As such, nope. But they very well may be attempting to sabotage the current administration in an attempt to render a duly elected president powerless for the duration of his last term.
Overly dramatic? Maybe. We’ll know by Wednesday, April 23, 2025.
Yes, that’s a very specific date. It’s roughly seventy-two hours from The New York Times unsupported claim that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth violated national security by including his wife and brother on a Signal group that dealt with the specifics of the attack on Yemen in March.
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By Greg JaffeEric Schmitt and Maggie Haberman
New York Times, 4/20/25
Published April 20, 2025Updated April 21, 2025, 9:30 a.m. ET
Leer en español阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.
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The quote above is the proverbial smoking gun. If the New York Times doesn’t produce actual evidence by Wednesday then the reasonable person should conclude that the Times is engaged in a fraud.
Who, exactly, are the ‘four people with knowledge of the chat’? The chat in question is subject of an ongoing investigation – why, then are these alleged witnesses not named?
To protect them? From what? There are whistleblower laws in place for legitimate whistleblowers.
To let the New York Times engage in reputational sabotage in order to force Hegseth’s resignation? Anonymous sources are very good for exactly that sort of subterfuge.
There’s an easy way for the Times to prove its good faith – reveal the evidence and the sources.
Will they? Dubious. They literally published that hit job on Easter. The story has been in the public eye since late March. It couldn’t wait for the news page on a Monday but needed to be done as an op-ed on Easter?
No. That does not pass the sniff test.
Seventy two hours is more than sufficient for the Times to produce the evidence to back up its claim. The American people certainly deserve to know if in fact their Secretary of Defense is so nonchalant regarding national security. The American people also certainly deserve to know if their pre-eminent newspaper is perpetuating a fraud.
The astute among you will have noticed that this blog isn’t posted until 4/23/25. I’d rather just write up the whole thing as if I already knew what will happen, but I’m not a New York Times reporter and I try not to make things up.
Oh yeah, that IS dripping sarcasm. I am NOT amused right now.
Well, it’ll be a couple days before I can finish this properly so we might as well discuss why this incident angers me.
Well, technically, I don’t have anything to be mad about – yet. If the Times produces the evidence then Hegseth has a good bit of explaining to do. But the reason I doubt that the Times will produce that evidence is simple – you don’t withhold a smoking gun. It’s stupid to hold back their evidence and sources IF the Times can actually prove this accusation.
However, if the Times is pulling one of its usual ‘anonymous sources’ that never materialize games, keeping that source and evidence hidden is absolutely necessary. Fraudulent evidence gets you jail time and is usually pretty easy to reveal as fraudulent when the accused has the money and resources to have the evidence properly examined. Being in the Presidential Cabinet does have a few perks.
In other words, presenting false evidence or easily refuted witnesses will land the Times in more hot water than it can handle.
So, there better really be evidence, right? Surely the Times would know that, right?
Right and right – but Democrats are desperate. Desperate makes you dumb.
The anonymous sources crap is the Times bread and butter. They’ve been allowed to get away with it for decades. It probably never occurred to their editors that accusing a Cabinet member in an administration that isn’t playing by the old rules where Republican leadership let Democrats run roughshod over them might be a really, really, stupid idea.
I don’t believe in grand conspiracies. People run their mouths constantly. Keeping big secrets is the hardest thing of all. Humans never fully grow up. Just like in first grade, the instant we hear a secret we just have to blab about it.
Fancy titles don’t change human nature.
The sting in the tail is that humans are also opportunistic in the extreme. Grand conspiracies are too hard to do but small conspiracies opportunistically preying on circumstance? That humans can do pretty well.
Sometimes.
So here’s a conspiracy theory for ya:
DISCLAIMER for the Reading Comprehension Impaired: What follows is supposition. If you don’t know what a supposition is and can’t use the Internet well enough to look it up, go ask your Mommy if it’s okay for you to read this.
Hey, Kid! Your Mommy said no, didn’t she? Scram! I mean it! I’ll tell your Mommy if you’re not gone in…
Okay, now that the kiddies and college students are out of the room, here’s the conspiracy theory: The New York Times is attempting to sabotage the Trump administration by forcing resignations within Trump’s Cabinet. Trump has surrounded himself with people he can trust, unlike in his first administration. If Trump doesn’t have people who will actually carry out his orders his effectiveness in implementing his agenda will be greatly diminished.
Basically, the Times seems to be attacking Hegseth to force a resignation which both makes Trump have to waste time selecting a new appointee and getting them through confirmation AND deprives Trump of at least one loyalist. The more time, energy and manpower Trump has to waste on keeping the Cabinet he wants, the less Trump will get done in other areas.
If the Times and other outlets can get enough Cabinet members to resign, Trump will have fewer people he can trust and likely will end up with at least a few who will actively work against him as happened in the first Trump administration.
I should use bigger words so the media doesn’t realize we’re on to them, huh?
Now, all of that is supposition. The Times could produce evidence and Hegseth will be in actual hot water.
Of course, if the Times had the evidence they likely would have produced it already. But it could happen.
