Happy Schadenfriday

There’s much joy to be shared in the misery of others in Trumpland.

It’s been a long week with news of the expanding war in Iran, spiking inflation, zero job growth, and the president insulting our Japanese allies by bringing up the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yikes.

So since it’s Friday, let’s switch gears and enjoy some much-deserved satisfaction as we watch former members of the Trump administration thrown under the bus, and current members struggling under the increasingly burdensome task of covering for Trump.

Kent’s state

Another once loyal Trumpkin just got tossed under the bus.

Joe Kent, a white nationalist and antisemite, resigned as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, citing differences with the White House over the war in Iran. On Wednesday, Kent went on Tucker Carlson’s show to claim Israel drove the decision to start the war, that key decision-makers were deliberately excluded, and that Iran in fact posed no imminent threat. We knew this, of course, but Kent admitting it to millions of MAGA voters is next level.

Shortly after his announcement, reports emerged that the FBI is investigating Kent for mishandling classified information. These reports were almost certainly pushed by the White House, as Trump aides denounced Kent as a “leaker” while Trump bad-mouthed his own appointee on social media.

We should shed no tears for Kent. Indeed, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted, he could have timed his resignation to make it appear that the investigation, which has been going on for months, was launched in retaliation.

Kent is a prime example of how MAGA officials who were once loyal foot soldiers could have it very rough now that they are on the outs. Indeed, some like Marshall posit that these officials are encouraged to be as bad as they can while in office so they can’t quit without risking investigations and imprisonment. It’s Trump’s version of defenestration for those who cross him.

One day you’re in, the next you’re out

Corey Lewandowski, the reigning MAGA champion of in-again / out-again—and I don’t just mean with rumored paramour Kristi Noem—is out again.

This is the second time Lewandowski has been publicly pushed out of a Trump job. The first occurred a decade ago when he was fired as Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign manager and replaced by likely Russian asset Paul Manafort. (This was a clear sign, by the way, of how bad things were about to get.)

After getting fired this time around along with his cosplaying girlfriend, Lewandowski reportedly is now under investigation, this time for involvement in government contracts. As MSN summarized,

Multiple contractors and DHS officials allege Lewandowski sought payments—described by one source as a ‘success fee’—in exchange for helping secure federal contracts, including with private prison operators and marketing firms. NBC News reporting describes GEO Group founder George Zoley rejecting such offers, after which the company saw contract changes, though it later won a $121 million deal. Industry and legal experts say such behavior would be a ‘blazing red flag’ for procurement integrity concerns.

Democrats warned these GOP-led investigations into both Lewandowski and Noem were mere window-dressing, given that the White House has long known about the corruption inside Homeland Security.

So yesterday, Democrats announced their own intent to investigate Lewandowski. As The Hill reported, Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) and Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), wrote to the DHS Office of Inspector General on Wednesday to request an investigation into Lewandowski and issued a request that DHS preserve all his records:

“We also demand DHS preserve all documents and communications concerning Mr. Lewandowski’s role within the Department, as well as the Department’s practices, policies, and procedures related to contracting, personnel, and the handling of classified materials, including, but not limited to, social media messages, Signal chats, and other private or personal communications pertaining to DHS matters.”

Let’s be clear: The House Oversight Dems are preparing for the day they hold the gavel and can proceed with real investigations instead of the sham ones the GOP keeps throwing up.

Speaking of sham investigations…

Attorney General Pam Bondi was subpoenaed by the Oversight Committee, with five GOP members breaking ranks to vote with all Democrats, to appear in a sworn deposition in April. At issue is her failure to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and release all documents, with only victims’ names and images redacted, still held by her Department relating to its investigation of Epstein and his associates.

There is no question that Bondi has not complied with the law, and that others in the Justice Department, including her deputy Todd Blanche, are withholding documents to protect powerful, wealthy allies of Trump or to shield Trump himself from accountability.

So what’s a lying sycophant to do? Cover up the cover-up, of course.

Yesterday, Bondi went in for an “informal briefing” with the Committee which Republicans now present as a kind of substitute for her testimony under oath. To this end, a Justice Department spokesperson on Tuesday called the Bondi subpoena “completely unnecessary” and said Bondi “continues to have calls and meetings with members of Congress on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which is why the Department offered to brief the committee.”

When Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) protested the arrangement, Chair James Comer (R-KY) told her to “stop bitching.” The Democrats walked out and immediately took their concerns to the press. Ranking member Garcia had choice words:

Bondi continues to resist at her peril. A change in the majority is coming, and she won’t be able to stonewall or dissemble much longer. The more it appears she is trying to hide, the more the Epstein files return to public focus.

After all, not even a slippery snake like Bondi can escape the Streisand effect.

“Why do you even have jobs?”

Congress held hearings this week with Trump’s top intelligence officials: Director of National Intelligence and Fulton County sneak peeker Tulsi Gabbard; CIA Director and serial leaker of classified information John Ratcliffe; and FBI Director and former podcaster turned jet setting party boy, Kash Patel.

Through their testimony, two things were made quite clear.

First, they often don’t know what’s happening in their own departments. Here’s Patel on the question of the firing of Iran counterintelligence experts before the war began:

And here’s Gabbard trying to explain why she was in Fulton County when the FBI was involved in a domestic law enforcement activity:

Second, they made clear that, in their view, it is the president, and not the intelligence community, that determines what an “imminent threat” to our national security is.

A visibly agitated Rep. Jimmy Gomez asked why these intelligence officials “even have a job” if whatever Trump says goes.

The fact is, U.S. intelligence was at odds with the notion that Iran posed an imminent threat, as Joe Kent himself confirmed when he resigned. In order to square this assessment with why Trump started the war, they are left painfully arguing that, no matter what the intelligence experts conclude, Trump can and will just ignore them and do as he pleases.

This is both an indictment of Trump, who won’t listen to his top intel officials, and of those officials, who remain in their jobs and therefore have to humiliate themselves in public hearings.

That isn’t without cost. There’s a growing number of Trump voters who did not want this war and are beginning to balk mightily at the high gas prices it is causing.

Once their ire is fully stoked—perhaps at $5 a gallon—and they finally understand that they were lied to (duh), many may come to view officials like Patel, Ratcliffe and Gabbard as little more than water carriers for Trump.

That of course is already the clear truth. But truth has been in short supply among GOP voters, thanks to Trump and right-wing propaganda. And while independents have already abandoned Trump in historic numbers, we can’t simply force GOP voters to follow suit.

But hope yet lives. The treachery, corruption and utter abdication by Trump’s aides—from Joe Kent to Corey Lewandowski, Pam Bondi to the intelligence agency heads—are beginning to bring that truth into focus.

I sense a tipping point coming, even for many GOP voters, hastened by war, inflation and the Epstein Files. This is a three-headed hydra Trump cannot outrun, with each new provoked crisis somehow worse than the one he had hoped to distract from.