The personnel selections of the Trump nationwide safety regime present a key to higher understanding the actions and decision-making of the administration.
The silly doesn’t simply occur, it’s made to occur.
Let’s deal with one named participant at a time and provides a fast abstract of their latest antics and clarify how they match into the bigger Trump nationwide safety regime.
Pete Hegseth on the Hook?
Let’s begin with Secretary of Struggle Pete Hegseth.
I’ve coated Secretary Pete beforehand in such items as “Amway Oligarchy and Trump’s Prepared Figureheads” from July and October’s “Shutdown, Clampdown, Clownshow or Horror Film?”
Hegseth was nominated and confirmed to function Secretary of Protection, however in September POTUS Trump “first introduced a proposed identify change in early September when he signed an govt order that approved Hegseth to undertake the title “secretary of warfare” and to make use of “Division of Struggle” in official correspondence and public communications.”
NBC studies that making the identify change formally official will probably price as much as $2 billion and the following steps require the Pentagon to “submit paperwork to the Nationwide Safety Council that will transfer the method ahead to formally and legally present Congress with what it wants to think about the identify change.”
Whatever the authorized niceties, Politico studies that the army industrial foyer is on board with the change, as are most Republicans in congress.
Senator Angus King (I-ME) is a notable maintain out, calling the identify change “another usurpation of the ability of Congress.”
With the necessary stuff out of the way in which, let’s flip our consideration to allegations of warfare crimes towards Secretary Pete.
The under is in reference to assaults by the U.S. Navy on numerous boats off the Venezuelan coast. We’ve coated that threatened battle many instances beforehand (see right here and right here).
The Washington Put up broke the story on Friday:
Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, in keeping with two folks with direct information of the operation. “The order was to kill all people,” one in all them stated.
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, putting the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a reside drone feed. Because the smoke cleared, they received a jolt: Two survivors have been clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Particular Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 assault — the opening salvo within the Trump administration’s warfare on suspected drug traffickers within the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to adjust to Hegseth’s directions, two folks acquainted with the matter stated. The 2 males have been blown aside within the water.
Hegseth’s order, which has not been beforehand reported, provides one other dimension to the marketing campaign towards suspected drug traffickers. Some present and former U.S. officers and law-of-war specialists have stated that the Pentagon’s deadly marketing campaign — which has killed greater than 80 folks to this point — is illegal and will expose these most instantly concerned to future prosecution.
Sadly for Hegseth, the umbrage on this one is bipartisan, in case you rely former Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-OH) as a Republican, that’s.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson eliminated Turner from the Committee in January when the present Trump nationwide safety regime took energy.
When requested in regards to the alleged “shoot to kill” orders on CBS’ Face the Nation, Turner responded, “Clearly, if that occurred, that will be- be very critical, and I agree that- that- that would- could be an unlawful act.”
Turner additionally clarified that the incident is “utterly outdoors of something that has been mentioned with Congress.”
Democratic Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Kelly have been extra emphatic of their condemnations, per the NYT, of what Hegseth is alleged to have finished.
Kelly is one in all six Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a TV advert “urging present army and intelligence personnel to ‘refuse unlawful orders,’ including, ‘nobody has to hold out orders that violate the regulation or our Structure.’”
Trump’s response to that advert was to accuse the lawmakers of ‘seditious conduct,’ a cost that the president stated may very well be ‘punishable by loss of life,’ though he later walked again the loss of life threats.
However that didn’t cease the FBI from reaching out to the seditious six (Sen. Kelly plus Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania) and trying to schedule a superb time to query them.
We’ll come again to Kash Patel and his Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), however let’s stick round coup nation for a bit first.
New Data Emerges About 2020 Venezuelan Coup Try
One of many extra hapless chapters of Trump’s first time period in workplace was the try to put in the nearly unknown nominal Venezuelan opposition chief Juan Guaidó into energy.
New courtroom filings obtained by The Grey Zone point out that “Excessive-ranking Trump officers together with Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, the highest CIA official in Latin America, and a prime NSC advisor appeared to find out about his invasion plot, and will have been concerned in its planning.”
Amongst different issues, the filings additionally expose “a proposal delivered to VP Pence’s workplace included plans to conduct ‘alse flag” operations in Venezuela, unfold hepatitis throughout the nation’s army, and fund the schemes by means of the “expropriation” of “drug product.”
The American Prospect has extra particulars on that caper:
…a pitch deck obtained in discovery, which was produced for then-Vice President Mike Pence by a gaggle known as “Digital Democracy.” It outlined an in depth 29-page regime change proposal consisting of sabotage plans together with “contamination with hepatitis (A, B and C), influenza, measles and piglet to the social golf equipment the place the highest officers of the narco-regime meet” and “pressured stoppage of private and non-private transport in all types” that will culminate within the alternative of the Bolivaran structure with a “easy federalist constitutional textual content that prohibits communism and socialism,” with coaching to begin on a North Carolina coaching camp operated by Constellis, previously referred to as Blackwater.
That plan by no means received off the bottom, maybe as a result of it required the Treasury Division to grant the plotters “a Swift clearance passport from the US authorities to switch accounts of the US authorities an approximate quantity of US $14,500,000,000 in property expropriated from the narco-regime and make it accessible to Digital Democracy.”
However don’t cry for Elliot Abrams, Argentina or Venezuela or wherever else, the outdated chancer is conserving busy and nonetheless discovering large platforms for his obsessive coup d’etat rantings.
