Search Results for "Mark Esper"

President Donald Trump's second term is defined chiefly by his hunger for revenge, and that obsession is now on a foreboding collision course with his greatest strategic failure.

Trump's vengeance-driven governing style back to his first hours in office, when he stripped security protection from officials he viewed as disloyal, including Gen. Mark Milley, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Mark Esper, and New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued that impulse has since expanded to target ordinary private citizens who defy him.

"The Ahab-like tenacity of the White House in its pursuit of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia might make sense if he were some criminal mastermind — a danger to the public order," Bouie wrote. "He wasn’t. He was just an ordinary person, a working member of his community who happened to be an easy target for the president’s deportation machine."...

An offhand comment from Donald Trump to Vice President JD Vance may not have been meant for public consumption, according to political analyst Heather Digby Parton.

In an unguarded moment this week, Vance disclosed that Trump told envoys tasked with negotiating a peace deal with Iran to "use the [memorandum of understanding] to refill the world's oil economy, refill some stocks and then to see where the hand is."

According to Parton, that was an admission that the administration is stalling negotiations to drive down gas prices before possibly restarting the war, but that Vance's blunder is simply business as usual in an administration where "verbal incontinence" cascades from the top down. ...

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed Democrats during Monday's press conference for the failed assassination attempt at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner, reading from a prepared list of Democratic criticisms and accusing members of the party of inciting violence.

MS NOW reporter Laura Barrón-López pushed back, cataloging President Donald Trump's extensive history of threatening violence against his opponents.

Barrón-López noted Trump called seditious behavior "punishable by death," reposted "Hang them," and suggested executing former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley. She cited Trump's 2016 rally rhetoric about punching protesters and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper's memoir account of Trump asking why police couldn't "just shoot protesters" in the legs....

After White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt used her Monday press conference to blame Democrats for a lone gunman attempting to crash the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night. MS NOW reporter Laura Barrón-López pushed back with a list of physical threats President Donald Trump has made over the years.

Leavitt was presented with a question from a Fox News reporter, wondering what needs to be done to lower the political temperature after the unsuccessful assassination attempt.

Leavitt happened to have a list on hand containing names and quotes from Democrats who have criticized the president and his administration that she read from while accusing them of inciting violence....

MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire claimed Thursday that what Defense secretary Pete Hegseth didn't say during a testy exchange with Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) told him everything he needed to know.

Hegseth appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday where he sparred with Slotkin when she asked if he has given the order for the military to shoot unarmed protesters.

The question came in the wake of President Donald Trump federalizing National Guard troops and sending active-duty Marines to quell the deportation protests in Los Angeles....

“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough on Tuesday did not hold back, using the word “stupid” four times in a rant about the Pentagon’s decision to investigate Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) for appearing in a video urging service members not to follow illegal orders.

“How stupid do you have to — like, I have Republicans saying, ‘I can't believe how dumb we are.’ We continue to throw a fit over the president's right to issue illegal orders, and we're putting military heroes from the Democratic Party constantly on television, thereby branding the Democratic Party as a party of veterans, of CIA agents, of all the things that Republicans don't want Americans to know about the Democratic Party,” Scarborough said.

Show co-host Willie Geist pointed out that Kelly “not only has a long career of service in the United States Navy, but also has been to space four times.”...