Concerns are mounting over President Donald Trump’s ability, willingness, or even interest in engaging with the most pressing issues facing the country, as he increasingly—and casually—admits to being unaware of critical matters. His repeated declarations of ignorance, often delivered without hesitation or concern, have deepened alarm among critics who warn of a dangerous void in informed leadership in the Oval Office.

Late Wednesday afternoon, a reporter asked President Trump, “Have you been briefed about the soldiers in Lithuania? Who are missing?”

The Commander-in-Chief, appearing both uninformed and unconcerned, simply replied, “No I haven’t.” And moved on to take a question from another reporter.

The four soldiers went missing on Tuesday during a training mission in Lithuania, near the border of Belarus, a staunch ally of Russia. On Wednesday, as Axios reported, their Hercules armored vehicle was found submerged. Hours before Trump was asked, NATO and numerous media outlets had reported the soldiers were dead, only to walk that back later. They currently remain missing.

But President Trump said he was unaware of any of this.

Reporter: Have you been briefed about the soldiers in Lithuania? Who are missing?

President Trump: No, I haven’t. pic.twitter.com/IP4NKoSsUu

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 26, 2025

“Is Trump just totally out of the loop?” asked journalist Matthew Yglesias. “Why wasn’t he briefed on the soldiers in Lithuania?”

READ MORE: Passwords, Contact Info for Top Trump NatSec Officials ‘Publicly’ Available: Report

Declaring President Trump “clueless” on “basic intel,” The New Republic on Thursday morning noted that “the armymen were known to be missing as early as Tuesday at 4:45 p.m., the Lithuanian military said, so why Trump was still unaware of the situation more than 24 hours later is unclear.”

Also Wednesday afternoon, President Trump was asked about his Secretary of Defense’s involvement in Signalgate. Pete Hegseth has been identified as the one who shared classified information in an insecure channel—seen as the greatest violation within the entire scandal. But the President appeared unaware of his Defense Secretary’s role in the massive nation security breach when asked by a reporter.

“Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do this. Hegseth? How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, it’s all a witch hunt,” Trump told the reporter. He then went on to try to blame Signal, saying he thought it could be “defective.”

Trump: “Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do this. How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, it’s all a witch hunt … I think Signal could be defective to be honest with you.” pic.twitter.com/DXuRgo4HJJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2025

Attorney and former Biden White House senior presidential speechwriter Dan Cluchey, responded to the video of Trump’s remarks on Hegseth and Signal.

“This is stronger evidence of cognitive decline than anything Joe Biden has ever said in his life, ever,” he wrote, and warned: “Something tells me the press will breeze right past it.”

READ MORE: ‘Liar’ Hegseth Faces ‘Immediate’ Resignation Demand From Growing List of Democrats

Journalist James Surowiecki observed, Trump is “so checked out of his job that he doesn’t even know Hegseth needlessly disclosed the weapons packages and times of the attack on the Houthis.”

On Monday, Trump had told reporters when asked about the Signal scandal, “I don’t know anything about it.” Appearing as if he had not been briefed, he then asked a reporter for more information about it.

“Trump initially told reporters he was not aware that the highly sensitive information had been shared, 2 1/2 hours after it was reported. He later appeared to joke about the breach,” the Associated Press reported.

The Signal texts that The Atlantic had published also reveal the President’s apparent lack of awareness, on numerous fronts.

On Wednesday, asked by a reporter if he believed the information shared in the Signal chat was not classified, the Commander-in-Chief told reporters, “That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know. I’m not sure, you have to ask the various people involved.”

The White House has repeatedly insisted it was not classified, but countless experts, including lawmakers, say it was classified.

Vice President JD Vance in the texts says, “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this [military strike] is with his message on Europe right now.”

The Washington Post, citing a person with knowledge of Vance’s intentions, reported on Wednesday that “Vance wanted to ensure that Trump had been given all the facts about the potential attack, including that European nations stood to benefit more from it than the U.S.” That would suggest the Commander-in-Chief was not aware of “all the facts.”

Also of concern is that the 18 participants in the Signal chat appeared to be unsure of the President’s directive.

