asked about texting war plans to a Signal group, Pete Hegseth deflects by attacking Jeffrey Goldberg as a “discredited so-called journalist.”
(MAGA’s only plays are whataboutism and attacking the messenger. Every. Time.)
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 24, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Tulsi Gabbard is being grilled in the Senate as I write this alongside head of the CIA John Ratcliffe doing his best to obfuscate and polish this turd, and squirming doesn’t do her tepid filibustering justice. This is a woman utterly terrified to say words because she surely knows that most of the ones she has at her disposal will likely either confirm the Atlantic’s story or perjure her.
my goodness you can see Tulsi Gabbard trying to come up with evasive answers to Kelly’s questions in real time
[image or embed]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 25, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Jeffrey Goldberg is now suggesting that Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth may not be telling the whole truth about all the classified stuff they discussed in that non-classified setting, and he is now thinking about releasing the contents of the texts that supposedly prove otherwise. (Do it! If they’re lying, especially to Congress, you’re professionally obligated to reveal evidence of it!)
In all my years of sitting at poker tables, I have rarely seen such obvious tells than what Gabbard and Hegseth have displayed in their initial public appearances since the Atlantic’s explosive report. Despite the fact that the Trump era has seemed to eliminate even the concept of shame for a significant chunk of America, I would literally bet that these Yemen war texters are feeling whatever amount of shame their limited emotional and intellectual capacity allows for.
It’s definitely not shame as you or I or any other normal human who has not sold their soul to the devil would feel it, but these people are clearly displaying a sense of resigned rage in their shambolic defiance that even by their shallow standards, doesn’t have a whole lot to punch back with. There’s a part of them that must know their fates are sealed with the people in their orbit who still live in objective reality, and they clearly crave the approval of many of those people. This kind of contradiction rests at the genesis of a political movement dedicated to a man who will go to his grave resentful over elite Manhattan socialites wholly rejecting him decades ago.
Those people whose approval the Hegseths of the world crave aren’t you or me or Jeffrey Goldberg or even their own voters who they treat with more disdain than us lefty bloggers do, but the people in the government working underneath them who if they did this, would be fired, rehired, then fired again just to send a message to everyone else how colossally stupid it is what they did. If this is how they do things at the Pentagon under Hegseth’s command, then China certainly knows more about the Department of Defense at this point than the United States Secretary of Defense does.
According to sworn testimony from people who know him, Hegseth has lived the life of an abusive alcoholic. He even said he would stop drinking to take this job, and he has a long history of sexual and physical abuse allegations surrounding him, even from his own mother. This is a man who has lived a life of shame who envisions himself to be a warrior like the troops he commands, but his lone moment of combat notoriety in his life came when he nearly killed some poor drummer after mis-throwing an axe on live TV. It is a known fact in the military now that everyone from the generals all the way down the chain of command to the grunts are more trustworthy with America’s secrets than the drunken doofus at the top of it. Hegseth will never be one of them.
Tulsi Gabbard has long been peacocking towards whatever constituency is paying attention to her at the present moment. She pretended to be a lefty when that suited her, poisoning the well with Assad sympathizers, and now that MAGA is horny posting for her, she is cosplaying as their Very Serious National Security person. My poker chair psychoanalysis of her is that she is more cynical and less broken as a human than Hegseth, so her sense of shame resonates less. But you cannot tell me that there is not some part of your brain that looks at Hegseth and Gabbard’s faces in these videos and sees people feeling whatever amounts to their version of shame over a world historic own goal that the folks they cosplay as will never forget.
Shame!
The thing that makes me most confident to sit them down at the metaphorical poker table for this exercise to call their bluff is that they received the kiss of death from dear leader. Everyone in Trumpland knows at this point that the worst thing he can say about you is “I don’t know anything about” that unfathomably embarrassing thing you did. Your days are numbered in Trumpland as soon as you cease to become a useful person to him. He exchanges his cabinet-level TV hairpieces like he does his own hairpieces, and there is no doubt that many elements of the Trump universe are remembering today that they measure time in Scaramuccis in their world.
GET SPLINTER RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
The Truth Hurts
