Column: Trump’s recklessness endangers the nation
President Trump was unusually lucky in his first term; He neither inherited nor provoked the kind of crisis that tested US presidents until the emergence of Covid-19 in the last 10 months. (He failed that test, contributing to his reelection defeat in 2020.) Trump 1.0 inherited from President Obama a growing economy, and the incoming president has assembled a cadre of talented advisers who often take on the job. acted to stop him from doing crazy things at home and abroad.
Trump 2.0 has made sure his second Cabinet has no such human guardrails, just knee-jerk enablers. Unlimited, presided over crisis after crisisAll self-made. Tariff turmoil and high prices. Armed agents and troops in American cities. Repeated violations of court orders. Destruction at federal agencies And White House.
And now Trump has led the country into war against Iran Israel in cooperation with Benjamin Netanyahu. Depending on the moment and the audience contradictory Trump He either claims that the war is “fully completed” or that much remains to be done to “destroy” Iran. “It’ll end whenever I want it to end,” he blithely told Axios on Wednesday, even as U.S. officials planned further actions.
In any case, Trump’s war of choice and the killing of the supreme leader of Iran’s terrorist theocracy has now led to another potential crisis. Counterterrorism experts warn: Risks of retaliatory terrorist threats in the country. And whether that comes from homegrown extremists or the kind of sleeper cells that came to life on 9/11, Trump is likely to face a greater threat in his second term because of the self-inflicted crisis: his crackdown on the federal government.
Trump has empowered Elon Musk to destroy bureaucracy in the name of “government efficiency” and continues to retaliate against any federal employee involved in investigating and prosecuting during his interregnum. Long-time spies and spies at the FBI, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, CIA and elsewhere have been eliminated. Gone are counterterrorism experts with hundreds of years of collective experience, particularly at the FBI, and many of those who remain have been redirected to Trump’s top priority: mass deportation.
As a result, the president who promised to “Make America Safe Again” has arguably made Americans less safe.
I brought up this frightening possibility A little over a year ago, as Trump’s efforts to destroy the so-called Deep State continued. And now the Middle East war that Trump promised would never start has further emboldened Iran and its jihadist proxies to strike back, just as it has weakened the country’s early warning systems.
But the New York Times notes that even in the days before Trump ordered the first attack on Tehran, there was enough intelligence that government analysts were gathering “alarming signs” that Iran was conspiring against US targets. reported. Following the US-Israeli attack and the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28, the government caught a possible Iranian “operational trigger” against “sleeping entities” outside Iran. According to ABC News.
said counterterrorism expert Colin P. Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center, which focuses on global security and transnational terrorism. wrote US agencies in the Atlantic this week record Given recent changes in funding, personnel, and priorities, the attempt to disrupt Iran-backed conspiracies in America was in jeopardy. “Because of this,” he concluded, “the homeland of the United States is probably more vulnerable than it has been in a long time.”
In a subsequent email exchange, Clarke told me: “Many of this administration’s actions have been myopic — shifting counterterrorism resources to immigration, firing FBI agents working in counterintelligence, etc. A week before the United States went to war with Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel was about to demonstrate in Milan for the Olympics. [where he struggled to chug a Michelob Ultra, a firing offense in its own right] “While Iran should be prepared for a possible reaction on US soil.”
Patel’s ill-advised party with the US men’s hockey team, while war plans were being made in Washington, drew widespread, and rightfully, criticism. was mocked. But it stands as a metaphor for the entire Trump administration’s cavalier attitude toward homeland security. Its abusive approach towards both immigrants and citizens protesting on behalf of immigrants distracts from the real threats to the country.
Patel, his boss at the Department of Justice, Atty. General Pam Bondi has made clear through her words and actions that the president’s political enemies are the real public enemy No. 1. One of Bondi’s first acts was to create a political party. “armament working group” he was required to take action to identify, fire or prosecute individuals within his department who were investigating and prosecuting Trump; many of them also had experience in domestic and international terrorism. The association representing FBI agents wanted him to purge “dangerous distractions” from his work “to make America safe again.”
Days after the start of the Iran war, when domestic security should have been on red alert, Trump said was fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. His dressing up in expensive costumes as the homeland’s hero on horseback in anti-immigrant videos and his penchant for luxury jets allegedly used to transport deportees were too much even for him.
But all three “national security” officials—Noem, Bondi, and Patel—reflect Trump’s warped approach and blasé attitude toward the home front.
When Time magazine asked the commander in chief last week whether Americans should be concerned about potential terrorist attacks in their country, he replied: replied“I think.”
“We are planning for it,” he added. “But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people are going to die. When you go to war, some people are going to die.”
The management plans this well. Extraordinary number of senior Trump officials Residence started in houses on military basesAmong them are Bondi, Noem, Secretaries of State and Defense Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, and White House adviser Stephen Miller.
The rest of us just have to keep our fingers crossed. I think.
Blue sky: @jackiecalmes
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