All posts tagged "Steve Benen"

Top White House aide Stephen Miller's claims of exploding crime across the country came as a surprise to residents of Minneapolis after he held up that city as a cautionary tale, according to Steve Benen with MSNBC.

Miller told Fox News this week, "We have communities all across this nation that, 20 years ago, before the era of open borders, were completely peaceful, completely stable, thriving middle classes."

He added, "Look at a place like Minneapolis. Post-mass migration, they are unsafe, they are violent, you cannot use the public parks."...

In a new article for MSNBC, political analyst Steve Benen advised that it may finally be time to "come to terms" with the fact that the "moderate" wing of the Republican Party "simply doesn’t exist."

Benen cited the case of Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who was touted recently by The New York Times as somewhat of a unicorn in a Republican Party not afraid to tell the president, "no."

"Mr. Bacon’s willingness to publicly disagree with the president makes him an anomaly in the tribal House Republican Conference, where members tend to fall in line behind Mr. Trump’s agenda and actively seek out ways to demonstrate their loyalty to him," The Times piece read. "In a Republican-led Congress that has been reluctant to challenge Mr. Trump on almost anything, the Nebraskan is among the last of a disappearing breed in his party."...

MSNBC political contributor Steve Benen argued in a new article that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "still hasn't gotten it together," despite President Donald Trump's assertion that he eventually would.

In April, Trump told The Atlantic, "I think he’s gonna get it together,” after editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg listed Hegseth's failings: "he’s fired three top advisers in recent weeks, he rotated out his chief of staff, he installed a makeup studio at the Pentagon, he put attack plans in two different Signal chats, including one with his wife and personal attorney."

Benen wrote that Trump's prediction might prove true in the future, "but the hapless Pentagon chief apparently hasn’t gotten it together just yet."...

Some Pentagon officials seem willing and able to leak sensitive information about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's shortcomings and failures — and it's creating scandals just as hefty as Signalgate, according to a new article with MSNBC.

Columnist Steve Benen wrote Monday that some defense insiders are ignoring the Trump administration's chief of staff Susie Wiles' directive against leaks to the media.

Even after the revelations last week that detailed war plans about a bomb run on Houthi rebels in Yemen were shared in a Signal chat, "things managed to go from bad to worse for the scandal-plagued former Fox News personality," Benen wrote....

President-elect Donald Trump "flunked three important tests" on New Year's Day that should have been no-brainers for any leader of the free world, argued MSNBC analyst Steve Benen.

Benen, editor for the official blog of The Rachel Maddow Show, said Trump's social media post about "migrant crime" shortly after a U.S.-born citizen drove his pickup truck into a New Orleans' crowd was written "from a position of ignorance".

Early Wednesday morning after the horrific incident that killed 15 people and injured dozens of others, Trump wrote, "When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true. The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before."...

The Republican fight against health care rights for women may end up hurting the party on election day, according to a new poll.