March 12: EXCLUSIVE Mullin played previously unreported role in some of those CECOT deportations … Famous real-estate developer says no one gives a fuck and/or shit about housing costs … It’s official, almost: America bombed an Iranian girls school for the same reason it bombed Iran; Badness at intelligencing … Pentagon also covered up American casualties …
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Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) has no law-enforcement experience. He has no military experience. He has no paramilitary experience. He has no paramedic experience. He has no comedic experience … except for the fact he was nominated to run the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (DHS).
With almost a quarter million employees, DHS is the largest law-enforcement organization in human history, not counting the next Avengers movie or later episodes of Super Friends.
DHS includes the Coast Guard. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). And the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Mullin’s most relevant qualification — for running multiple law-enforcement agencies (Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection), plus an entire branch of the armed forces, plus the agency that safeguards U.S. aviation, and the agency that prepares for and responds to natural disasters and other catastrophes — is that he ran and grew the business empire he inherited from his father, starting with Mullin Plumbing.
It is, according to Mullin’s Senate biography, “the largest service company in the country state area region.”
That’s Mullin Plumbing, your trusted Tulsa plumbing & HVAC company: The RED ROOTER!
What’s relevant to Pres. Donald Trump is that Mullin was a wrestler and fought three mixed-martial arts bouts. Which, yes, is pretty bad-ass. And about as helpful as a three-handed saw.
Senate Democrats know all of this. Yet some are open to voting for him anyway.
In their defense, they could argue that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is leaving a backlog of “dozens” of unsigned contracts — and who better to clean out a clogged pipeline than Mullin Plumbing: The RED ROOTER!
What Senate Democrats don’t know is that Mullin actually does have relevant experience in immigration.
On Wednesday night, I revealed the story of how Mullin was a key, but secret, player behind the scenes in last year’s horrific and illegal arrests and deportations of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants, some of whom were sent to CECOT without due process. To be tortured.
If you follow my reporting, you know I’ve been writing about two guys — a former CIA official and a Venezuelan dissident — who’ve been confirmed by other news outlets as working with the Trump administration, feeding them intel on the Venezuelan regime and gangs. Allegedly.
It turns out that, even before the 2024 presidential election, these two were connected to the Trump campaign … by Mullin. It was Mullin, the ex-CIA guy said, who got their information to Trump.
Their information shattered hundreds of families. And they had to get Mullin to give it to Trump because, the ex-CIA guy says, literally everyone else they spoke to wouldn’t give them the time of day:
As I reported Sunday, it wasn’t just information about Tren de Aragua.
Mullin also passed on to Trump the election-conspiracy claims of election-conspiracy theorists who believe that Venezuela rigged elections in 72 countries. With help from Cuba, Iran, China, Russia, and Serbia. And George Soros. And Joe Biden.
It was their claims about Venezuela’s non-existent 2020 election theft that allegedly motivated Trump’s attack on Venezuela. All of that, from Mullin, to Trump.
This is what Mullin now says he believes about Venezuela and election theft:
And now Trump wants to put Mullin in charge of:
Immigration, and
Elections … maybe.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) chairs the Homeland (sic) Security Committee which will hold Mullin’s confirmation hearing next Wednesday. Mullin once called Paul a “freaking snake” and Paul has said he wants to hear Mullin acknowledge some DHS failures, not necessarily including DHS murders.
Oh, and by the way, I have even more revelations (hint, hint, Bible, Bible) coming about Mullin. So it’s not too late to subscribe to my original-reporting Substack, Senate Democrats!
Trump Doesn’t Give a Shit and/or Fuck About Your Housing Costs
Pres. Donald Trump — whose housing is paid for by the American taxpayer, including the demolition of the East part of his housing — doesn’t give a shit and/or fuck about the housing of the American taxpayer.
As TFN told you Wednesday, there’s bipartisan support for a new bill making its way through Congress to alleviate housing costs — on the demand end, with new subsidies, and on the supply end by making building easier.
But Trump wants Congress focused on making it harder to vote. So, according to Punchbowl — I know, I’m embarrassed even writing that — Trump told Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to forget about making housing more affordable.
