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‘The Ground Has Shifted’: Experts Warn After Trump’s ‘Gnat’ Speech to U.S. Navy

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National security, military, legal, and political experts are warning that President Donald Trump crossed a dangerous line in his latest speech — a televised, rally-style address to more than ten thousand U.S. Navy service members in which the Commander in Chief urged the troops to “take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder called the Democrats,” a statement many view as an authoritarian abuse of the military’s apolitical role.

“But we have to take care of this little gnat that’s on our shoulder, called the Democrats,” Trump told the cheering Navy crowd in Norfolk, Virginia, that included sailors, SEALs, and Marines. “They want to give all of our money to illegal aliens that pour into the country.”

The late Sunday afternoon event was slated as a celebration of the Navy’s 250th anniversary.

READ MORE: ‘Intolerable Abuse of Power’: Top Democrat Rages at Trump’s ‘MAGA Propaganda’ Scheme

Juliette Kayyem is a senior public policy lecturer and the faculty director of the Homeland Security Project and the Security and Global Health Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as a CNN senior national security analyst and a contributor to The Atlantic, according to her bio.

She wrote: “‘Take care of’ is not subtle. This weekend the ground has shifted and no person can deny what the president, unpopular and unfit, intends. To remain silent is to welcome this. They can both sides or claim they didn’t hear, but there is no wiggle room about his plans now.”

Political and national security analyst, and well-known veterans advocate Paul Rieckhoff called the President’s “gnat” remark “wrong, outrageous, shameful and disgusting.”

“These are lines that should never been crossed,” he warned. “And have never been crossed. But he keeps crossing them.”

“Never let them normalize how wrong it is to attack political opponents when speaking to a military audience,” Rieckhoff added. “This is impeachable behavior. But not a single member of Congress has the courage to make the case. And it’s getting worse fast.”

READ MORE: Leavitt Explains White House Claim ‘Illegals’ Get Free Health Care—Experts Disagree

Stanford Professor of International Studies in Political Science Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, remarked: “In front of this audience, this statement is wrong… and scary. He is supposed to be the president of the United States of ALL Americans, not just his party. Polarization is destroying our country at home and making us weaker abroad.”

​Political and communications consultant Jesse C. Lee, a former Biden and Obama official, observed: “Trump is on a tour of speeches to our active military, telling them that the new focus is going to be on wars against the ‘enemy within’ and that Dems are bugs that need to be exterminated, while sending the National Guard to occupy ‘Democrat run cities.’ Textbook fascism.”

U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) wrote: “Donald Trump keeps blurring the line between law enforcement and the military to go after political opponents. It’s unacceptable, and it’s how authoritarians consolidate power. We must name and resist every attempt to use government power to silence dissent.”

Gregg Nunziata is the executive director, Society for the Rule of Law, a Federalist Society member, and a former attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

He wrote: “‘We have to take care of this little gnat on our shoulder called the Democrats,’ says the American President to cheering servicemembers. This is so incredibly repugnant and un-American, on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin.”

Dave Cavell, a former speechwriter for President and First Lady Obama and Vice President Harris, remarked: “I’m a former WH speechwriter who has written many speeches to those who serve. I can barely describe the rage and shock I feel seeing this lunatic spew vile, fascist style garbage at our troops, whose mission is to serve us all, not a party — or this bozo.”

READ MORE: ‘None of Us Consented’: Trump Admin Blasted for Altering Federal Workers’ Emails

 

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‘Orwellian Gaslighting’: Trump CIA Slammed for Retractions of ‘Biased’ Reports

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The Central Intelligence Agency has announced it is retracting certain findings that it now deems “biased,” across a range of reports on topics such as white supremacy, anti-LGBTQ attacks, and contraception.

But according to an MS NOW opinion piece, this is a case of the CIA “yet again spurning intelligence that doesn’t align with Donald Trump’s bigoted agenda.”

“Without providing any evidence,” MS NOW’s Ja’han Jones writes, a CIA news release “calls the reports ‘biased’ and gives credit to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — a group that is led by Trump ally Devin Nunes and includes people like far-right podcast host Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s policy director.”

READ MORE: Trump Previews State of the Union Address in Wild and Rambling White House Remarks

Jones calls the group “a bunch of handpicked MAGA activists” who are “attempting to discredit analysis about white supremacy as the president presses forward with a racist agenda; they’re trying to discredit analysis about LGBTQ+ abuse and discrimination as he pushes policies that discriminate against some LGBTQ+ people; and they’re undermining an analysis about reproductive rights and health care access after the administration absurdly destroyed nearly $10 million worth of contraceptives for women in low-income countries.”

The CIA’s release stated that Director John Ratcliffe ordered retractions or revisions to 19 intelligence products that did not meet CIA and Intelligence Community “analytic tradecraft standards,” and “failed to be independent of political consideration.”

The release also stated that these now-retracted intelligence reports exhibited “substantial deviations from the President’s expectations that CIA’s workforce remains independent from a particular audience, agenda, or policy viewpoint.”

Ratcliffe said, “There is absolutely no room for bias in our work and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record. These actions underscore our commitment to transparency, accountability, and objective intelligence analysis.”

According to Jones, Ratcliffe’s remarks reflect “Orwellian gaslighting.”

