Government Shutdown and that clown show at Quantico yesterday

TAT readers,

There is a lot of preventable lunacy coming at us these days from Washington D.C. So today, I will just try and hit the highlights of a couple of imminently dangerous issues that have painful ripple effects, across our nation and the world. The two biggest stories today dominating our headlines, are grounded in longtime Trump and Hegseth grievances, and are also providing a diversion from the Epstein Files terror, among Republicans.

Most mainstream news doesn’t go into much depth about these threats so we here on Substack and other truth-telling platforms, must. Most news agencies continue to falsely label Republicans, as “conservatives. They are nothing of the sort and proof positive, that most newsroom editors, do not own or use… dictionaries. Today’s MAGA GOP are by definition, a far-right domestic extremist organization. This paragraph is the baseline understanding required to put today’s work into perspective. Both subjects are intensely complex to explain but I will do my best to be as clear as possible.

Onward

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The Quantico clown show

As most readers understand, I am retired from the army and had the high and humbling honor, to spend most of my career, with the US Special Operations Command/ USSOCOM. During those years, often deployed, I had the privilege of working in near proximity to many of our nation’s finest and most elite leaders. Some who I worked for most often, mentored other leaders after them, some of which were in the room yesterday, attending a disgraceful meeting demanded by Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense (only Congress can change the name of an agency or department) and of course, our narcissist-in-chief, Trump.

The general officers that were my commanders would in my opinion, never consider violating their oath to “protect and defend the constitution, from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” I also have high confidence that the overwhelming majority of senior leaders in the room, will honor theirs as well. An old friend and former boss in my part of USSOCOM, generously gave me time yesterday to express very similar thoughts and he has, despite being retired, kept up with many of the same senior leaders, post-retirement. As a West Point alumni, he understands the protocols of how these events are handled by senior leaders. The bottom-line, is no demonstrable support or displeasure is to be indicated when in situations such as yesterday. Of course, Trump moped at not getting applause. From all I have read since, it would appear that our senior leaders, behaved admirably and in keeping with tradition. Bravo to them for their professionalism.

I really don’t have much to say about Hegseth’s patently ridiculous speech that hasn’t already been said, and in the overall scheme of things, his offensive and unconstitutional BS, is precisely what we could have expected from a guy who installed a makeup room in the Pentagon. His DEI and fat-shaming were a national embarrassment. Both Trump and Pete are losers when considering their perspective on military matters, all culture wars and false bravado. First there’s the five bone spurs deferments for an overweight Trump and then there’s Pete, a failed National Guard officer due to his White Christian Nationalist ideology. Trump, has been a loser with the military that I still interact with, ever since he called us “losers and suckers.” Pete’s history overall, is just a “Trump-lite” version of his boss, as is clearly explained by last fall’s detailed expose’ by The New Yorker.

Like Trump, Pete’s grievances with the military are driving factors in his assault on senior leadership. His racism and misogyny policies are an affront, to all of the courageous men and women who excelled at serving our nation, that were not white male Christians. His erasures from our history denigrates not only those purged but every single service-member that served with those historical heroes. This week’s decision from Pete, to not act on reassessing the Medal of Honor awards to soldiers who committed the massacre at Wounded Knee, during the 1890 Indian wars on the frontier, tells us all that we need to know about him. Well, this is enough about Pete. He’s not the dangerous one, like his boss.

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Trump’s rambling, grievance-filled speech, roughly an hour long, should send everyone scrambling to “battle stations.” Please see the quotes below taken from the transcript of his speech and published by SOFX, as a primer of sorts for what follows.

1. (13:44 – 13:53)

   “But they’re great. And they’re brave in our inner cities, which we’re going to be talking about because it’s a big part of war now. It’s a big part of war.”

2. (14:20 – 14:29)

   “They don’t even have to inspect you when you hit the ground. And you have people shooting bullets at them in some of these inner cities. We’re not going to let that happen.”

3. (42:54 – 43:07)

   “But give us another 15, 16 days. It was — it’s perfect. And people, other than politicians that look bad, they think — you know, the Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape.”

