After three days of the president being locked away deep inside the White House and completely hidden from public view, the Trump administration abruptly informed the gathered reporters at just 11:59 this morning that the president would not be making any public appearances for yet another day. For a man who thrives on public attention, this raised all sorts of questions and only intensified the speculation surrounding an unsubstantiated report claiming that Israel had shared a serious security warning involving senior U.S. officials and Donald Trump. According to that report, the threat was so serious that multiple Trump administration officials were immediately relocated to military bases, and Trump himself was being held inside one of the most secure buildings on the planet, the White House. Other reports also claimed that he had canceled a visit to a golf course scheduled for Saturday because of these safety concerns.
With all that is happening, the travel nightmare still unfolding, the war in Iran, the outrage over Pete Hegseth, and Donald Trump’s growing unpopularity, we could only imagine the weight of what was being discussed behind closed doors. Add to that the thoughts that must be running through the mind of a president who has reportedly been warned that a foreign adversary may be planning to target him and his closest advisers with explosive-laden drones. Under circumstances like these, we would expect the president to be spending every waking moment focused on the threats facing our country, working with his advisers to protect the American people, and making sure that the government was doing everything possible to respond to the growing number of crises unfolding under his watch. We would also expect him to be communicating with the American people, reassuring us that someone was in charge and that our safety was his highest priority. So, knowing just how serious the administration claims all of this is, what Donald Trump actually shared on social media today was possibly more revealing than a press conference.
The president started his morning posting spree at 9:54 by attacking the governor of California, “Gavin Newscum.” By 2:31 this afternoon, he was posting photographs that showed a dilapidated public golf course in Washington, D.C. At 2:35, while reports about an Iranian drone assassination plot were starting to circulate online, the President of the United States decided that was the right time to post a rambling, unhinged statement about how he was going to turn something he called “Trash Island” into “the Best Golf Course anywhere in the World.” In that post, he attacked a federal judge named Ana Reyes for blocking his renovation plans. He bragged about fixing “83 Fountains, Monuments, and Statues.” He promised 50 percent discounts on greens fees for D.C. residents. He claimed crime in Washington was down 91 percent, “a RECORD.” He said the golf course would host the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship, the Ryder Cup, and the Presidents Cup, all of which would require approvals he does not have from organizations he does not control. He said it would be beautiful and that everyone was proud and grateful. He published post after post of golf course pictures over and over again.
At 5:00, he attacked Newsom again, this time comparing death-row prisoners to Hannibal Lecter. At 7:50, he claimed the stock market had lost three trillion dollars because investors did not like the midterm results. He kept posting until nearly 10:00 at night.
Not once since the ground stop yesterday has Donald Trump said a single word about the thousands of Americans who are right now stranded at airports across this country, desperately trying to get home. He didn’t comment about the families sleeping on terminal floors. He said nothing about the more than seven thousand flights that were delayed and over two thousand canceled in a single day at the peak of this crisis. He does not care about the people who are spending money they do not have on last-minute hotels and rental cars because their government failed them. The president had time to write a love letter to a golf course, to attack a governor twice in one day, and to go after a federal judge, but he could not be bothered to acknowledge that his own citizens were desperate for their government to simply function. Donald Trump knows that his presidency is in freefall, and he thinks he can just ignore this and it will go away. He is wrong.
We do not know what is actually happening behind the walls of the White House right now, and that is part of what makes this moment so unsettling. We do not know if the Israeli report about an Iranian drone plot is legitimate intelligence or if it is another in a long pattern of unverified warnings that American intelligence agencies have repeatedly been unable to confirm. Earlier this year, when Israel warned of an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Trump during the NATO summit in Turkey, the CIA assessed its confidence in that intelligence as “low.” U.S. and Turkish authorities investigated the claims and did not uncover evidence of an operational plot. Some current and former intelligence officials told the Washington Post that they believed the warnings were designed to influence Trump’s decision-making and U.S. policy toward Iran. The original source of today’s report is Israel Hayom, an Israeli newspaper owned by Miriam Adelson, one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors. The story was published while Mossad Director Roman Gofman was in Washington meeting with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, reportedly pressing for renewed strikes on Iran. Neither the CIA nor the White House has confirmed the report.
We do not know if this is a desperate move by Benjamin Netanyahu to stay in power or if this is a distraction from a physical or mental deterioration that those around the president are trying to hide from public view. But the fact that we are once again forced to ask these questions, and that we are again left guessing about whether our president is capable of leading during a genuine crisis or whether the crisis itself has been manufactured, is troubling enough on its own.
While the White House continues to leave the American people guessing about what is happening behind closed doors, people who have worked inside this administration are speaking publicly about what they witnessed. What they have to say is not reassuring.
Today, John Ullyot, the former Chief Pentagon Spokesperson and a longtime Trump loyalist who once publicly advocated for Pete Hegseth’s appointment as Secretary of Defense, went on national television and called Hegseth’s tenure “beyond embarrassing at this point.” This is not a Democrat; this is someone who worked inside the Pentagon under Hegseth and left after what he described as a “Month from Hell” of chaos, leaks, purges, and dysfunction so severe that he predicted Trump would fire Hegseth. He wrote in Politico that the building was in “disarray” and in the grips of a “full-blown meltdown.” He warned that bigger bombshells were coming. That was last year. In the months since Ullyot left, the situation has only gotten worse.
We are going to have to see how this all plays out. Donald Trump seems to disappear for a week at a time in six-week intervals. Not to the day, but he reliably takes these “breaks.” He often returns with a grand show of strength publicly and with bruises on his hands. Each time, the questions swirl, and we are reminded just how vulnerable and fragile this administration has made our country. As I was doing research for this post, I just kept thinking about how none of this had to happen. The terror in our streets, with people being grabbed by ICE or being shot. The people now dying from preventable illnesses, the normalization of cruelty and chaos. We wouldn’t have had a new forever war, or our taxpayer dollars being siphoned off by Trump and his inner circle. We wouldn’t be paying sky-high gas prices, either. None of this had to happen.
In January, when the new Democratic-controlled House and Senate are sworn in, the unchecked carnage that has defined this administration is going to hit a roadblock that no Truth Social post can stop. Those on the wrong side of history know this. We can expect more of them to defect from this sinking ship, and we can expect accountability to finally, slowly, begin. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: Pete and I made a quick trip up to Newport Beach today. We stopped at Fashion Island, and this was our view as we made our way back to our car. There were people everywhere taking pictures. The American flag really is beautiful. I’ve had a complicated relationship with it lately, as I know many others have. I love it for all it can be and for all that it has survived, but I cringe when I see it because it has been commandeered by a cult that has perverted the very ideals it was meant to represent. I hope that someday it will no longer be a symbol that divides us, and we can all look at it with the same sense of pride and hope for our country that it was always meant to inspire.
Sources:
https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/fmr-pentagon-spokesman-lifts-lid-214437543.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/john-ullyot-op-ed-pete-hegseth-rcna202071
Thank you for beautiful writing and the coverage you provide every day. I share every one of your posts on email.
My guess is he's either recovering from poor health after a long, miserable October, preparing to escalate the war with Iran, or some combination of both.