Mr. Waltz had been on thin ice since he organized a group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal to discuss a sensitive military operation in Yemen and accidentally included a journalist in the conversation.
May 1, 2025
"But most of Mr. Trump’s advisers had already viewed him as too hawkish to work for a president who campaigned as a skeptic of American intervention and is eager to reach a nuclear deal with Iran and normalize relations with Russia."
I'm reading "Trump is ousting Michael Waltz, his national security adviser" (NYT).
Posts
39 comments:
Were Trumps original appointments good moves or did Biden force them on him?
Sometimes a slimeball slips thru. You know - Like a Kak.
Like I said "good riddance, Mr Neocon."
He was not hooked into the neocon publication "The Atlantic" by some bizarre accident. He was feeding those guys stuff to undermine Trump's efforts at bringing the conflict in Ukraine to an end without escalating to WW3.
Neocons like Waltz see this conflict for what it actually is, a centuries old effort by Western Europe to humble and humiliate Russia, not for the sport of it, but because Russia sits on uncountable trillions of dollars in natural resources. These neocons believe, without evidence, that Russia will back down and not take the conflict nuclear. But you know what? Post a nuclear war, the Eurasian continent will not be ruled by an army based on North America, anymore than Britain was ruled by Romans after the Roman Empire collapsed.
Invasions flow from population to resources, not the other way around. Russia has a very small population compared to its resource base, and Western Europe has a large one. it's logically absurd that Russia would seek to conquer and swallow Europe. For what? To seize control of its financial instruments? What are they worth really? No, the only time the Russians have involved themselves with Western Europe militarily have been in responses to invasions by Western Europe, from Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_invasion_of_Russia in the 18th Century to Napoleon in the 19th, to Hitler in the 20th Century.
Russia wants to be left alone, but our rulers can't stop drooling over her resources. To this end, they invent a threat from Russia to try to scare us into going along with their greedy plan.
In response to Kak, he lied to get the job so that he could undermine Trump from within his administration. This has been brewing, in my opinion, since he got caught with a direct line to the enemy, The Atlantic, on his phone. At that point the horns and bells were already going off in the Trump Administration, I am guessing. I thought he was going to get axed right then.
Trump had criticized Biden for never firing anyone despite many and serious screw ups, so firing someone like Walz is showing that he is different.
After all the targeting of Hegseth Trump fires the actual guy responsible for the signal chat, and the traitorous Wong deputy along with him.
It was one of Walz's assistants who actually made the mistake, right? If it was in fact a mistake.
Respondeat superior.
He seems to have been another Beltway swamp creature, banging the drums for permanent war. Americans are getting sick of that.
I'm ready for a Constitutional amendment forbidding any American serviceman from setting foot in a foreign country, except for sailors on shore leave and Marine guards and military attaches assigned to our embassies. To hell with the rest of the world, especially Europe. Let's abandon them to the tender mercies of Putin and Xi and the cutthroat Muslim hordes they love so much.
Yawn
Trump is well known to appoint persons with differing views and opinions. He likes the competition of ideas between his team members. Hell, he appointed John Bolton as National Security Adviser for crying out loud. John friggin Bolton!
It's a good philosophy for a leader IMHO, but it has bitten Trump in the ass a few times.
He made it past the 100 day mark, respect🫡
The word ‘neocon’ is doing some heavy lifting for the pro-Kremlin team today.
Jaq said: "Russia wants to be left alone, but our rulers can't stop drooling over her resources. To this end, they invent a threat from Russia to try to scare us into going along with their greedy plan."
****************
OK, now tell us which rulers, and when/where and what they said to support your claim about them "drooling" over Russia's resources. Please be specific.
What good would those Russian resources be, I ask, if the world has been destroyed by nuclear war? You seem to making a variant of the "broken window" fallacy: we will gain so much more even if europe and Russia become a pile of radioactive cinders and ash. Explain yourself.