Calling him “President Bystander,” MSNBC’s Steve Benen writes, “Trump appears out of the loop in his own White House.”

Pointing to the Signal texts, Benen says one text “chain featured the White House’s Stephen Miller adding, in apparent reference to the attack plan, ‘As I heard it, the president was clear: green light.'”

“The problems should be obvious,” Benen added. “Vance was uncertain about Trump’s knowledge of the relevant details, and one of the president’s right-hand loyalists added an ‘as I heard it’ qualifier to the commander in chief’s directive about a deadly military operation abroad.”

The Commander-in-Chief appears to have been uninvolved in important portions of the planning of the military strike. Based on the Signal texts, it appears likely that he was absent from key portions of the decision making process.

Jared Ryan Sears, who writes The Pragmatic Humanist, offered this observation.

“Trump didn’t know about the Signal group chat or that a reporter was included. Trump says he didn’t sign the authorization to use the Enemy Alien Act to deport people without due process. His signature was on the document. Trump didn’t know that US service members went missing during a training exercise in Lithuania,” he noted. “What kind of leader knows nothing about what his administration is doing, what he himself is doing, and what is happening with the military he is in charge of?”

Attorney, Republican, and former U.S. Representative Barbara Comstock on Wednesday shared her concerns via social media.

“There is no adult supervision at the White House. Grandpa does not know what is going on except on the Golf Chanel or if someone takes a bad picture of him. Where’s Melania? Does he have a COS or caretaker?”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Quite a Bit of Perjury’: Texts Shatter Trump Admin’s ‘Bungled Coverup’ of Classified Leak

Image via Reuters 

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in an attempt to cauterize the self-inflicted wound from his decision to help Republicans pass their “CR,” continuing resolution, last week—a move backed by President Donald Trump—may have only deepened what some rank-and-file Democrats see as a crisis of leadership.

In what some are calling a “devastating” interview Tuesday evening with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, the Democratic leader appeared unwilling to grasp the full extent of the current threat level to American democracy, that our democracy is now at a crossroads—a fact well-documented by experts on democracy, and proclaimed by a Democratic U.S. Senator—and struggled to acknowledge that the nation is facing a constitutional crisis.

Trying to defend what is being seen as a lack of strategy, an inability to grasp the gravity of this moment in American history, and a refusal to fight the battle that is actually before him, Schumer made his argument to Hayes.

President Donald Trump’s approval “numbers have started to go down, from 51 to 47. If we keep at it and keep at it and keep at it, his numbers will be much lower. He will not only be less popular, but less effective,” Schumer insisted.

Schumer additionally claimed that “we will find the moments where we shouldn’t give them votes.”

READ MORE: ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’: GOP Senator Furious Over Judge’s USAID Ruling

But Schumer was sitting in Hayes’s studio exactly because he did give Republicans votes. He canceled his book tour that was supposed to start this week, reportedly due to security threats, and instead has been hitting the talk shows and cable news defending his decision — and his leadership position.

“There’s this weird asymmetry right now,” Hayes observed, noting that Republicans “are acting in this totally new way, in which they are ambitiously trying to seize all power and create a presidential dictatorship in the United States of America, and the Democratic opposition is acting like, ‘Well, if we can get their approval rate down a few points.’ Then what? Then what happens?”

“Well,” Schumer, still in defensive mode, declared, saying that “what happens is, look, first, we get it way down, he’s gonna have much like we—this worked in 2017.”

For some on social media, that appeared to be the inflection point—the moment that Schumer exposed that he is using the old playbook that the Trump administration, MAGA, The Heritage Foundation, and Project 2025 burned long ago.

“You say now it’s a different government,” Schumer acknowledged.

“It’s different, though,” Hayes pressed.

“Oh, it is different, but health care: we beat them. Taxes: we beat them, and guess what we did? Guess what we did, Chris? We took back the House and won in the Senate, and that got and then we were allowed to do all those good things.”

Hayes also honed in on Schumer’s 2017 reference.

“I don’t disagree with that, but the difference to me between 2017 and now,” he explained, is that it “is a full-fledged assault on the Constitutional order that has not been seen.”

