it.
Phantom noncitizen voters have been behind President Donald Trump’s impetus to urge Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require all voters to offer proof of citizenship when they register to vote and to provide a photo ID at the ballot box. This is despite the fact that citizenship is already a core requirement of voting.
Link to NYT REPORT (gift link)- Homeland Security Made a Big Claim About Noncitizen Voting. Now It Can’t Prove It.
Link to Democracy Docket REPORT – ‘Bulls**t’: Nevada election chief blasts Trump’s noncitizen voter roll claims after DHS walks them back
Natalie Harp’s letter to Trump
OK everyone has been having a great old time with this Natalie Harp story but:
(1) She’s nuts
(2) Her origin story — miraculous cancer survivor — is sketchy in several different ways
(3) Her security clearance consists of Trump waving her through without anything having actually been done.
(4) She’s 35, acting like a 13-yr-old girl with a crush on a rock singer.
People magazine has a detailed article about this troubled young woman.
Most Americans probably hadn’t heard of Natalie Harp before this week, but the close Trump aide has been in the political spotlight in recent days.
The 35-year-old’s official title is special assistant and executive assistant to the president, and she is frequently seen at President Trump’s side, by all accounts unwavering in her support and known for being quick to provide printouts of positive news coverage for his perusal.
It was Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat running for reelection, who focused attention on her role during a Sunday campaign rally. Ossoff said the president wants to “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie” rather than focus on his day job.
The remark prompted pushback from the president.
“You mean Pee-wee Herman? Pee-wee Herman look-alike?” the president replied about Ossoff when a reporter asked him about the comment Monday in the Oval Office.
She’s one of the president’s most trusted aides
Mr. Trump, 80, often dictates Truth Social posts for Harp to type out and post. She became known as the “human printer” during the 2024 presidential campaign, as the New York Times reported at the time, because she carried a portable printer to quickly get positive news to the president. Mr. Trump often prefers to read physical copies of social media posts and news stories, rather than off screens.
Harp started working at the White House as a presidential appointee when Mr. Trump took office in January 2025.
Mr. Trump has taken note of Harp’s loyalty. In their book “Regime Change,” New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported that the president remarked of Harp to staffers, “All of you will go off and make money. She’ll never leave me.”
The White House has taken issue with Ossoff’s remarks, with White House communications director Stephen Cheung calling Ossoff the biggest “loser in politics,” among other things.
“Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest working aides on President Trump’s team,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told CBS News in a statement, calling Ossoff’s rhetoric “cringeworthy.”
Harp was among the few aides who traveled with the president on a secret plane from Turkey
As CBS News reported earlier this month, Harp was among the few aides who were transported in a catering truck and then a secret plane with Mr. Trump as he departed Turkey in July.
Sources say the Secret Service adopted the ruse to protect the president after U.S. intelligence detected a possible Iranian plot to fire a missile at his plane as he left Ankara.
Only a few others joined the secret flight, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House aides Walt Nauta and Dan Scavino. Several top Cabinet members were left on the decoy plane along with other staff and the press corps.
Harp’s background before the White House
Harp worked at One America News Network in 2021 and 2022, hosting a TV show. On the pro-Trump network, Harp repeated Mr. Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 presidential election.
Harp delivered a laudatory speech at the Republican National Convention in 2020 about the president’s signing of the Right to Try Act, a 2018 federal law that lets patients with life-threatening illnesses try experimental treatments. Harp, a bone cancer survivor, credited Mr. Trump with saving her life.
“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” she said in her address. “They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”
However, the Washington Post reported Harp has also spoken of being treated with an FDA-approved immunotherapy given off-label, which would not have required “right to try” since it was already approved for some uses.
Harp, a California native, earned her bachelor’s degree from Point Loma Nazarene University in 2012, and her MBA from Liberty University in 2015.
Harp is nut. She’s 35 years old, and gushing about Trump like a 13-yr-old with a crush on a rock singer.
Harp grew with a mother who was a bible-thumping, psalm-singing fundamentalist christian.
Natalie Harp was born in 1991 and raised in California. Her father, Robert Harp, was a real estate broker who founded a consultancy for travel companies; he died by suicide in July 2020. Her father had a Master of Theology Degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. He was executive director of the office of innovation at Biola University. In 2019, he joined the Lausanne Movement. She and her older brother were homeschooled by their mother Jill Harp. Her brother has said they were taught American exceptionalism at home. She is a devout, evangelical Christian. Harp graduated from Point Loma Nazarene University in 2012, and from Liberty University in 2015 with an MBA.
Clearly., Harp sees Trump as the father who deserted her to kill himself.
She’s nuts.