Probably.
Okay, kiddies, you can come back now. We’re back to analysis instead of just guesswork.
So what? Why would the New York Times acting like the liberal rag it is irritate me? Technically, it’s not treason – you have to use weapons for that – but it’s danged close even if the supposition is wrong. The press is supposed to be adversarial to everybody, not just one side or the other. But constantly smearing an incumbent administration even if just stupid and not malicious causes far reaching damage. The American people selected the candidates they did because the American people wanted what those candidates were selling.
They have every right to get what they voted for and the media has no right to intervene. The media’s job is to relay information. It is NOT the media’s job to select winners or losers in any way whatsoever.
Period.
You overly cynical folks are just as wrong as the overly naïve folks. It’s not ‘just the way it is’ – it’s the way We the People allow it to be.
Stop looking at me in that tone of voice! We most certainly DO have a choice and both formal and informal systems available to us to make our choices count. Believing we can’t affect change is the first step to losing the freedoms we hold so dear and for which so many gave their lives.
Not easy is not the same as not possible. The US Constitution is designed to be slow and difficult. It keeps the tyrants and the hotheads from taking power. Efficiency is not for governance – we want that in implementation. We want inefficient systems to enact laws because that gives us a LOT of time to reconsider, oppose, obstruct, object, rework and maybe even pass something worth passing. Speed kills whether in sports cars or legislation.
If we want something enacted, WE have to elect the people that will actually do all that boring political work or at least hire staffers capable of the boring part. Once we’ve elected those people, it’s the job of other elected people to be a pain in the butt and of other citizens to write their congressmen to try to stop legislation they don’t like.
Welcome to the American Way. Messy, but effective at its main job, preventing tyranny.
Our job. Our government. Our representatives. Our fellow citizens.
Not. The. Media. Period.
The media is granted a special position because We the People need good information to make good decisions with and frankly, even with the Internet, that’s a LOT of work. We have real jobs of our own so there’s only so much time we can devote to our civic duties. The Media is supposed to fill in part of that gap.
It is NOT supposed to intervene in how America is governed. Not by trying to subvert the Constitution and not by subverting an administration – those things are strictly off limits. That’s the price the Media pays for its privilege.
The New York Times has forgotten that.
Well, it’s 3 PM CST on April 23, 2025. As of this writing , the New York Times has not offered any evidence of its claims.
Color me not surprised.
The Trump Administration and President Trump himself have denied the allegations and called them ‘fake news’. Instead of evidence, we’ve gotten further spurious anonymous sources claiming that Hegseth is being ousted.
No on the record sources for any of this.
The whole idea that the New York Times has insider knowledge of the Trump administration is bordering on ridiculous. Trump didn’t select anyone from the Beltway and has been firing a ton of bureaucrats so who would these insiders even be? If real, they are either being robbed by not receiving Best Actor awards or they are simply not privy to high level information. Otherwise, such leakers would be quickly found and dismissed.
Maybe that is what happened in the Pentagon. Maybe its some other political stunt as three of Hegseth’s people were dismissed for unknown reasons. Probably the former but can’t rule out the latter.
That’s the problem with having too little information and too big of an imagination. It’s way too easy to get caught up in what we think we know and the emotions of the moment instead of getting the information we actually need and giving ourselves time to calm down.
That’s really the point to this exercise. On Monday when the Times accusation blew up it really did tick me off. My first thought was the title of this post – that the NYT was engaged in an effective coup, trying to sabotage the administration.
And you thought the title was just clickbait.
Three days later the Times hasn’t produced a shred of evidence. Could my initial assessment be correct? Sure, but it probably isn’t. The guys at the Times aren’t that smart.
All Trump has to do is deny and ignore. Without real evidence this ‘scandal’ will die on the vine. If the guys at the New York Times were half as smart as they think they are they’d have known that and crafted a much better story with a source stupid enough to go public. All this accusation did was make the Times look even more incompetent and untrustworthy.
Not exactly how you bring down an American administration.
Point being that whoever you think ‘they’ are, ‘they’ are usually idiots. Grand conspiracies and even big conspiracies just don’t work in real life.
So is stupidity the better explanation for what the Times did? Nope, sometimes stupidity accompanies actual malice. The Times knew they didn’t have proof but they ran the story anyway. They aren’t that desperate for readership. The Times simply hates all things Trump and ran the allegation just for spite.
If Trump were stupid enough to let it damage his administration, all the better.
But Trump already took this class the hard way. He’s unlikely to play Whack-A-Mole with media lies this go around. His handling of this incidence of media malice shows a great deal of sophistication.
Let the liars lie. They will only destroy themselves. Trump has better things to do.
Scaring the crap out of Wall Street, deporting all Biden’s criminal illegal immigrants, giving Putin enough rope to hang himself…
Trump is a very busy man. He doesn’t have time to let the New York Times sidetrack him with their unsubstantiated claims.
The Times has better things to do as well. After all, the New York Times is the pre-eminent American producer of fish wrap and bird cage liner.
Overpriced, of course.