And Hayes asked, “but then the question becomes, what is the role of the minority in resisting that, that’s distinct from ‘we’re gonna beat them on health care, we’re gonna beat them on spending with Medicaid.'”

Then Schumer said, “If our democracy is at risk—”

“It is at risk,” Hayes declared.

READ MORE: Chief Justice Smacks Down Trump

“Sorry. It is certainly at risk,” Schumer acknowledged, after Hayes made that declaration, but then he ignored Hayes’s question: “Do you believe” it is at risk?

Schumer moved on, appearing to say that if the federal courts ultimately fail to hold Trump, “we’ll have the court of public opinion, and if that happens, as you pointed out, we have had rule of law since the Magna Carta, okay?”

“The people will have to rise up, not just Democrats, not just Republicans, not just, you know, people everybody. But our democracy will be at stake then,” he said, again, not appearing to grasp that, as experts say, it is right now.

“And if the people make their voices heard as strong and stand up, and we join them, I believe we can try to beat that back.”

“We can beat that back, but it’s it’s it’s up on that one, if democracy is at risk, that’s a little different than what we’re talking about now — even a shutdown as horrible as it is.”

“We’ll all have to stand up and fight back in every way,” Schumer concluded.

Critics, and rank-and-file Democrats, and some elected Democrats, say the fight should have started when Trump was elected.

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a noted political scientist, responded to a clip of Hayes’ interview with Schumer, declaring, “Chuck is delusional.”

That word has repeatedly surfaced.

“‘This worked in 2017’ is all you need to hear. I can understand Schumer’s logic on the shutdown, but he’s delusional if he thinks that’s a winning strategy,” observed Cosmopolitan editor Olivia Truffaut-Wong.

“You know, I watched Sen. Schumer on Chris Hayes and really tried to hear him defend his actions in good faith,” wrote Charlotte Clymer, a former Human Rights Campaign press secretary who has called for Schumer to resign, “but by the end of their discussion, it just felt impossible for me to avoid this very deep sense of dangerous foreboding. Big ‘tempting fate’ energy in the worse way. Honestly scary.”

One day before Schumer’s MSNBC interview, Clymer on Monday had already made the case for “Why Chuck Schumer Should Step Down.”

“We have lost our way not because of what we believe in,” she wrote, referring to rank-and-file Democratic voters, “but because of our party leadership’s reluctance to fight for what we believe in.”

Sam Seder, the progressive political commentator and host of “The Majority Report with Sam Seder,” declared Schumer’s interview with Hayes was “devastating for Schumer. ..ignoring the criticism from all corners of the party..can’t articulate a strategy. It’s bizarre. He thinks it’s 2017.”

He also wrote that Schumer was “trying to justify his lack of leadership and strategy on his failed dirty CR. He’s panicked and should be. He is not up to the era. Instead of fighting against every other Democratic leader he should resign for the sake of the country.”

Emma Vigeland, Seder’s co-host, wrote that Chris Hayes “nailed Schumer at the end of tonight’s interview by getting him to equivocate about whether or not we are currently at risk of losing our democracy. This is entirely out of step with how the base feels and saying this on MSNBC could (and should!) cost him his leadership.”

Elected Democrats are starting to break their wall of silence and call for Schumer to resign as Senate Democratic Leader.

U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) on Tuesday, as C-SPAN reported, said: “I was deeply disappointed that Senator Schumer voted with the Republicans. You know you’re on bad ground when you get a personal tweet from Donald Trump thanking you for your vote…I’m afraid it may be time for the Senate Democrats to pick new leadership…”

Christopher Webb, a social media political commentator with a strong following multi-platform following, posted edited video of the interview and also called it “devastating.”

DEVASTATING INTERVIEW

Trump must be very happy that Chuck Schumer is the minority leader right now.

This dude doesn’t get it. He doesn’t think democracy is truly at risk, and he’s doing save it—just waiting for Trump’s poll numbers to drop.

