Stumble, Bumble and Fumble

Trump’s people can’t stay ahead of multiple policy fiascos and an increasingly furious public.

Trump’s lackeys faced tough questions yesterday from the press and lawmakers, including critics within their own party.

From the war in Iran, which is quickly spiraling out of control, to the corrupt and illegal actions of Homeland Security, there were plenty of pitfalls, and Trump’s allies and advisors kept walking into them.

In some cases, because of Trump’s mercurial ways and constant flip-flopping, his aides were forced to contradict things they had asserted just a few days ago. It produced some head-spinning, embarrassing moments.

In other moments, the regime’s incompetence and grift were on full display with no way for the officials in charge to wave away concerns.

Let’s review some of their worst moments.

Rubio in the hot seat

Iran has retaliated against the U.S. and Israeli strikes by targeting bases, infrastructure and certain civilian structures throughout the region with missiles and drones. The half million or so U.S. citizens in the region are now desperate to escape, but the U.S. State Department is offering no assistance whatsoever.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio couldn’t explain the lack of any workable evacuation plan for Americans in the Middle East despite weeks of force build-up there. He blamed airspace closures for not being able to evacuate people from the region. But that was an entirely foreseeable consequence of engaging in military hostilities that risked open war with an adversary.

He did mention a phone number for Americans stuck in the Middle East to call. But as Jonathan Karl of ABC News reported, the “message you get when you dial the State Department’s emergency number tellingly warns, “Please do not rely on the US government for assisted departure or evacuation…”

Then there was Rubio’s complete 180 on the rationale behind taking the country into war with Iran. Two days ago, Rubio claimed that we had to strike Iran because Israel was going to strike first and we’d be pulled in anyway. As Natasha Bertrand of CNN reported, Rubio expressly stated on Capitol Hill this past Monday,

“The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.”

But yesterday Rubio astonishingly claimed that he never said that and that a reporter’s restatement of his assertion was “false.” He accused the press of misrepresenting what he said, so let’s compare:

Rubio is lying today about what he just claimed on Monday.

The Speaker didn’t misspeak either

Moreover, this was not a case of Rubio speaking out of turn, because he wasn’t alone with that initial eye-popping claim about Israel leading us into war. Speaker Mike Johnson also asserted that Iran would have “retaliated against U.S. personnel and assets” after Israel hit them, so we had to hit first:

The question isn’t whether Trump’s people are backpedaling, but why they are doing it so quickly. The simple answer is that Trump began facing blistering far-right backlash over the idea that Israel dragged us into this war. Trump realized, a bit late, that this was a very bad look for the U.S. and would cause him to hemorrhage support from his base, which is in fact happening in real time. So he instructed his mouthpieces to change the narrative.

But receipts are forever, and now the regime not only looks like it was indeed letting Bibi Netanyahu call the shots, but is now furiously trying to rewrite history.

Giving idiots the mic

The past few days have seen Trump’s surrogates landing some real doozies that could come back to haunt the White House and the GOP on the campaign trail.

Take Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL? FL?). The former football coach provided us a soundbite for the ages by making clear that the war with Iran, which is quickly unraveling, is “Trump’s War”:

Or Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who rather amazingly argued that Iran has been an “imminent” threat for the past 47 years.

To quote The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Then there was Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who seems bent on living up to what his name makes him sound like. Mullin didn’t seem to know whether to call this a war or not and wound up changing his language mid-interview.

This is of course a war, which means Congress needs to have authorized it under the War Powers Resolution. We’ll soon see how that fares in the Senate.

Uncomfortably Noem

Kristi Noem was back before lawmakers on Capitol Hill yesterday where she faced some of the toughest questioning of her increasingly precarious career.

Noem testified that she never called murdered U.S. citizen Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist” when she very much did, if you assume someone who commits “domestic terrorism” is by definition a “domestic terrorist.” The Bulwark ran the receipts:

In one telling exchange, Noem demonstrated the extent of the grift in her department. She admitted that she awarded a $143 million contract to the spouse of her department’s spokesperson.

And GOP Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), who announced last year that he would not seek reelection, used his time to rip Noem on several levels, including her incompetence, her failure to respond to his office’s inquiries, and even her killing of her 14-month-old puppy.

Tillis seems to have found his voice, in part because he no longer fears Trump will ruin his political career, and he used it rather effectively against her.

At one point, the hearing room even broke out into applause at his impassioned condemnation of policies and practices under her leadership of DHS:

I honestly probably would have applauded, too. While it’s frustrating that Tillis has long had the power to block the Trump regime’s agenda and has only recently begun to assert it, I am glad he is doing so now and hope he holds fast.

This week has already demonstrated several times that the Trump regime is faltering. It’s doing so at a time when Trump’s approval ratings are already at record lows. And the midterms are coming, with primaries already underway, meaning GOP lawmakers with keen self-preservation instincts will start to weigh the cost of lashing themselves to a sinking, burning vessel.