And if Russia wants to be left alone, why does it do so much sabre-rattling agains Estonia and te other Baltic states it once held captive? For that matter, why does Putin seek to take over the large parts of Ukraine with non-Russian speakers and their own culture? Does the term Holomodor strike a familiar note?
Ok, Hassyamper: suppose we bring all our forces home---then the Chicoms attack Japan, Korea and Taiwan, causing great harm to the economy of the United States. Do we sit there with 300 million + thumbs up our asses, doing nothing????
Are you for frickin' real?
The idea that the West is going to acquire through force the natural resources of a country with thousands of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them is loony.
Wondering if Trump talking to Goldberg was intended as a reward for Goldberg (inintentionally) providing the excuse for dumping Waltz over unrelated issues. Rumors of Witkoff as successor alarming. No foreign policy or national security background. Just a New York real estate deal making background.
"when/where and what they said to support your claim about them "drooling" over Russia's resources."
I cited invasions of Russia going back to the 18th Century. We backed a coup in Ukraine which overthrew the democratically elected government and immediately our CIA director was landing in Kiev and taking over their spy agencies.
Let's say we gave Puerto Rico its independence and told them that the condition was that they not join a hostile military bloc, but remained neutral, they didn't even have to join up with us, and China backed a coup there, and they then entered into a military alliance with China, what do you think that the response of the United States would be? Because those were the conditions under which Ukraine was granted its independence.
Can anybody find any actual rebuttal of my post in this:
"The word ‘neocon’ is doing some heavy lifting for the pro-Kremlin team today."
I guess neocons don't actually exist, and all of the wars that we have been involved in as principles and as sponsors, since the fall of the USSR, we just innocently blundered into; the US blunders and wanders through history just like Forest Gump.
The neocons have noticed the smell attached to them, so now they pretend that there are no such thing as neocons, no, these guys are something new, just because they want WW3 over a border dispute as to where millions of Russian speakers are governed out of on the other side of the world is no reason to think that these new people are "neocons."
"The idea that the West is going to acquire through force the natural resources of a country with thousands of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them is loony."
The idea was, and it's pretty well documented, is that we would inflict a strategic defeat on them, cut them off from the Black Sea and turn it into a NATO lake, and this would create regime change and the collapse of the Russian Federation.
I agree with you that it's looney.
At the same time cutting them off from the Baltic Sea, BTW.
re Europe vs Russia (or, Russia vs Europe)
NONE of it matters, in the least..
Here are the horrible facts:
within a generation; MORE THAN HALF the population of both will be GONE.
If you're not making babies; you are GONE.
but wait! it gets worse!
America Used To Be barely getting by, with NEARLY enough reproduction to maintain. Now the women in the USA have decided to stop having kids TOO.
The future BELONGS to those who show up; and it WON'T be:
The Russians
The Europians
The Americans
The Chinese
The Japanese
The Koreans
The Iranians
In about 2 generations, the world will be made up of
Arabs, and Amish.
There's a battle of the Ages* for you!
Ages* The 7th century vs the 17th.. Who will win? The pacifist Amish? or the warlike Arabs? Stay Tuned!
Jaq: you cited two examples from long ago, and our interference with Ukraine's elections. BUT you didn't NAME any modern leaders who have "drooled" over capturing Russian resources. But the last was an example of us stymying Russian intent, not attacking them directly.
Nor did you acknowledge that the "strategic defeat" we would subject Russia to would come at the expense of a nuclear war destroying much of Western civilization.
I'll give you another chance: NAME some droolers and point us to their published papers or pronounements. Like maybe, West Point lecturers or far-right think tank types? WHO?
Or else, you've got bupkis.
"Rumors of Witkoff as successor alarming"...
I thought the rumors were that Michael Anton, who is brilliant, waits in the wings.
In about 2 generations, the world will be made up of
Arabs, and Amish.
The Amish birthrate is exceptional and if trends continue, they would be a majority of the earth's population in a few hundred years.
The trends won't continue, of course. Wars are caused by undefended wealth. The Amish won't lift a finger to defend their fertile farmland and dairy herds, depending on the rest of us to do it for them.
