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‘Extraordinary’: Pentagon’s ‘Urgent’ Summons of Hundreds of Top Brass to US Sparks Concern

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Concerns are rising as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered nearly all 800 top military officers worldwide to the U.S. for a “rare” and “urgent” meeting in Virginia — believed to be without precedent and called with no published agenda.

Calling it a “highly unusual directive,” The Washington Post, which broke the news, reported that the meeting comes “months after Hegseth’s team at the Pentagon announced plans to undertake a sweeping consolidation of top military commands.”

The meeting also comes just after President Donald Trump rebranded the DoD as the Department of War, which requires congressional approval, and amid an order from Secretary Hegseth to Pentagon reporters that they publish only approved material. It also comes just ahead of what is expected to be a federal government shutdown as Republicans so far have refused to negotiate with Democrats over healthcare funding. The Trump administration has threatened mass layoffs of federal workers on October 1 if the government shuts down.

READ MORE: ‘Ridiculous and Weak’: Trump’s ‘Triple Sabotage’ Mocked as Fox Hypes Escalatorgate

The secretive meeting is raising national security concerns.

“None of the people who spoke with The Post could recall a defense secretary ever ordering so many of the military’s generals and admirals to assemble like this. Several said it raised security concerns,” the Post reported.

“People are very concerned. They have no idea what it means,” one person told the Post. “Another person said ordering hundreds of military leaders to appear in the same location is ‘not how this is done.'”

“Are we taking every general and flag officer out of the Pacific right now?” one U.S. official said. “All of it is weird.”

The Post also reported that the Defense Department “possesses highly secure videoconferencing technology that enables military officials, regardless of their location, to discuss sensitive matters with the White House, the Pentagon or both.”

READ MORE: Vance: FCC Chairman’s Kimmel Threat Was Just a ‘Joke’

Critics are also expressing concern.

“I don’t know why Hegseth is calling this big jamboree in until I do. I can’t really evaluate it. On its face, pulling all these guys from all over the world and making them all sit in one place seems kind of stupid,” remarked retired U.S. Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols, now at The Atlantic.

“With modern secure communications all of this could be done remotely. If hundreds of top military commanders are in one place is that not a security concern?” noted Barbara Starr, the well-known former CNN national security reporter.

“Extraordinary move: Hegseth summons hundreds of generals and admirals to Quantico for reasons unknown. Good day for someone to plan an invasion,” observed Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor at The Economist.

READ MORE: ‘Red Flag’: Stephen Miller Accused of ‘Reviving Fascist Rhetoric’ at Kirk Memorial

 

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Trump’s Latest ‘Executive Time’ Grievance Session Reveals What He’s Really Worried About

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President Donald Trump used his executive time Friday morning in an hours-long Truth Social session, attacking late night television hosts and a Republican senator while pushing two of his primary agenda issues and celebrating the rising stock market.

His posts paint a president securing the Republican future and vanquishing his enemies. But his targets suggest a president focused on threats, real and perceived.

“Stop playing games and pass the Save America Act!” Trump wrote, seemingly out of nowhere Friday morning, ignoring the tumult and GOP anger his $1.8 billion “weaponization” fund and $1 billion White House ballroom security request had, disrupting vital funding legislation this week. The Save America Act is — at least at the moment — effectively dead in the Senate, and not on the list of the majority leader’s top priorities.

Trump has been repeatedly promoting the Save America Act, declaring if it passes Republicans won’t lose a race for the next 50 years.

“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward,” he wrote. It has not gone forward and is causing massive upset in the Republican-controlled Senate. “I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal break in of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune. Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, justice!”

Trump’s claim he could have settled what was a $10 billion lawsuit is contradicted by reports showing the IRS was preparing to fight him, until Trump’s DOJ intervened.

Critics of the proposed $1.8 billion fund say it rewards criminals and could incentivize his supporters to take violent action on his behalf in the future.

READ MORE: Trump Envoy Invites Kids in Greenland to Come to America for Chocolate Chip Cookies

Trump also attacked Stephen Colbert after his final show Thursday night — and appeared to threaten other hosts with a similar fate.

“Stephen Colbert’s firing from CBS was the ‘Beginning of the End’ for untalented, nasty, highly overpaid, not funny, and very poorly rated Late Night Television Hosts,” he wrote. “Others, of even less talent, to soon follow. May they all Rest in Peace!”

But Trump saved his enmity for an outspoken critic from his own party, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis calling him “weak and ineffective” while taunting him for retiring.

The North Carolina Republican lawmaker, Trump charged, “didn’t have the courage to fight it out in the Senate, remain in place, and run again for office, a thing he desperately wanted to do.”

“When I told him that I would not, under any circumstances, endorse him for another run, too much work and drama (he couldn’t have won, anyway!), he immediately quit the race and publicly announced that he was going to ‘retire.’ I said, ‘Wow, great news, that was easy!’ The media said how brave he was to take me on, but he wasn’t brave, he was just the opposite – he was a quitter!”

