The press and Democrats are trying to make an issue of a Signal chat between top figures in the Trump administration. Trump needs to figure out what happened and move on.
The good news for the readers of this site is that my humble computer includes a Delete button. Not infrequently I will write something and after I have gone through it a couple of times, I’ll delete it rather than send it to the editors. Some things are just not on target.
One such article involved what’s going on presently with the Trump 47 administration. Just before the president returned to the Oval Office, I wrote a piece that essentially said that there was no room for mistakes or unforced errors. The gist of the article was that the media and the Democrats will pounce on any mistake, any whiff of scandal, anything that makes the president and/or his people look bad. I dumped the work for the simple reason that no matter what President Trump and his associates say or do, those opposed to him and the majority of American people will always whip up some scandal. The president and all of his men and women are human, and as such they will make mistakes and they will say and do things that in retrospect would not have been the best course of action. The media and Democrats would always accuse the president and his people of being bigoted, autocratic, incompetent, etc. There was no need for the article because the new administration was made of humans and the other side would attack them even if they could be perfect.
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I don’t know all of the details of the Signal kerfuffle, and in my mind they don’t matter. Sure, the White House needs to find out exactly how an external, Trump-hating reporter somehow got onto a conversation that included some of the top people in the West Wing. Was any secret information compromised? Were accepted communication protocols followed? If there were any failings, they need to be addressed, and those involved need to be interviewed and if there was real incompetence or malfeasance, punished accordingly. The press can demand Pete Hegseth’s head, but they would do the same if his only sin was smiling first thing in the morning.
All federal jobs are held by human beings, each having his or her foibles, beliefs, weaknesses, and strengths. People will make mistakes, whether it be the president or the lowest person in his administration. When my kids used to bring me their school exams, I would ask if they now know what they got wrong when they took the test. If they said that they did, then as far as I was concerned, the matter was closed. One of the biggest problems we have had with previous presidents is that they were so vain that they could not admit their failings. I remember George W. Bush was asked—well after 9/11—what his biggest mistakes were as president. He had to think for a while and then he said that maybe some low-level secondary appointments could have been better. Barack Obama tied his being elected to the healing of nature. Joe Biden, in his waking hours, ostensibly was the “buck stops here” leader when Chinese balloons flew unchallenged over sensitive military sites, when 13 Marines were killed in a helter-skelter Afghan exit, and when around 10 million illegal aliens poured into the U.S. Did any of them ever say, “My bad” or “I’m sorry” or “We’ll do better next time?” Nope. If you were to separate Biden and his ice cream for a minute, I have no doubt that he would tell you that the retreat from Afghanistan was a great success and that he left the country far better off than it was when he took over.
The current trend of district judges slowing down President Trump’s agenda is, while in scale unprecedented, not surprising. Judges are chosen by presidents, and one would be shocked if a president chose a candidate who thought 180 degrees differently than he did. There is some breadth in the application of the law, and the practitioners on the bench were never instructed to leave their personas at home and rule as automatons. A liberal judge chosen by a liberal president—well, were you so shocked when he wants to return USAID money or won’t let the feds boot a Hamas supporter, etc.? We should hope as Americans that at higher levels of judicial review, the president will be given all of the power associated with his role as the leader of the executive branch. What has gone on for the past few weeks is similar to the argument here in Israel: the High Court in Jerusalem can make military decisions, cancel appointments, and throw out laws passed by a majority of the Knesset. Israel has no constitution and there is no balance of powers. The latest act of the High Court was to disallow the prime minister from firing the head of the Shabak (internal police), a man whom he had hired.
People, including those in the new/old administration will make mistakes or do things that in hindsight could have been done better. Fine, that’s being human. Learn from any mistakes, plug any holes, and if necessary punish as need be and then move on. The left will always pounce on any stupid thing, real or imagined. So ignore them and get the people’s business done as they so clearly expressed in November of last year.
There’s a story in the Babylonian Talmud involving two sages. One turns to his colleague and says, “You know, they say that your sister is a whore.” The second scholar looked perplexed. “But I don’t have a sister.” The first then said, “Go prove that you don’t have a sister.” This is the current situation with the Signal chat story. Whatever Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth or Mike Waltz says, the opposition media will simply say, “Aha! Now that you say that there was no secret material or confidential sources is proof that there was!” Just clean up whatever needs to be fixed and move on. The Democrats and their stenographers in the press will never move on, so you had better go forward. How many years did they use the “very fine people” hoax, though the tape showed that the president condemned the extreme right at the Charlottesville event? The left has nothing to offer on substance and it has no levers of power; the only thing they have is attacking the president, his people and his party. Americans want results. Provide them and the people will ignore the noise in the background.
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