When the Arabs and Pakistanis and sub-Saharan Africans outnumber everyone else combined, the Amish are cooked. The same is true of the Orthodox Jews, who have similar fecundity, but are similarly well known for shirking military service. Their only hope is that Mormons and sedevacantist Catholics and quiver-full evangelicals, who are not scrupulous of bearing arms, will step up to replace all the purple-haired harpies and homosexuals and noodle-armed porn-addicted incels who are not going to reproduce.
Twenty years ago, when the falling birthrate among white Americans was already well established, I would have said the Western Hemisphere would end up under the rule of the fertile Hispanics, but even they are falling below replacement rates as they become more prosperous and assimilated and intermarried. Likewise with the Chinese, of whom it used to be said that if they were marched off a cliff ten abreast, they would never stop marching. That is no longer true, and China will be as depopulated as Russia if they don't change their ways.
suppose we bring all our forces home---then the Chicoms attack Japan, Korea and Taiwan, causing great harm to the economy of the United States. Do we sit there with 300 million + thumbs up our asses, doing nothing????
You think they will stop selling us the things we want? Switzerland doesn't care from which Oriental despot they buy computers or soybeans or oil, and if we became a giant Switzerland minding our own damned business, neither would we.
Hassayamper said...
suppose we bring all our forces home---then the Chicoms attack Japan, Korea and Taiwan, causing great harm to the economy of the United States. Do we sit there with 300 million + thumbs up our asses, doing nothing????
You think they will stop selling us the things we want?
**********************
So, you insist we will ignore the huge casualties and economic destruction of our main Asian allies, and just keep dealing with the ChiComs and their new slave states as if their aggression never happened?
Just as we have with Russia's war against Ukraine...no sanctions, just business as usual?
Just as we and our allies did during the post-war years dealing with the Soviet Bloc and the Chicoms with our Export Controls Act ?
SNORT
You also say : "Wars are caused by undefended wealth."
Yeah, that explains our Civil War, WWI and WWII, and the Korean War.
SNORT
You slay me, man.
“ The idea that the West is going to acquire through force the natural resources of a country with thousands of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them is loony.”
But in the Yeltsin years this was what was happening, right? Americans were investing $20mm to build a gold mine worth $500mm. But they found that the Russian partners ran off with the $20mm as fast as possible, because they knew that guys like Putin would never let them walk away with $500mm.
Switzerland gets to be a rich neutral country because the US lets it be one, by defending its neighbors. Without the US Putin would not permit Switzerland to be.
So Rubio does a reverse Kissinger and adds NSA duties while Waltz moves to New York.
“But in the Yeltsin years this was what was happening, right? Americans were investing $20mm to build a gold mine worth $500mm. But they found that the Russian partners ran off with the $20mm as fast as possible, because they knew that guys like Putin would never let them walk away with $500mm.”
Maybe 20 years ago, friend was offered the job of building a ski area in China and in Russia. He took the Chinese offer, and laughed when his former boss ended up with the Russian one. The Chinese might steal from him blind, but weren’t going to kill him. The Russians were known to do both. He ended up with a much better payoff than his former boss did.
One of those situations where I'm glad I was too busy to drop a hot take on the matter before Paul Harvey cleared his throat.
Yeah, that explains our Civil War, WWI and WWII, and the Korean War.
Apparently you never heard of Lebensraum or the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Also, fuck our "allies". Europe in particular is becoming an actual enemy.
Hassayamper: "You also say : "Wars are caused by undefended wealth."/ Yeah, that explains our Civil War, WWI and WWII, and the Korean War."
Civil War: The secessionists calculated that the soft Northern wankers wouldn't fight to preserve the Union. So the perception of undefended intangible wealth?
WWI: You're right. The weirdness of the treaties and the mobilization timetables meant that perception of a strong defense triggered an even stronger offense. Belgium was pretty close to undefended, though.
