Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, Farrah Tomazin and Sarah Ewall-Wice are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out.
Melting down in The Swamp today are: Felicia Jones, Maria Bartiromo, Robert Kraft, Letitia James, Jack Smith, Xi Jinping, Anna Paulina Luna, Addison McDowell, Claudia Tinney, James Comey, and God.
Hegseth Tries to Turn Army Life Even More MAGA
Pete Hegseth has forced out female and Black generals, gone to metaphorical war with “beardos, weirdos, and wimps,” and given himself the preferred pronouns of “Secretary of War.”
Now this turbulent Defense Secretary has a new target for a power grab: The priests.
In fact, not just the priests, but also the rabbis, imams, pastors, and many others who make up the military’s chaplains.
The Swamp has learned that Hegseth is attempting to take effective personal control of the roughly 3,000 chaplains who minister to active duty, reserve and National Guard U.S. service members.
The men and women of God include the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps, which is older than the country itself, having been established by the Continental Congress in 1775, and the other service branches’ commissioned chaplains. Some may even recall the compassionate Father Mulcahy on M*A*S*H.
Until now, chaplains have been a normal part of the military bureaucracy, with the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, made up of top-ranking chaplains, providing advice to the Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness on issues of religious practice and freedom. It lists an executive director who is, intriguingly, a woman: Army Col. Karen Meeker. The career Army chaplain has something that Pete “No Tabs” Hegseth doesn’t: A tab, having graduated from the Airborne School.
But hidden away in Hegseth’s shocking State of the Force speech to the military at Quantico last week—the one where he ranted, “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top”—was a telling detail which puts Meeker and the Chaplains Board firmly in his crosshairs.
As Hegseth said the military is “putting on the full armor of God” because “the real battle is spiritual,” and wanted religion elevated to the same level as physical health. He also announced a new Office for Religious Affairs.
According to documents reviewed by The Swamp, the new Office for Religious Affairs will be led by a yet-to-be-appointed director who will ensure the department prioritizes religious affairs and implements whatever religious policies Hegseth wants.
They will also oversee funding requests, represent Hegseth on religious engagements with Congress and other agencies, and overhaul the Armed Forces Chaplains Board and its executive director.
Crucially, the board will now report to the director, who in turn reports to Hegseth. The men and women of God have been, to use management speak, layered.
And what are the new priorities for the chaplains? The new office will oversee “research, technology, and analytical tools” to “support and assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness and spiritual resilience” across the military. We’re not sure what that means but we’re guessing its the spiritual equivalent of “no fatties”.
Also on the agenda are some distinctly MAGA-coded elements. The new office will push “faith-based homeschool support for military families,” and obtain funding for “contracted service from faith-based non-Federal entities”—a hint that a barrel of pork is being readied for MAGA-friendly mega-churches.
All this comes after a little-noticed video from Hegseth last December. While other Christians were preparing for Christmas, he was complaining that chaplains had gone woke, had been turned into “emotional support” for “warfighters,” and ranting about “secular humanism.”
Blessed to Pete are the warfighters. But at the Swamp, we enjoy a good Bible passage, too, including Ecclesiastes 9:18 which preaches: “Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.”
PSA: Curse of Trump About to Strike
The Swamp rarely comments on sporting matters but fans of the Baltimore Ravens, cancel your Super Bowl travel plans: The curse of Trump may be about to strike. On a trip to Baltimore Tuesday, the president greeted some of the team’s players, then doubling down on the curse, he shouted out the injured quarterback Lamar Jackson. “Say hello to your quarterback. He’s a little bit injured, and tell him I know his mother. I met his mother a few times in Palm Beach.” Jackson’s mom, Felicia Jones, Next up for the Ravens are the Atlanta Falcons. Reports are that Jackson will not start. Ravens fans might want to try spitting to ward off the curse.