“No one gives a [bleep] about housing,” Trump reportedly told Johnson. Punchbowl didn’t clarify whether the [bleep] was fuck, shit, flying fuck, good goddam, rat’s ass, rat’s dingus, patootie, or Johnson.
Trump’s disinterest could give some House Republicans an opening to close off affordable housing now, giving House Democrats an opening to close up some House Republican careers in November.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, obviously biased because they care about things, most Americans do give a bleep about housing.
In polling last May, 82% said affordable housing should be at least an important priority for local bleeping leaders. Almost half, 48%, said it should be a top bleeping priority.
My Lie Massacre
A Pentagon investigation reportedly has confirmed that, yes, fine, it was America that bombed a girls school in Iran. And, therefore, that Pres. Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lied when they said it wasn’t.
The death toll, according to Iran — which didn’t lie — is estimated at 175 people, at least, most of them children. As with almost every fucking thing with this administration, the cause was bad intelligence. Or, to put a better spin on it, really good stupid!
The school was adjacent to an Iranian military base, and used to be a part of the base. Target coordinates for the strike came from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which provided outdated data.
Checking that kind of thing is the kind of thing that woke militaries do.
But Trump and Hegseth have gutted military protections for civilians, relied on glitchy software that still thinks human hands have six fingers and used outdated targeting information, and then blew up a girls elementary school in Iran and lied about it. Is a sentence that now exists.
(In Claude’s defense, the New York Times reports this fuckup was all good, old-fashioned, organic, free-range, human intelligence.)
One year ago, the Pentagon launched the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. Then Hegseth dropped that mission in favor of “lethality,” the military jargon for bloodlust used by the Sociopathy Center of Excellence.
Citing whistleblower Wes Bryant, ProPublica reported on Tuesday:
Trump and his aides lowered the authorization level for lethal force, broadened target categories, inflated threat assessments and fired inspectors general, according to more than a dozen current and former national security personnel…
“We’re departing from the rules and norms that we’ve tried to establish as a global community since at least World War II,” Bryant said. “There’s zero accountability.”
After word came that someone bombing Iran had bombed the girls school, Trump tried to deflect blame, without mentioning Jeffrey Epstein, saying,
“In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran … They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”
Asked why only he in his entire administration was lying and blaming Iran, Trump explained that he just says shit, literally saying, “I just don’t know enough about it.”
Department of Homeland Insecurity
The FBI at the end of last month alerted California police departments that Iran “allegedly aspired” to attack the state with drones that didn’t exist from a ship that didn’t exist, frighteningly close to the California shore. (The FBI allegedly aspires to find Nancy Guthrie by the end of this month.)
If carried out, the Iranian drones would have been the second attack on California by a hostile power in just two years.
But CBS News Senior White House Reporter Jennifer Jacobs wrote Wednesday night that there was “no credible intelligence” behind the alert.
Non-credible intelligence is the same kind that was recently used to bomb an Iranian school from frighteningly close to the Iranian shore.
News of the alert, and news of the alert’s bullshitness, come as congressional Republicans are trying to pressure Democrats into funding the Department of Homeland (sic) Security, which has killed more people on U.S. soil than Iranian drones have. Speaking of which…
U.S. Covered Up Extent of Iranian Drone Attack
The injuries sustained in an Iranian drone attack in the early hours of the war were worse than the Pentagon said, CBS News reported Wednesday.
On March 1, the Pentagon said that five were seriously wounded and “several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions.”
“Several” turns out to have been more off-base than the girls school was off a military base.
Thirty-seven casualties were still hospitalized as of Tuesday. The injuries include burns, shrapnel, and traumatic brain injury, the latter of which most of the Trump administration does not consider serious.
Six others died last week from the drone strike.
And if you’re wondering how this story got past CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss, it might interest you to know it had no mention of an earlier CBS exclusive: That the tactical operations center — military jargon for a tricked-out triple-wide — where that Iranian drone struck with some accuracy whatsoever, was not, in fact, fortified as Hegseth claimed it was.