4. (43:07 – 43:25)

   “We have many cities in great shape, too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical-left Democrats — what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles — they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one.”

5. (44:32 – 44:46)

   “And I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military — National Guard, but military — because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor.”

6. (51:35 – 51:50)

   ‘Many of our leaders used the military to keep peace. Now they like to say, oh, you’re not allowed to use the military. And you know what the people say, the people in those cities where they’re being raped and shot and beat up? You know what they say? We love the military.”

My friends, this is a call for unconstitutionally sending the US military into American cities, just to punish those who disagree with him and his extremist party. This is about as far from being a patriot as one can get. At the very minimum, sending troops into American cities for non-existent reasons, is to deny every American citizen, our constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Without even looking past our Bill of Rights, in the first ten amendments to our constitution, such actions would clearly violate the first, and fourth amendments, with many legal scholars also arguing for the third amendment, since it deals with protecting domestic privacy when there is a militarization of authorities.

The Amendments | Constitution Center

Considering the Trumpian subservience of the Chief Justice John Roberts SCOTUS, to Trump and his far-right, unconstitutional agenda, I am not confident in SCOTUS’ willingness to defend our constitution. He and the five other Republican Justices, have been so busy twisting our constitutional precedents into pretzels to give Trump and the GOP free reins, it’s difficult to place any trust in them. Apparently they forgot about Thomas Jefferson’s and James Madison’s views on the law and just decided that they know better than both of these prestigious founders and authors of our most sacred founding documents.

Then, we come to the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military to act as Law Enforcement, with only a couple of very narrow and in our current situation, inapplicable use. By all appearances, there is no way that Trump can take these actions without violating this core principle of American law.

Like Hegseth’s long-desired chance to gain revenge over senior military leaders after being deemed too extremist to participate in the deployment of his guard unit, for President Biden’s inaugural, Trump’s obsession is a Putin and Hitler-like military force under his own control. Any politician who supports his attempts to militarize our republic, must be removed as insurrectionist. With the subservient track record of the GOP, all would have to be removed. Maybe if we started burning such politicians in effigy again, we would be able to make these points to the current, GOP-led Congress.

As I wrote about previously in-depth, we are not currently in a civil war but we are in what the military calls, a Low Intensity Conflict. Should the Republicans take military action against US cities via active duty service members, without meeting the narrow requirements of the Posse Comitatus Act, I would deem this as an opening salvo in a civil war, 2.0. Make sure that you tell your local congressmen this when you flood their offices with letters and demonstrate outside their offices.

Now let’s move on to briefly discuss the Republican Party’s government shutdown.

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Trump’s and the GOP’s government shutdown

This topic is fairly cut and dried, but still deserves addressing a couple of points.

The history about government shutdowns is instructive, in order to better understand who, what, when and how they occurred. Trump’s last term, he actually shutdown the government twice, with Republican control of congress too. This is classic Trumpian mafioso negotiating, no matter who gets hurt. On paper, this shutdown is about denying American middle and lower classes affordable healthcare.

While honest Americans understand this, we cannot remain silent regarding the overt lies being spewed by all Republican elected politicians. Their claims about the so-called left wanting healthcare for undocumented aliens is as far from the truth, as me being the starting pitcher in the seventh game of the upcoming World Series for my beloved Cincinnati Reds. Federal law has long made it illegal in every sense, to allow undocumented residents to acquire healthcare from the government. These GOP lies are now so bold as to border on being an alternative reality.

This shutdown, has the potential to be very painful for plenty of Americans, especially Federal workers like my son, who is also a Navy Veteran. If there is any saving grace for Federal employees, it is that ICE and CBP won’t continue being paid to illegally assault our neighbors. One disclaimer here is that I firmly believe that not all ICE/ CBP employees are the “bad guys.” Most career professionals execute their jobs faithfully and in accordance with our laws. Those we see in endless assaults on our media feeds, are not the good guys, but those without badges, masks and valid warrants. Like most Americans, I find the actions of the masked assailants, reprehensible.