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) December 1, 2025
Whether or not or not this iteration of the Trump nationwide safety regime presses ahead with their dangerous intentions for Venezuela, Trump’s been busy just a bit bit north of there, in Honduras.
Trump Pardons Honduran Narco-Pol
On the finish of November, POTUS Trump posted the information to Reality social that he could be pardoning former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández. He additionally strongly endorsed Nasry “Tito” Asfura, the present commonplace bearer for Hernández’ right-wing Nationwide Celebration.
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) December 1, 2025
Hernández was convicted in a New York courtroom in 2024 “of taking bribes throughout his marketing campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the infamous former chief of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico referred to as ‘El Chapo’, and of operating his Central American nation like a narco state.”
Hernández had been sentenced to serve 45 years in American jail.
His brother Juan Antonio Hernández was sentenced to life in jail March 30, 2021 in New York for trafficking tons of cocaine to the USA over 14 years.
Perhaps Hernández made an excellent alternative in who he employed to foyer on his behalf in Trump’s first time period, as VICE reported on the time:
(Hernández) signed a take care of a Washington lobbying agency known as BGR Group to buttress his picture as a devoted ally and an implacable foe of organized crime.
Though BGR presents itself as a bipartisan agency, it has inextricable ties to the Republican Celebration. The corporate was co-founded by former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. Its present crew contains outstanding Republicans, similar to former Consultant Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican, and Trump Administration State Division spokesperson Heather Nauert, who’s on the agency’s advisory board.
BGR has additionally given greater than $1 million to candidates for federal workplace in every of the final three election cycles, with roughly 90 p.c of its contributions going to Republicans. Rubio is among the many prime beneficiaries of BGR generosity, and he has benefited from the corporate’s largesse all through his profession, together with BGR-hosted fundraisers throughout each his 2010 and 2016 Senate campaigns and his short-lived presidential bid.
Protestors have fun outdoors the US Southern District of New York on March 30, 2021 after Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez, brother of the president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez was sentenced to life for drug trafficking.
Instantly after taking over Honduras as a shopper -a contract which earned BGR $660,000 final 12 months – in keeping with mandated disclosures, BGR Group reached out to 11 Congressional staffers. Three of them labored or had labored for Rubio.
Later within the 12 months, BGR lobbied the Improvement Finance Company, an arm of the U.S. authorities that connects creating nations with non-public buyers. And all year long, the corporate tried to enhance the President’s picture by circulating press releases to journalists from dozens of various information retailers, together with VICE, detailing the top of state’s actions. BGR despatched out three totally different press releases in October about Hernández: two a couple of journey he took to the USA, and one about joint U.S.-Honduras counternarcotics operations.
However Trump is a look-forward-not-back type of man and is presumably completely happy that Asfura at present holds a slim lead within the elections with over 60% counted to this point.
However the Trump Nationwide Safety Regime has a home element as properly and this week FBI Director Kash Patel is drawing a lot of consideration.
Patel Blasted within the NY Put up
It’s one factor when a Trump official is excoriated on CNN or within the New York Instances, however when the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Put up runs with an unsightly headline, that’s a distinct matter solely.
Yesterday’s Miranda Devine column headlined, “Damning report labels FBI ‘rudderless ship’ below Kash Patel — with him and Dan Bongino extra involved with constructing ‘private résumés’” could be dangerous for a extra polished official with a broader base of assist, for podcaster-turned-FBI-head Kash Patel, it’s probably ruinous.
Right here’s a style:
A troubling new report card on the primary six months of Patel’s management concludes he’s “in over his head” and his deputy, Dan Bongino, is “one thing of a clown,” in keeping with the alliance, which in two earlier studies warned about crippling DEI and politicization of the FBI throughout the Biden administration.
The Patel-led FBI is described within the 115-page report as a “rudderless ship” and “all f–ked up.”
…
The report was written within the type of an official FBI intelligence evaluation, analyzing studies from 24 FBI sources and sub-sources, and utilizing anecdotes as an example troubling themes.The case of the “medium-sized raid jacket” is one instance.
On Sept. 11, 2025, the day after Kirk was assassinated, Patel flew into Provo, Utah, on the FBI jet however “wouldn’t disembark from the aircraft with out an FBI raid jacket,” in keeping with ALPHA 99, a “extremely revered” supply who has served within the FBI for a number of a long time.
“Patel apparently didn’t have his personal FBI raid jacket with him and refused to step from the aircraft with out sporting one,” in keeping with the report.
…
When a jacket belonging to a feminine agent was delivered to Patel on the aircraft, he complained that “two areas on the higher sleeves didn’t have Velcro patches hooked up.”Patel wouldn’t depart the aircraft “till he had two patches to cowl these areas” so “members of an FBI SWAT Staff took patches off their uniforms and ran these patches over to” Patel “on the airport. The patches have been then hooked up to the loaner FBI raid jacket” and Patel “disembarked from the aircraft.”
The report builds on destructive headlines garnered by Patel for assigning an elite SWAT-team to guard his girlfriend Alexis Wilkins, a 27-year-old aspiring nation singer and for allegedly misusing a personal jet to pay visits to Wilkins when she works.
The allegations towards Patel appear fairly minor compared to the potential warfare crimes being notched towards Pete Hegseth’s ledger and definitely nothing in comparison with these towards the previous Honduran president.
However for the sake of everybody working within the Trump nationwide safety regime, one hopes the POTUS is conserving his pardon pen sharp and full of ink for any late time period rescues that must be issued earlier than the entire thing comes a cropper, presuming it does.
