Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is in boiling-hot water for texting U.S. war plans to seemingly everyone, the Dow is racing toward its worst April since the Great Depression, the U.S. dollar just hit a three-year low as the world questions the stability of America’s economy AND President Donald Trump, after fewer than 100 days in office, is already on his fifth IRS commissioner.
Oh, and grocery prices remain high and will likely rise more thanks to Trump’s tariffs.
I realize all of that might seem, to the untrained eye, almost comically bad. But trust me, it’s worse. A more accurate term would be “cosmically bad.”
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Hegseth keeps proving how remarkably unqualified he is to lead the military
Let’s start with Hegseth, who, as I write this column, has probably leaked sensitive U.S. troop locations via Signal chat to his mom, Ted Nugent and an old Russian drinking buddy. The former Fox News host seems to have taken the “he is in no way qualified to run the Defense Department” concerns and worked overtime to prove them right.
Hegseth is now on his second texting-related scandal, this time involving a New York Times report that he shared details of U.S. strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen with his personal attorney, his wife and his brother. You know, the normal array of people who should definitely be looped in on sensitive attack information via a commercial messaging app.
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The earlier scandal involved a separate Signal chat group in which Hegseth spilled war-plan beans to, among others, an editor at The Atlantic. Oops!
Hegseth's Signal leaks show just how incompetent Trump's picks are
By April 21, NPR was reporting that the White House may be looking for someone to replace Hegseth, which makes sense, as it seems quite literally anyone would be more competent.
There is widespread reporting of chaos at the Department of Defense, where a number of Hegseth’s own people have recently been booted for allegedly leaking sensitive information, prompting this remarkably disconnected-from-reality comment from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt:
“The administration and the president have taken a very strong stance against anyone who leaks, especially sensitive and classified information that can put our troops and our war fighters at risk. And you've seen the secretary has taken very strong action to rein in the leakers at the Pentagon and he will continue to do so I'm sure.”
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Secretary Hegseth IS one of the leakers of sensitive information at the Pentagon! He probably leaked something new on Signal while Leavitt was making that ridiculous statement.
While Hegseth and Trump fiddle, the US economy burns
As both Leavitt and the leader of the world’s largest military demonstrate that America is celebrating a Golden Age of incompetence, the markets are following suit.
USA TODAY cited a note sent by Jonas Goltermann, deputy chief markets economist at Capital Economics, saying that Trump's tariffs have “resulted in a sharp fall in the dollar and what looks increasingly like a generalized loss of confidence in the U.S. as a safe haven in currency and bond markets.”
The Dow dropped 970 points on April 21, and major markets were all in the red, which is the color of MAGA. So maybe that’s good? I’m not sure.
If you listen to Trump and other administration officials, everything is going great now, so I’m assuming up is the new down and Americans’ retirement accounts are doing great as long as they don’t look at them.
Trump is changing IRS commissioners at a ludicrous pace
Beyond all of that nonsense ‒ and that is a lot of nonsense ‒ it’s worth noting that in a staggeringly brief period of time, Trump has burned through four IRS commissioners.
As The Washington Post reported April 18: “President Donald Trump replaced acting IRS commissioner Gary Shapley on Friday, three days after he was selected for the position, as rapid leadership changes continue to rock the agency charged with collecting and disbursing billions of dollars in revenue and benefits.”
Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender became the fifth ‒ count ‘em, the FIFTH! ‒ IRS head since Trump took office Jan. 20. If this keeps up, the president is on pace to go through roughly 80 IRS commissioners in his four-year term.
Unless he has some secret plan to bring stability to his administration and the American economy.
If he does, I’m sure we’ll learn about it via a Hegseth group chat that includes his dog walker, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Elon Musk and a dude Hegseth met at a hotel bar in Bangor, Maine, back in 1993.
