What's Wrong With This Picture?
Hey, kids, can you count how many things are wrong with this picture? Find 'em all!
The conventional wisdom is that a picture is worth a thousand words. This picture, though, is worth a thousand jaw drops.
It’s the flimsy makeshift war room that someone at Mar-a-Lago thought would be a fitting facility from which to initiate an international military invasion. Remember that military invasion of Venezuela that happened before they invaded Minnesota and before they threatened invading Iran and Denmark and Greenland and probably a few other sovereign nations?
(Of course, you may have been distracted by the ICE officer shooting a 37-year-old mother in the face, or by the subsequent spin by DHS, or perhaps by the resignation of civil rights attorneys and prosecutors in protest to the government’s determination to investigate the victim rather than the murderer, or maybe by the most recent malicious prosecution by the Trump/Bondi Department of “Justice.” It’s hard so to keep up these days.)
And, yes, I said military invasion. The Trump administration all got their stories straight and claimed it was law enforcement activity. But if it quacks like a war…
I took a stab at the “what’s wrong with this picture” game, and I came up with this disturbing yet certainly incomplete list.
Where was this picture taken? Is this some store room at Mar-A-Lago? Tru[mp couldn’t be bothered to return to Washington to the White House Situation Room for a matter of such gravity? The casualness with which he has approached the unlawful removal of the leader of a supposedly sovereign nation is shocking, even for Trump, who has single-handedly changed our collective understanding of what can shock us.
With an operation that we’re learning has been in the works for weeks or months, was Trump just unwilling to spend time in Washington so the operation could be initiated from a secure location? He has become entirely accustomed to risking national security so that he can keep up his lifestyle.
As noted above, Trump and his cronies keep saying their invasion of Venezuela wasn’t a military operation but rather a law enforcement operation. So why, then, is self-proclaimed “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth in the room and not Attorney General Pam Bondi? (Of course, declaring “not war” is a job for men, and Pam Bondi is just a woman, after all.)
Where is Tulsi Gabbard? In fact, where has she been lately? Shouldn’t the Director of National Intelligence be a key player in this absurd venture? Or has she been “disappeared” from this administration since she has occasionally failed to march in lockstep? (She’s also just a woman, after all.)
Why does the only screen big display X/Twitter? Are they measuring their success or failure by the responses on this now hijacked right-wing platform? If that’s the case, it’s kind of in keeping with the way they’ve been operating. They’ve created a broadcast and social media landscape that magnifies their own views and minimizes the views of their opposition, and then, having excluded anyone who disagrees with them, they refer to the support they receive on those outlets as an indicator of the complete mood of the nation. (More on this in an upcoming post.)
What’s with the flimsy black cloth? Is that a new kind of security that no one else in the world has ever heard of? Or is it just as stupid, just as vulnerable, just as useless as it looks? (You know already the answers to those sarcastic rhetorical questions. Basically, Trump and his crony cabinet members are discussing military plans in a completely non-secure environment, with those plans able to be heard by any sous chef, towel boy, or swollen-lipped Mar-a-Lago damsel who happens to be passing by.)
What’s stunning about this picture is that it isn’t some secretly acquired picture made public by some “traitor” to the Trump regime to reveal how out of control this administration is. No. It was proudly published to social media by Trump himself. Not only that, even John Ratcliffe, the CIA Director, proudly and complicitly posted several pictures from the same series on Instagram. They’re either all oblivious to the fact that these photos aren’t doing them any favors, or their rubbing America’s nose in the fact that they have no compunction about their behavior. It could be both.
Feel free to post your own list of things that are wrong with this picture in the comments.