Yes, there was steel-reinforced concrete around the walls. But the drone came accurately through the roof and there was no special protection overhead. Just like America!
Eighteen Democrats Who Don’t Read Their Own Fundraising Emails Confirm Trump Nominee
The Senate on Wednesday confirmed newly generalized Gen. Joshua Rudd to serve in two positions, the minimum number of positions Pres. Donald Trump likes people to serve in under him.
Rudd will serve as the National Security Adviser, whose function is to be ignored or not even consulted by Trump on high-level impulse wars. Rudd will also lead the U.S. Cyber Command despite not being good with computers and probably still being on MyWarSpace and FriendlyFirester.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) had forced a roll call vote, objecting to Rudd’s lack of experience in cybersecurity and surveillance. But 18 Senate Democrats wydened their gap with Democratic voters by helping Republicans confirm Rudd. The 18 were:
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Chris Coons (D-DE)
Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV)
John Fetterman (D-PA), no points if you guessed it
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Maggie Hassan (D-NH)
Martin Heinrich (D-NM)
Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
Mark Kelly (D-AZ)
Angus King (I-ME)
Gary Peters (D-MI)
Jack Reed (D-RI)
Jacky Rosen (D-NV)
Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Elissa Slotkin (D-MI)
Mark Warner (D-VA)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Good thread on this here.
Election Watch
GEORGIA The race to replace former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), but hopefully very, very differently, has come down to a runoff set for April 7. Democratic candidate Shawn Harris’s campaign website is here. Republican candidate Clay Fuller’s campaign website is somewhere else.
Four Quickies
Hey, do you like apples or other commodities? Remember how I and Tyson Slocum explained earlier this week why supply and demand don’t drive oil prices? Just like Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday? Well, despite Wright acknowledging that Wall Street speculation drives price spikes, Pres. Donald Trump on Wednesday turned the White House into Waffle House, changing his mind in less than two hours on whether to release oil from strategic reserves. More supply means price goes down, right? Oil soared back over $100/barrel. How do you like them apples? Wait, am I doing the apples thing right?
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee says more people are withholding tax payments to protest — and deny funds for — U.S. military involvement in Iran, Gaza, and the U.S. The U.S. has supplied weaponry for use against the citizenry of all three, and is actively engaged in combat in at least two that we know of. Not that your law-abiding TFN would ever countenance such a heinous crime, but the group’s website is here.
Remember how the Justice Department dropped its legal defense of the illegal executive order punishing white-shoe law firms for not brown-nosing Pres. Donald Trump? The Justice Department picked it up again. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump told some White House flunkey to order his Justice Department flunkies to continue fighting. Even though they keep flunking.
Nye County, NV, Republican Chair Leo Blundo has been indicted on fraud charges, for allegedly stealing at least $225,000 in COVID grants. Just wait’ll the feds find out it’s not Somalians committing fraud but a white Republican! And just this January, Blundo’s predecessor, former Nye County Republican Chair William Carns was charged with creating or distributing child pornography. Just wait’ll the feds find out it’s not drag queens, but white Republicans!
TCB
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NEWSFUCKING IN THE WILD Please join me today at noon, eastern, for the second in my series on how TV news actually can be saved. I’ll be joined by my friend and former MSNBC colleague, David Shuster, now with The Young Turks and Blue Amp. You can join us, free, right here, for “How To Save TV News: David Shuster.”
Also today, at 4pm eastern, I’ll join the Refuse Fascism Substack for a conversation about my reporting on those “Armageddon,” holy-war, Jesus-returning briefings. With luck, this link will work!
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Go get ‘em, kids! Remember, Trump still hasn’t admitted he destroyed the East Wing of the White House and an entire girls school…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Everyone needs to refer to Mullin as Mar'Quayne Mullin until he loses his shit. Which should only take a day or two.
Another excellent and informative post, thank you. Even gave me a bit of a giggle. In Australia to 'root' is to fornicate, if not referring to plants or teeth. Imagine driving around in a van that says, 'the red fornicator' on the side. Mate, that's a bit off.... teehee.