Susan Rice: Hegseth Is ‘Dumb as a Rock’

“Well, if you’re a white male Christian cisgender macho MAGA man, you can be as dumb as a rock and be deemed qualified to serve as secretary of Defense. That’s apparently what we’ve learned from this episode.”

— Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice bucked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s intelligence following weeks of scrutiny over leaks at the Pentagon amid massive spending reductions at the Department of Defense, The Hill reports.

In Climate Speech Former VP Al Gore Draws Parallels between MAGA and Nazism

Former VP Al Gore in a speech during Climate Week in San Francisco in April 2025

Former Vice Pres. Al Gore was the keynote speaker at a special Climate Week event at The Exploratorium in San Francisco on April 21. He kicked off the event with a speech criticizing the Trump administration’s approach to climate change, comparing it to the Third Reich and highlighting the need for action.

AL GORE: It is abundantly clear, after only three months and one day, that the new Trump administration is attempting to do everything it possibly can to try to halt the transition to a clean energy future and a deep reduction in the burning of fossil fuels. The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis, basically 80% of it.

Many of you here today have likely felt the chilling effect of the policies and the rhetoric coming from Washington, D.C. and what the effect has been on businesses and investors and far beyond.

The Dow Jones, of course, today fell another thousand points and since Donald Trump’s inauguration it’s gone down six thousand points. But while the most visible impacts of what the new administration is doing may be in the market for stocks and bonds, that’s not the only thing that he has caused to crash.

[…]

Trump Meme Coin Brings in $100 Million for the Grifter-in-Chief

$100 million

“Buyers have poured tens of millions of dollars into President Donald Trump’s meme coin since his team advertised Wednesday that top purchasers could join Trump for an ‘intimate private dinner’ next month,” the Washington Post reports. “Nearly two dozen crypto wallets acquired more than 100,000 $TRUMP meme coins, worth roughly $100 million.”

Maddow on Trump’s Disastrous First 100 Days: ‘Oops!’

During her April 23, 2025, show, Rachel Maddow provided a run-down of the Trump regime’s destructive, mistake-ridden first 100 days. In describing the Trumpists’ authoritarian takeover of the country, she took us on a wild ride through the regime’s long list of blunders:

  • Oops! Freezing all federal funding/grants, then rescinding the order within 48 hours due to confusion and legal challenges.
  • Oops! Accidentally listing the wrong person as acting head of the FBI on the White House website and letting the error stand.
  • Oops! Accidentally sending names of hundreds of CIA officers in an unclassified email to the White House.
  • Oops! Announcing a policy that inadvertently halted all mail from China, then reversing it.
  • Oops! Accidental firing and attempted rehiring of nuclear security agency staff.
  • Oops! Misstating savings on a contract by billions of dollars.
  • Oops! Reversing a decision to remove legal aid for migrant children after public outcry.
  • Oops! Cutting, then restoring, the program for 9/11 first responders.
  • Oops! Elon Musk, Trump’s top campaign donor, sending out mass layoff threats to federal employees, then walking it back.
  • Oops! Cutting and then restoring burial services and cancer support for veterans.
  • Oops! Accidentally eliminating Ebola prevention measures, then reversing.
  • Oops! Cutting and then reinstating hires for the Veterans Crisis Line due to an “administrative error.”
  • Oops! Deleting and then restoring thousands of federal contracts in error.
  • Oops! Announcing mass firings of federal employees, then denying it happened.
  • Oops! Posting hundreds of federal properties for sale, including agency headquarters, then removing the listings without explanation.
  • Oops! Publicly releasing unredacted Social Security numbers and private information of hundreds, including Trump’s own lawyer, in JFK assassination files, then scrambling to mitigate.
  • Oops! Accidentally texting war plans to a journalist.
  • Oops! Admitting to mistakenly deporting a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison.
  • Oops! Tariffs inadvertently affecting remote islands, including one inhabited mainly by penguins.

At the end of the segment, Maddow suggested that we should keep this long list of Trump’s failures in mind as the mainstream media sane washes and glosses over of the chaos in its reporting on Trump’s first 100 days.

It’s the Stupid, Stupid

“Yes, Trump and his accomplices are malicious. Yes, they’re corrupt. Yes, they’re dangerous. But they’re also profoundly stupid, and their stupidity is hurting or worrying a lot of people who voted for Trump. … So here’s my pitch: To break Trump’s coalition and reclaim our government, we need to talk not just about the administration’s corruption and its abuse of power, but about its pervasive incompetence.”

Will Saletan