Despite reports that Trump’s actions may hamper his agenda and GOP congressional majorities, the president wrote that Tillis can now “have all the fun he wants for a few months, with some of his RINO friends, screwing the Republican Party. In the end it will only get bigger, and better, and stronger, than ever before!!!”

READ MORE: Trump: $400 Million White House Ballroom Is ‘My Gift to the United States of America’

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‘Political Survival’ Fears Driving Senate GOP to ‘Breaking Point’ With Trump: Report

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This has been a challenging week for Senate Republicans, and they are reaching a “breaking point” with President Donald Trump over fears for their own “political survival,” reports Punchbowl News.

One prominent Senate Republican had just lost his primary race to a Trump-backed opponent when the president snubbed another prominent Senate Republican to endorse his ultra-MAGA rival in Texas — leading to fears the Democratic candidate could win that longtime red seat.

Then on Thursday, Senate Republicans met with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for nearly two hours. Reporters said it did not go well. Republicans are furious over not just the president’s $1.8 billion compensation fund for alleged victims of DOJ weaponization during the Biden administration — but also for the timing the White House chose to announce it, disrupting their efforts to pass a critical reconciliation bill so thoroughly Majority Leader John Thune sent them home.

“Eventually,” Punchbowl reports, “Senate Republicans were going to prioritize their own political survival over President Donald Trump’s wants and needs. They have. But it just might be too late.”

READ MORE: Targeted by Trump Senator Scorches President’s Pet Project

Now, some say, the prospect of the GOP losing control of the Senate seems more likely than it did just a few months ago.

“Many Republicans fear Trump is determined to bring them down with him — along with their shared legislative agenda,” Punchbowl observed. “Senate Republican leaders are now coming to grips with the reality that advancing Trump’s priorities may be in conflict with their efforts to retain the majority.”

Punchbowl cites an “erosion of good will” between Senate Republicans and Trump that has been “building steadily for months over campaign strategy disputes, uneven White House messaging and Trump’s attempts to get rid of the filibuster.”

The White House “isn’t making life easier” for Capitol Hill Republicans.

Some see the president’s actions as severely limiting the Republicans’ ability to pass their agenda — and his.

Political journalist Isaac Saul this week noted that Trump has successfully managed to oust several congressional Republicans — with one more possibility on the way — but by doing so he has severely imperiled his critical majority in the U.S. Senate.

“One understated reality of what Trump has done: He basically just nuked his Senate majority for the next six months,” wrote Saul.

The enmity between the Senate GOP and the White House has become so great that one reporter on Thursday point-blank asked Trump if he is “losing control” over Senate Republicans.

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I really don’t know.”

READ MORE: Ex-Republican Pundit Has a Strategy to Defeat Trump and the GOP

 

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‘Galactic Blunder’: Republicans Furious Over Timing of Trump’s $1.8 Billion Fund

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Senate Republicans had already grown vocal in their opposition to President Donald Trump’s unprecedented $1.8 billion fund to compensate alleged victims of Justice Department “weaponization” during the Biden years. After a nearly two-hour meeting Thursday with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that participants described as “incredibly hostile,” their opposition hardened — and the reasons why became clearer.

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) spoke with CNN’s Manu Raju on Thursday, and denounced the legislative strategy behind the $1.8 billion fund — but not the fund itself.

“Ron Johnson told me the Trump administration should have focused on getting ICE/CBP bill passed and the decision to unveil $1.8B fund now (when they’re trying to pass the bill) was a giant mistake,” Raju reported.

“Somebody described it as a galactic blunder, and I think that’s probably true,” Johnson told the CNN anchor.

“Similar sentiment among GOP leadership,” the Washington Examiner’s Ramsey Touchberry added, “who feel [the] situation is a mess of the admin’s own making and Blanche meeting/WH guidance on anti-weaponization fund made it worse, per source.”

“Lots of frustration among Senate Republicans over the timing of the anti-weaponization fund — and the fund itself,” the Washington Post’s Riley Beggin noted. “One GOP aide told me about half of Senate Rs don’t like it.”

Mediaite notes that “NOTUS’s Reese Gorman reported on the Republicans not being ‘happy’ with the Trump administration over the fund, which critics are slamming as a massive ‘slush fund’ to pay Trump allies and donors.”

“They have f—— this up on too many levels to count,” a senior GOP Senate aide told Gorman, Mediaite reports. “The only thing more toxic than demanding taxpayers foot the bill for a billion-dollar ballroom is demanding taxpayers give billions of dollars to J6 rioters.”

Axios adds that U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) told reporters that the $1.8 billion fund was dropped like “a bomb in the middle of a pretty well planned out reconciliation bill.”

Politico reported Thursday that Blanche had struggled “to quash GOP concerns” surrounding the fund. “Blanche met privately with Senate Republicans as the administration and GOP leaders tried to defuse the controversy over the fund.”

 

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