Like most of Trump and the GOP’s activities these days, it’s all about power and grifting. One such grift is that if the Republicans get away with their lies about the shutdown, everyone’s healthcare insurance purchased through the ACA will more than double in cost. This puts more money in the pockets of some of Trump’s greediest oligarchs. Don’t forget, this is the issue that spurred the actions of Luigi Mangione. In a time where inflation continues to rise and services are disappearing, it is safe to say that our citizenry is pretty fed up with this criminal administration.

"At issue are tax credits that have made health insurance more affordable for millions of people since the COVID-19 pandemic. The subsidies, which go to low- and middle-income people who purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, are slated to expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t extend them. Their expiration would more than double what subsidized enrollees currently pay for premiums next year, according to an analysis by KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues."

- Looming health insurance spikes for millions are at the heart of the government shutdown
- ABC News
- By ALI SWENSON Associated Press and MARY CLARE JALONICK Associated Press
- October 1, 2025, 12:28 PM

This is plenty on the topic of the shutdown for now, but I will revisit this threat with new insights and sources as it progresses.

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Summary

It would negligent of me to not tie both of these topics together, with one of the primary reasons that we’re watching so much crazy, inside the Beltway. One of the primary reasons for the shutdown comes down to one word, Epstein. The heat on the administration and Republican Party for months now, is the demand to release the so-called, Epstein files.

Every single day, the cries for their release grow stronger and as they should. I personally will never get over family and friends voting for a lifelong sexual predator and probable pedophile. Trump’s complicity in the Epstein affairs is legendary, despite every elected republican and their propaganda influencers, doing all possible to change the narrative. It won’t work and I offer as evidence, that Trump destroying a core narrative of the MAGA movement, sent his base into a tizzy and eroded for the first time, some trust in their prima donna king. This is a delicate situation for Trump and the party as they head towards the midterms. The last thing they want is to have to back JD Vance, whose relationship with the MAGA hordes is weak at best, tolerated at worst.

All of this tough talk yesterday at Quantico and the government shutdown, are diversions from the poison arrow of the Epstein files. Despite all of the hoopla over the Quantico craziness and the Republican misinformation campaigns to divert attention from their sexual predator-in-chief, they are currently losing on all three counts. Americans are fed up with the lies and subterfuge. We’re angry, and the pressure we are ratcheting up on the GOP and their base, is increasing daily. If only the DNC would get in the game and support the congressmen that are doing their best to counter the GOP’s lies about immigrants and healthcare. Where are the full page ads and focused explainers, outreach on campuses etc.?

Those in the resistance are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to campaigning, and they’re doing a great job of it, especially with social media. Social media though, is not enough. At risk of annoying readers, I have to continue trying to get resistance leaders and those who plan protests, to take them directly to the most vulnerable part of today’s GOP, their congressional district offices and to your local media. Letters to the editor, Op-Eds etc. Heck, there aren’t even yard signs saying, “release the Epstein Files.” Without a full-court press while the opposition is weak, is the perfect way to cede the narrative war to the bad guys. During last year’s election cycle, the left lost the narrative war on inflation and the border. In fact, they didn’t even try to win.

To close out today’s essay, I will leave you with a thought from my combat zone experiences. The enemy doesn’t often give you good opportunities to exploit their weaknesses. Right now, the GOP is wide open to exploitation. If anyone at the DNC is paying attention, now is a good time to open your checkbook and get busy. Winning at influence requires agility and planned operations, not one or the other. To succeed, you must be able to do both at a high level and in a sustained campaign. At the moment the DNC is doing neither or they’re doing it at such a low level, that it’s doing nothing. They need someone or a team that understands influence, not just political campaigning. To date, they haven’t shown any sign that they have any interest in learning and by extension… winning.

In the meantime, tonight when I finally hit the button to publish this, I will toast all of the heroes out there in the resistance, doing all of the hard work to restore our republic. That’s what America is all about, citizens standing up and doing the hard work, when liberty is on the line.

One last administrative note… After being gone over the past couple of weeks, I am way behind on correspondence, inquiries and messages. My apologies and I’m working as fast as possible to catch up.

Back for short essay come Friday,

Publius Redux