And worse— @SenSchumer is waiting… pic.twitter.com/YtIq2lsx0O

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) March 19, 2025

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Welcome to Autocracy’: Trump Declaring Biden’s Pardons ‘Void’ Debunked and Denounced

Image via Reuters

Democrats across the political spectrum—liberal, moderate, and progressive—appear united in their outrage over Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to back the Republican-led bill to fund the government and prevent a shutdown. They argue that the legislation enables President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to continue dismantling the federal government while jeopardizing health care and veterans’ benefits. Without a signed bill, the federal government will shut down at 12:01 AM on Saturday.

Calls are mounting for Leader Schumer to resign. There appears to be a movement on social media demanding his resignation, across platforms including X, Bluesky, and TikTok.

Protestors in New York City are chanting, “Vote no, it’s time to go,” while some hold up signs that read, “Schumer — Be a fighter not a collaborator,” and, “Don’t be a Schumer chicken s—.”

SENATOR AOC?

Some are calling for U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the popular progressive Democrat from New York, to primary the 74-year old Schumer, who was first elected to Congress in 1981.

“I think there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal,” Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez told reporters on Thursday. “And this is not just about progressive Democrats. This is across the board. The entire party. There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States, who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people, in order to defend Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. Just to see some Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk, I think it is a huge slap in the face, and I think that there is a wide sense of betrayal if things proceed as as currently planned.”

READ MORE: ‘Basically Underwater on Everything’: Trump in Big Trouble With Majority of Voters Poll Finds

Some House Democrats “are so infuriated with Schumer’s decision” that they have begun encouraging Ocasio-Cortez “to run against Schumer in a primary,” CNN reported Thursday night. “Multiple Democrats in the Congressional Progressive Caucus and others directly encouraged Ocasio-Cortez to run on Thursday night after Schumer’s announcement.”

One member said that Democrats were “so mad,” CNN added, “that even centrist Democrats were ‘ready to write checks for AOC for Senate,’ adding that they have ‘never seen people so mad.'”

SCHUMER’S ‘STRATEGY’

When in the minority, Democrats for years have handed Republicans enough votes to help pass numerous “continuing resolutions,” bills that keep the federal government’s lights on, but this time it’s different. Right now, Democrats are aching for a leader who will fight the Trump/Musk/MAGA machine.

Their anger erupted Thursday night.

Leader Schumer on Wednesday had announced that it did not appear there would be enough Democratic votes to help Senate Republicans pass the House bill, and instead that they would filibuster it. But on Thursday afternoon he declared he would support the legislation, suggesting there would be enough votes to pass it.

.@SenSchumer (D-NY): “While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse … Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.” pic.twitter.com/1IkuJqOObr

— CSPAN (@cspan) March 13, 2025

Schumer’s reasoning is not wrong, many are willing to admit. Elon Musk reportedly wants the shutdown because if the government stays closed for 30 days, he can then mass fire even more government employees.

But Democrats are saying Schumer’s rationale does not meet the moment. They want someone to fight, not cave.

Adam Jentleson is a writer, political commentator, and the former deputy chief of staff to the late U.S. Senator Harry Reid. Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, was an extraordinarily successful Senate Majority Leader from 2007 to 2015.

READ MORE: ‘Entire World Ripping Us Off’: Trump Quotes FDR in Angry Tariff War Meltdown

“There is a lot of ‘what would Harry Reid have done?’ and sadly we will never know,” Jentleson wrote late Friday morning. “But I can say that we won the 2013 shutdown because we spent months laying track on a clear message about health care. The terms of the shutdown were well-defined before it happened.”

Critics say that’s what’s missing — that Leader Schumer hasn’t bothered to do that.

Pointing to a late Friday morning report indicating that Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune said that he and Leader Schumer have not even spoken, Democratic strategist Matt McDermott writes, “The problem here is that all evidence suggests @SenSchumer has no strategy whatsoever. Absolutely stunning that he hasn’t talked to the Senate Majority leader, even to attempt to negotiate concessions.”

McDermott also offered this insight:

Not sure we’ve really seen a time where Democratic leadership was so seismically at odds with one another. This is not just voter frustration. Tweets like this suggest that the caucus itself is truly fractured right now. https://t.co/vmKnoetboq

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) March 14, 2025

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Thursday night sat down with Schumer, and summed up the situation for him.