Trump’s Naming Fails Are Adding Up
The Kennedy Center has already become the ultimate Donald Trump-naming saga. First, he fired all the board members including chairman David M. Rubenstein, a billionaire who collects documents from the American revolution. Then Trump replaced the board with his handpicked cronies including Second Lady Usha Vance, fired Fox star Maria Bartiromo, and Dana Blumberg, a glaucoma specialist who’s married to New England Patriots owner and Macklemore-hater Robert Kraft. The new board enthusiastically voted to add Trump’s name on the building. Then a federal judge ordered it removed. And now the 80-year-old president has threatened that unless he gets his name attached, he will demolish the iconic institution established by an act of Congress to honor the assassinated 35th President.
But the Kennedy Center is hardly a one-off. A Swamp analysis has identified about a dozen Trump-naming branding attempts that have failed, been reversed or otherwise gone sideways since he returned to the White House. About a dozen more are still in limbo.
Among those that failed was a proposal for a “Trump Train” which would have renamed Washington’s transit authority and rail system under the Make Autorail Great Again Act. (They really called it that.) There was also the proposed “Donald J. Trump International Airport” at Dulles, which went nowhere despite two legislative attempts by two suckup GOP congressmen, Guy Reschenthaler and Addison McDowell. In Manhattan, Trump tried to append his name to Penn Station as part of a Gateway funding deal. Not surprisingly, Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer rejected the offer. A bill to turn a stretch of State Route 260 in Arizona into the much posher “Donald J. Trump Highway” also failed, along with attempts to rename two scenic Utah roads, as well as a highway in Missouri, proposed by two state lawmakers.
Then there are the grander ideas put forward by GOP lawmakers trying to suck up to the egotistical president. Trump got his own bill to add him to Mount Rushmore, courtesy of Anna Paulina Luna, but Congress didn’t bite. A proposal by local Republican delegates to rename Spruce Knob, West Virginia’s highest point, “Trump Mountain” fell flat. And Trump’s birthday becoming a federal holiday? That proposal, put forward by GOP Congresswoman Claudia Tinney, also died.
Mind you, the president hasn’t done too badly when it comes to putting his name and image across projects both here and abroad, with almost 19 successful attempts all up, according to government watchdog 47.watch (including The Institute of Peace). But while Trump’s name is increasingly plastered across roads, bridges, programs and even an airport in Florida, there’s a growing graveyard of things that Trump almost got to put his name on – but couldn’t. The Kennedy Center is not alone.
Trump Goes Shy on His Forbidden (City) Love
Xi Jinping might have left Washington to return to the Forbidden City but Donald Trump’s love for the 73-year-old authoritarian remains on full display on the walls of the White House—kind of. The Swamp has spotted numerous photos of the Chinese President in the West Wing recently, including a framed photo featuring Trump and Xi near the Palm Room doors leading to the Rose Garden, and in a corridor leading to the East Room filled with images. For a president who has spent the year warning that Democrats are dragging America towards communism, Trump certainly seems determined to keep a little piece of the Chinese Communist Party close to home. But he doesn’t want you to see those pictures: When The Swamp went to photograph the display, we were stopped with an alacrity any Communist commissar would be proud of—although we managed to beat the red guards. No wonder Trump loves him!
Now We Know What Really Ticks off Trump
Donald Trump’s retribution campaign has taken aim at everyone from New York attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, to first term National Security Adviser John Bolton and former Special Counsel Jack Smith. Now, the 80-year-old President has set his sights on a somewhat more bipartisan target: the humble mosquito. A bizarre executive order signed by Trump directs federal agencies to slash the population of Asian tiger, Egyptian and other invasive mosquitoes in D.C. by 90 percent by 2028. In addition, he’s calling for the city’s tick population to be cut in half. It makes you wonder what these insects ever did to America’s germophobe president. Either way, Trump is not leaving things to chance. Officials have also been ordered to attack breeding grounds through mowing and drainage projects; target rodents and deer that help ticks thrive, and explore futuristic solutions including sterilization, genetic modification and bacteria. After all, why settle for draining the swamp when you can exterminate it?