READ MORE: Judge Cannon Permanently Blocks Release of Jack Smith Classified Docs Report

 

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Trump Previews State of the Union Address in Wild and Rambling White House Remarks

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President Donald Trump gave angel families at the White House on Monday a small preview of Tuesday’s State of the Union address, while delivering a rambling, often off-script speech at an event where he hosted families of victims of foreign criminal organizations.

“It’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” the president remarked.

“We have a country that’s now doing well,” he also said. “We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had, we have the most activity we’ve ever had. I’m making a speech tomorrow night, and you’ll be hearing me say that.”

During the approximately one-hour event, Trump mentioned “these crazy shooters” who go after “consequential” presidents, like Lincoln and JFK.

Trump attributed Kennedy’s being consequential to his “glamour.”

“So maybe I want to be a little bit less consequential,” he said. “Can we hold it back a little bit, please?”

“We had the greatest first term of any president in history,” Trump claimed. “Even radical left people have said that.”

READ MORE: Judge Cannon Permanently Blocks Release of Jack Smith Classified Docs Report

He also alleged that “25 million people” came into the U.S. under President Joe Biden. BBC News, which debunked Trump’s 25 million people claim in December, reported that the “number of migrant crossings at the US border did reach record highs under Biden but not to the level Trump – who has never provided a source for these claims – states.”

Claiming that he “won in a landslide,” Trump said that the “one thing that I regret, about the election and the process, ’cause it’s a much bigger, more important, you look at what we’re doing throughout the world. We’re respected like we’ve never been before.”

“But the one thing that I can’t do anything about is that [Biden] allowed 25 million people, many of these murderers, drug lords, criminals, people from mental institutions, they emptied their mental institutions,” Trump claimed in a long statement.

“All over the world?” he continued. “Not just in South America. They emptied their jails. Many of them from all over the world. Why? Why would we do this? And they walk in, nobody even asks for, like, do you have an identification? Do you have an ID? Um… It’s so crazy. You know, the mayor of New York, and he’s a very nice person. I met him, but his ideology’s not too good. But, uh.. We’re having a massive snowstorm right now. And I’ve heard that he’s asked people to come out and help shovel the snow. Okay, so you get a shovel and you start shoveling, right? What the hell you’re not gonna help too much, but you can help. And hello, darling. Are you? No, right behind you. Look, my friend, right? Are you okay? Yes, you. Are you okay? Are you okay? Good. Good. Good. Are your eyes okay? I gave her money to get her eyes fixed. A lot of money to get her eyes fixed. That doctor ripped me off, but that’s okay.”

READ MORE: ‘Did Not Rule Against Trump’s Tariffs’: Bessent Offers Alternative Interpretation

Addressing his polling numbers, Trump denied he is at forty percent approval (latest polls show even less, with a new CNN poll at 36 percent), saying his numbers were “much higher,” and insisted that he has a great deal of “silent support.”

“I’d love to run against anybody,” he continued. “The real polls say you kill everybody — wouldn’t even be close.”

He also insisted that his second term is “much more powerful” than it would have been had he won in 2020, “because there would be nothing to compare it to. Now they compare it to Biden and that horrible, horrible administration.”

“It just amazes me that there’s not more support out there,” he told the families. “We actually have a silent support, it’s silent — that’s how I won I guess — probably 85 million votes. They say 78 million, 79 million. They cheated at this election too, it was just too big to rig. Too big to rig. But they cheated like hell.”

 

READ MORE: MAGA Existed Before Trump — It Isn’t Going Away When He Leaves Says Op-Ed

 

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MAGA Existed Before Trump — It Isn’t Going Away When He Leaves Says Op-Ed

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President Donald Trump did not create the spirit of “MAGA,” which is at the core of his Make America Great Again movement, but he did “recognize the sentiment, brand it, and give it a rallying cry,” according to an opinion piece in The Hill that suggests that when Trump is gone, MAGA will remain.

“The slogan didn’t invent a movement; it catalyzed one,” wrote Colin Kelly. “It pulled together a fragmented set of conservative circles and gave them a single banner. In that sense, MAGA didn’t emerge from Trump’s imagination — Trump emerged from the cultural terrain MAGA had already shaped.”

Trump’s MAGA slogan “suggested that electing Trump was the only path to restoration,” Kelly also wrote. “And it offered something more personal: supporting Trump would make you great again, too.”

READ MORE: Judge Cannon Permanently Blocks Release of Jack Smith Classified Docs Report

He warned that because the MAGA movement has “intensified” without expanding its base of supporters, “our politics increasingly resembles a kind of rhetorical civil war.”

Kelly says that MAGA’s concerns — including the erosion of the traditional family, undocumented immigrants, the economic decline of rural America, and “the sense that Christian religious values are increasingly dismissed in public life” — are “real.”

He suggests engaging with the “most reasonable” GOP voters, whom he described as those “who may feel culturally displaced but are not committed to perpetual conflict.”

Kelly concluded by writing that acknowledging the concerns of these voters “does not require abandoning the pursuit of civil rights, justice, or equal participation in our system, but rather, it “simply means recognizing that a healthy democracy must be able to hold multiple priorities at once.”

READ MORE: ‘Did Not Rule Against Trump’s Tariffs’: Bessent Offers Alternative Interpretation

 

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