Last September, I wrote a column titled “The know-nothing candidate,” describing the phenomenon of Donald Trump never seeming to know anything about his own decisions, actions, business practices, or presidency.
He knew nothing about hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels; he knew nothing of assaulting E. Jean Carroll; he knew nothing of stolen documents or fraudulent financial statements; nothing about Putin’s interference in American elections; nothing about the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers; and nothing about Project 2025.
There is no political figure in recent memory who knows less about anything than Donald John Trump, even though his greasy fingerprints and distinctive signature are on every incriminating document authorizing every action about which he claims to know nothing. The self-described “very stable genius” appears to be, instead, a man who is so neurologically damaged that he simply cannot remember anything he ever says or does.
It should come as no surprise that Trump 2.0 is continuing the practice of knowing nothing about anything that he and his henchmen have done in the past, are doing in the present, or plan to do in the future. His amnesia is pervasive.
In short, he is all mobbed up.
A few weeks ago, he claimed to know nothing about the brutal, disgustingly stage-managed deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members (at least one of whom has been identified as a gay makeup artist, a decidedly nonlethal occupation) to a prison in El Salvador, without offering actual proof of criminality prior to their deportation to one of the most hideous penal colonies on Earth. This was a flagrant violation of criminal law, to say nothing of human rights, and the violation of law was compounded by Trump’s refusal to follow the court’s order to cease, desist, and bring the detainees back to American jails to await their deportation hearings.
Trump only embraces due process when he happens to be the person on trial; otherwise, he views the Constitution and the rule of law as a set of vague suggestions that he is at liberty to ignore.
Trump not only cannot seem to remember that the court ordered him in no uncertain terms to return the deportees to the United States in order to follow a lawful process of expulsion; he cannot remember signing the deportation order, either. To top it all off, utilizing another of his favorite ploys for dodging accountability, he blamed the whole thing on Marco Rubio.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in Saudi Arabia at the time, handing Ukraine to Vladimir Putin at Trump’s behest. Evidently, amnesiac Trump forgot that the Director of Homeland Security (DHS) is not Marco Rubio. The DHS is the heavily made-up, flak-jacketed, pathetically performative Kristi Noem, who enjoys being photographed at the southern border astride her horse, wearing her bullet-proof vest and cowboy hat, pretending, absurdly, to be the product of a one-night stand between Annie Oakley and an ICE agent.
This past week, President in Name Only (PINO) Trump seized yet another opportunity to know nothing, this time about the national security breach caused by the cast of smug, self-serving bunglers who are responsible for our country’s most sensitive intelligence and military operations.
Behind the wheel of last week’s clown car was Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, whose résumé includes countless episodes of public drunkenness, sexual assault, spousal abuse, running two veterans’ organizations into the ground, and hosting a weekend propaganda fest on Fox News. Hegseth deemed it appropriate to share extremely sensitive information about an upcoming bombing mission over Yemen via Signal, the texting application utilized by the January 6 insurrectionists as they plotted to overthrow their own government.
Signal is, in fact, an end-to-end, encrypted application, but it is decidedly not a closed-loop, secure communication channel for discussing the particulars of an imminent foreign bombing mission. The application is entirely commercial and is therefore more vulnerable to hacking than closed-circuit government communication systems. In fact, Hegseth’s own Defense Department has issued very clear guidance that Signal should not be used to communicate sensitive information because it can be penetrated by cyber criminals and foreign governments to surveil—and potentially harm—our national interests. Ideally, such information is disseminated in person, in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF.
Another significant problem with Signal is that it can be preset to delete designated conversations, thereby violating the United States Records Preservation Act.
So the confederacy of dunces selected by Donald John Trump to carry out America’s most sensitive military and intelligence operations are, just like their thug of a boss, all mobbed up. Signal is the modern-day equivalent of a Mafia phone booth.
But wait, there’s more: As if ignoring Hegseth’s own department’s guidance on how to exchange top-secret, national security information wasn’t quite bad enough, CIA Director Mike Waltz managed to include Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine, in the chat. None of the other participants—not National Intelligence Director Gabbard, Secretary of State Rubio, or Vice President JD Vance—ever bothered to ask who “JG” was.
Again, these are the individuals who Donald Trump, in his infinite wisdom, appointed to safeguard our national security.
Jeffrey Goldberg does not work for the United States government in any capacity. He has no security clearance. Jeffrey Goldberg is a journalist. How fortunate for all of us, and particularly for the United States military, that Jeffrey Goldberg has a moral compass. He chose not to publish the story of this particular security lapse until after the bombing mission had been completed, because Jeffrey Goldberg, as a journalist, has more common sense and concern for the security of our troops than do Pete Hegseth and Trump’s merry band of morons.
When asked about the Signal chat as revealed by Goldberg, Trump remarked, predictably, that he knew nothing about it.
It is now clear that Trump’s case of galloping amnesia is contagious, because suddenly, none of the individuals included in the chat—with the exception of Goldberg—seemed to be able to remember the content of the chat. When grilled by the House and Senate on how this sloppiness and stupidity could have occurred in the first place, all that could be heard in the halls of Congress was an hours-long refrain of, “I don’t recall.”
Needless to say, the White House spin machine has been on overdrive since last Tuesday. There was no classified information in the chat, they insisted. Well, I looked at the chat, and I would encourage everyone to read the direct print-out of the text, provided by Jeffrey Goldberg, to determine for yourselves whether or not it included highly classified military information. I cannot imagine that anyone would see the details provided in the chat as anything other than highly classified.
They also said that it was not a “war” plan; rather, it was an “attack” plan. In fact, that assertion is a distinction without real difference. The object of both is the same: to conduct military operations in order to destroy, punish, control, or stop other people from doing things that we do not want them to do. Call it a war; call it an attack; call it a corned beef on rye. Calling it something else does not change what it is: a top-secret military operation launched against another country, communicated on the equivalent of a Mafia pay phone, by people who are completely unqualified for the positions they now hold.
And just like their feckless leader Donald Trump, not one of them seems terribly concerned about this serious security failure. The only thing that PINO Trump appears upset about at all, in the middle of yet another scandal, is that CIA Director Mike Waltz had one of the most respected journalists in America on speed dial.