WWII: Hitler got so little pushback from his very first puny offenses, such as remilitarizing the Rhineland, that he assumed Britain and France were not serious countries. The blitzkrieg in Europe decapitated the empires, so the Japanese attacked all that undefended wealth in the Pacific.
Korea: There was something about inconsistent statements from the US government. All we had in South Korea at the time of the invasion was Task Force Smith. And the ROK armed forces were not much compared to the KPA.
So mostly undefended wealth.
JSM
..."and the kind of shake-up that Mr. Trump had sought to avoid in his second term.....Mr. Trump’s advisers had already viewed him as too hawkish to work for a president who campaigned as a skeptic of American intervention and eager to ...normalize relations with Russia .....Mr. Waltz had been on thin ice as national security adviser for months, but his position became more precarious after ..."
They said, presenting a series of conflicting editorial assertions without evidence, but according to unnamed sources....
You don't hate the media enough, yet.
Keir Starmer is trying to force American social media companies to submit to left-wing censorship from UK.
Trudeau and the new guy have legislation pending that will allow the Canadian government to lock you up FOR LIFE if they think you "might" insult someone on the Internet in future.
These people have nothing in common with us. They are collectivist enemy scum. They are tyrants who differ from Putin and Xi only in degree and opportunity, not in kind. If we're going to continue meddling overseas, we ought to be working to overthrow them and exterminate European socialism. It's a much greater long term menace to our interests than Putin and the exhausted, anemic Russians.
Oops, sorry, my 3:10 PM should have been directed to effinayright, who was reacting to hassayamper.
JSM
I wonder if this had anything to do with why Trump allowed an interview with Goldberg.
Walz will be UN Ambassador. The whole Goldberg-Walz signal chat thing was incredibly weird. Was Walz lying? Or that just an excuse?
I think Trump is determined to have a disiplined team this time. No unauthorized leaks.
Dude should've turned in his resignation immediately after that Signal fuckup. Good riddance.
Twenty years ago, when the falling birthrate among white Americans was already well established, I would have said the Western Hemisphere would end up under the rule of the fertile Hispanics,
Drop a fertile Hispanic without an accent dressed in business casual anywhere in the USA and explain to me how you're going to tell he's not Caucasian.
Worked with a Puerto Rican who absolutely insisted all of us white folks discriminated against him because he was Puerto Rican. I told him more then once that if he didn't advertise the fact that he was Puerto Rican- no one would know.
Only in the USA are European descendants or all kind lumped together as "White" for an identity. And most of us can't see the ethnic differences. I understand that in Great Britain the Scots, English,, Welsh, and Irish can all tell at a glance which one another Brit is, of he's Cornish of one of those Channel Islanders... We certainly can't. Possibly because of people like me- of provable Welsh, English, Irish, Scotch, and Huguenot descent. So which am I? Easy- American through and through. And thanks to my wife's ancestry, my kids can add provable Bohemians and a few other ancestries to their list. DNA test says Germanic, and central and Eastern Europe, and the Baltic states. My one daughter-in-law who's done the DNA mostly overlaps my wife's results with a lot heavier Germanic origin, and from who knows where 4%
Ashkenazi Jews.
Hispanics are, for the most part, white. It's an artificial category since people actually from Hispania- Portugal and Spain (or is it Portugal and Galacia and Catalonia and Andalusia and Valencia and...) aren't categorized as Hispanic if they directly from there.
people actually from Hispania- Portugal and Spain (or is it Portugal and Galacia and Catalonia and Andalusia and Valencia and...) aren't categorized as Hispanic if they directly from there.
Oh yes they are. If you're a blonde, blue-eyed Galician (e.g. Emilio Estevez) you can get affirmative action handouts and preferences under U.S. law.
42 USC § 300u-6(g)(2): The term “Hispanic” means individuals whose origin is Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or any other Spanish-speaking country.
If rumors are true that Trump is putting Rubio in the position, at least on an interim basis, this is replacing a big time neo-con with an even bigger neo-con. George W. Bush at least put some realists into his administration after getting torched in his first 6 years.
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