“I’ve seen a lot of House members, and across an ideological range, interestingly enough, urging the Senate to filibuster this, saying, look, this is existential about whether we control the power of the purse or not. We cannot essentially sign off on this DOGE unilateral arrogation of this power,” Hayes explained.

The Democratic Leader’s response was that “it’s different in the Senate,” because voting against the bill in the House would not have led to a shutdown. But that’s incorrect. If the House bill failed, and no other passed, that would have absolutely led to a shutdown.

“I felt so strongly that the shutdown would be the greatest disaster we face with these arrogant, arrogant autocrats that we had to avoid the shutdown and fight and many of the other things, every other issue that we have,” Schumer added.

‘TEAM FIGHT’ — ‘MISREAD THIS AT YOUR OWN PERIL’

Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker issued a statement explaining his opposition to passing the continuing resolution, but his chief of staff late Thursday night served up an analysis of what Democrats are feeling.

“The fight going on in the Democratic Party right now is not between hard left, left and moderate,” explained Anne Caprara. “It’s between those who want to fight and those who want to cave. And Team Fight stretches across all ideological aspects of the Party. Misread this at your own peril.”

Right now, it appears there might be enough Senate Democrats willing to vote in favor of the continuing resolution, or at least, vote for “cloture,” meaning to allow debate on the bill.

One who is not voting yes is U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), largely considered a moderate Democrat.

“When I saw the House bill on Sunday, I said, ‘Hell no,’ because I just was not interested in voting for something that was going to enable these guys to fire more veterans and cut education and health programs, screw up air safety, tank the economy,” Senator Kaine said Thursday morning on MSNBC. “Why would I do it?”

Kaine noted that during an Armed Services Committee,”the Pentagon looked us in the face and said, this House CR will hurt national security, will weaken our ability to maintain ships and subs. It’s going to do damage to us. And then my Republican colleagues on the committee said, we agree with you, this is going to hurt national security, but it’s better than a shutdown.”

He criticized Speaker Johnson f0r sending House members home after passing the continuing resolution this week, because there’s now little means to alter the bill.

“And I decided then, when the Republicans are trashing this, but acting like they have to go along, I’m not going along.”

“I went back to my days in living in Honduras,” Kaine shared, “when it was a military dictatorship, and I learned something very important. That a bully can take something from you but you shouldn’t hand it over to him, so I’m voting no.”

Kaine also said, “we’re winning cases in court right now against things that Trump is doing. But if we vote for this bill and sort of say, ‘Okay, we’re going to put our imprimatur on some of this,’ I even worry it might make it harder for us to prevail in court on some of these battles.”

PRAISE FROM TRUMP

Critics from across the Democratic spectrum continue to blast Senator Schumer.

“Schumer’s decision is an unconscionable surrender that shows he does not have what it takes to meet this moment,” explained MeidasTouch co-founder Brett Meiselas on Thursday night. “Time for new leadership in the Democratic Party.”

“It is clear that some of us understand the present danger & some don’t! I stand by the NO vote on the blank check for Trump & Elon,” wrote U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). “I’ve got no explanation nor agreement with Senate Dems being complicit in Trump’s Tyranny.”

SiriusXM host Qasim Rashid, Esq. wrote: “Schumer thinks he’s smart to vote with GOP now because ‘in 6 months Trump will be unpopular.'”

“What’s Schumer smoking to think THIS time is different? Schumer—resign & retire.”

“How badly do you have to f— up being the Democratic leader that Trump is praising and congratulating you????” an astonished Elie Mystal, the justice correspondent for The Nation, asked on Friday.

Indeed, President Trump is praising Leader Schumer.

“Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing — Took ‘guts’ and courage!” Trump wrote on Friday morning. “The big Tax Cuts, L.A. fire fix, Debt Ceiling Bill, and so much more, is coming. We should all work together on that very dangerous situation. A non pass would be a Country destroyer, approval will lead us to new heights. Again, really good and smart move by Senator Schumer. This could lead to something big for the USA, a whole new direction and beginning! DJT.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Not Above the Law’: Fist-Pounding Democrat Explodes Asking ‘Where’s Elon Musk?’

Image via Reuters