We’re just over two weeks into the second Trump administration, and the all-out assault on government institutions is happening at such lightning-like speed it is impossible to keep up with all of it. Attacks are coming quickly and from so many directions, we miss seeing some of the axes landing on democracy’s roots.
An important case in point, which in this environment you probably missed, happened one week ago, last Friday night, at the Department of Defense, and it did not involve Elon Musk. Or, maybe it did. Who knows?
As Kevin Baron and Price Floyd wrote in a guest editorial for the Washington Post:
The “Correspondents’ Corridor” is where journalists reside and have 24-hour access to their assigned internet-equipped cubicles and small TV and radio booths. There is a reason it is located adjacent to the huge room housing the Pentagon’s army of spokespeople, as well as the briefing room across the next hall. The whole operation sits in close vicinity to the offices of the Pentagon press secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s public affairs, and the offices of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the defense secretary.
Proximity to power matters.
Baron and Floyd know what they’re talking about — from both sides of the microphone. Floyd is former acting assistant defense secretary for public affairs, and regularly briefed what’s called the DoD’s “resident press corps” — those with the assigned internet-equipped cubicles, small TVs, and radio booths. Baron was a member of that corps, worked for NBC News and Politico, and had his own well-equipped cubicle.
When news breaks in the Pentagon — for example, the killing of Osama bin Laden — public affairs officers will brief credentialed journalists. Members of the resident press corps will then get back to their cubicles and begin writing or recording, and the stories will be filed immediately. Meanwhile, a credentialed, but non-resident, journalist has to make the long walk to the Pentagon exits, then out to a car or the Metro, ride back to their bureau, and only then start writing. Or, like journalists from the mid-1900s, they can phone someone at a copy desk and begin dictating, presuming they can find that someone.
The same logic by which the Justice Department summarily fired twelve lawyers who worked for Jack Smith on the Trump theft of classified documents case, the same logic by which the Defense Department removed the portrait of General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and scrubbed any vestige of his presence from the institution, the same logic by which the Justice Department, searching for disloyalty to Trump, is targeting nearly 6,000 FBI agents who worked on the January 6th insurrection case, the biggest in the FBI’s history, is at work here — retribution. Nothing but hateful retribution.
If it has to do with the DoD, “All the news that’s fit to print” will now be printed later. But Breitbart and One America News, having a head start, will be able to put their “peculiar” spins on everything.
This is how you manipulate and distort news right from the beginning.
Joseph Goebbels would be proud.
Update
In yesterday’s Letter about the dismantling of USAID, I mentioned and described the overseas aid that has vanished because of Musk and his whiz-kid henchmen.
Today, Daniel Wu, writing for the Washington Post, pointed out USAID’s demise is also threatening billions of dollars the agency spends on American businesses that create the aid sent to countries in need.
Wu writes:
Now U.S. businesses that sold goods and services to USAID are in limbo. That includes American farms, which supply about 41 percent of the food aid that the agency, working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sends around the world each year, according to a 2021 report by the Congressional Research Service. In 2020, the U.S. government bought $2.1 billion in food aid from American farmers.
This means purchases and shipments of an estimated $340 million in rice, wheat, and soybeans now sit rotting in Houston, stranded, because Trump has forbidden their shipment to some of the poorest places on earth.
How else has Trump’s freeze affected Americans?
Well, researchers who worked on USAID projects have been furloughed and many small companies, who work in sectors such as health care or agricultural improvements will go out of business if the freeze on aid continues much longer.
When Wu asked the White House for a comment, he got this:
“President Trump is ensuring that taxpayer-funded programs at USAID align with the national interests of the United States, including protecting America’s farmers,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly.
I’m sure that will make “America’s farmers” who are losing all that business feel much better.
And late today, Karoun Demirjian, writing for the New York Times, reported the Trump administration will lay off nearly all USAID staff, going from about 10,000 employees worldwide to 290, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.
Demirjian also reported about 800 awards and contracts administered through the agency were being canceled, the three people said.
“We’re not trying to be disruptive to people’s personal lives,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters while traveling in the Dominican Republic. “We’re not being punitive here.”
I’m not sure that’s the way the 9,710 folks getting pink slips feel about it.
