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BOMBSHELL: Leaks Show Trump Officials Floated Sending the 82nd Airborne Into Portland
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All right. Hey, everybody, this is Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. I felt the need to jump on by myself on Saturday. It's not because I am obsessed with doing YouTube. So though it's, you know, I do a fair number of them because this insane story just popped up from the Minneapolis Star Tribune and there are like four different levels of insanity inside the story. One of them is just sort of how the story materialized to begin with. Kudos to the Star Tribune for, for landing. But frankly, the reason they landed this is. It appears that the Trump administration has been acting again, recklessly with again, Signal. The encrypted app messaging app story is this. So the Star Tribune published a piece. Trump officials discussed sending elite army division to Portland. It's Portland, Oregon. And then comes the key part. Text messages show. Okay, so here's what happened. According to the paper, a high ranking Trump administration official apparently was indiscreetly discussing sensitive government information over their cell phone. And someone reached out to the investigative reporter at the Tribune, a guy named Andy Mannix, saying that they had pictures of the text messages and that they believe that the information on the text messages were of public interest. Now, the Star Tribune went through incredible lengths to make sure that they could verify that the person who was sending these text messages, a guy named Anthony Salisbury, it could be Salisbury or Salisbury, he's the special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations of Miami, but he's now this deputy Homeland Security adviser in the White House. That this person was real, that these text messages were real. But apparently they did. They went, they had the whole separate story about how they ended up verifying this. I encourage you all to check it out. They verified that the text messages and, you know, the stuff in them is crazy. But we're going to put that aside for a second. Let's just dwell on this for one minute. The Trump administration, which already got in trouble for communicating over signal, is still communicating over Signal, still talking about sensitive military operations, still doing it in a way that apparently random people in the public can easily see, not only see, but take photos of. And that those photos then get sent to reporters and are publicized. It is like both reckless and just absolutely JV shit. Right? Like this is the stuff that would get you normally fired in any other administration because it's so cavalier that, you know, you wouldn't want people working for you who handle sensitive information like that. Okay, let's put that aside. So what actually do these text messages say? For starters, top officials discussing sending the 82nd Airborne Division to Portland, Oregon, Again, this is a city in the United States, and they're just sort of openly talking about sending the military in. And Pete Hegseth, according to the story, considered sending an elite U.S. army strike force to Portland to quell protests that Donald Trump has characterized as lawless mayhem. That's a Donald Trump quote. That's according to the images that the Tribune uncovered. The messages casually exchanged last week in a crowded public space show high level officials in the Trump administration discussing the deployment of the Army's 82nd Airborne, an infantry division that has been parachuted into combat zones in both world wars, Vietnam and Afghanistan. If the administration were to send in the army division, it would almost certainly be challenged in court. We know this, et cetera, et cetera. So what was kind of interesting about the texts that they uncovered was that Hegseth seemed, according to the texts, kind of reluctant to do this unless Trump absolutely was going to give him cover to do this. That makes sense. Obviously, you want a direction from, or directive, I should say from the President of the United States around something so sensitive and provocative a move. And yet I think the implication is that Hegseth is worried about legal coverage and that he doesn't want to be left out on, on his own. That was interesting, but there's other stuff in here as well. Salisbury also was chatting, apparently with Hegseth's advisor, a guy named Patrick Weaver, and they were talking about, you know, sending troops into the American city, Portland. He writes, between you and I think, I think Pete just wants top cover from the boss. If anything goes sideways with the troops there, we've a rote. He acknowledged the potential political ramification of deploying army troops in US City. Hegseth preferred to send the National Guard, he wrote, so Hegseth perhaps divided from Trump. Here they talk about how the 82nd is like our top tier quick reaction force, so it'll cause a lot of headlines and then there's a couple other things. So they talk, according to The Tribune, about J.D. vance. Apparently, J.D. vance wanted to pursue a criminal case against two Florida influencers who were, quote, preaching violence on social media. The. The article doesn't actually get into who the influencers were, but if you have your thoughts, feel free to drop them in the comments below. I'm dying to know who you think it was. Apparently prosecutors declined one of the cases and the messages didn't specify the identities of the pair. We'll see where that ends up. But, you know, just casually speculating that they might bring criminal cases against influencers, you know, Just you running little stuff. This is my favorite though. I'm going to read from the paper. In a separate exchange, Salisbury celebrated FBI Director Cash Patel's decision to fire several agents who were photographed kneeling during a 2020 protest. So just to back up for a second, this happened, I think it was last week where word got out that Patel had fired number of agents who had been photographed kneeling in the aftermath of George Floyd's death. This was the thing. This was again five years ago. I don't know why it he just got around to firing them now. It's one of several controversial things that have happened at the FBI. Controversial firings I should say that have, have happened at the FBI. So anyways, they, they were apparently applauding Patel in this text messages but then, oh man, this is the best part. Salisbury suggested Trump would approve of the action, but then he insulted Patel, quote, this is how Cash survives. Salisbury wrote. He will do this stuff for the man. But daytoday, giant douche canoe. If you don't know what a douche canoe is, I, I, I guess Google it. Although I'm not sure you want to Google that stuff. Look, the White House was asked by the Tribune about this stuff, whether they were legit. They did not deny the authenticity of the messages. They said Salisbury sent him in a moment of duress because he had been going to mini Minnesota to serve as his uncle, as a pallbearer at his uncle's funeral. The fact that he was in Minnesota suggests, if you read between the lines, that these images were seen while he was there because they were given to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. You know, I'm kind of curious whether the Tribune Falls is up with more stories because there's a lot there. Apparently they were talking about plans to arrest suspected Trend Aragua members and gang members in Chicago. I do want to know who the influencers were that JD Vance apparently weren' wanted to target. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on in these text messages. There's one line that kind of really piqued my interest where it says messages offer a rare glimpse of high ranking government officials chatting about a range of other topics. Salisbury's messages with a close knit circle of security officials discussed border patrol operations in Chicago, the need to reinstate an ICE agent who had been fired for throwing a woman to the ground in New York City, and internal politics. Of course I want to know about the internal politics, but I am curious the deliberations about reinstating this ICE agent. If you recall, this happened again about a week or so ago, the ICE operations quickly dismissed the guy because he was videoed throwing the woman to the ground. It was violent. They said that type of behavior was abhorrent and that they wouldn't tolerate it. And then they quietly reinstated the guy. If they have any insights into why they figured they had to reinstate the guy. That's like, inherently newsy. So I'm sort of curious if the Minneapolis Star Tribune ends up publishing a second story on the stuff. But either way, big picture takeaway. This is just like this stuff doesn't happen, and it's happening fair bit with this administration. They're just going around casually texting each other in public about sensitive stuff, and people are seeing it. If I were the chief of staff at Homeland Security, if I were the know, the chief of staff at the White House, I'd be livid, livid about this shit. And I would put the clamps down really hard because this is JV stuff as a reporter, I love it. It's great. And I wish they keep doing it because it's both juicy, but it's also inherently newsy and it actually provides some insight into what the hell is going on and how there are actually internal divisions and wariness and frictions around some of the more aggressive operations that the Department of Defense and the White House are considering with respect to American cities. So kudos to the Star Tribune, kudos to the reporter there. Great work on this stuff. And then to our readers, look, if you happen to see a government official signaling with another government official while on Amtrak or, you know, just riding the subway or something, and you want to pass them along, we got a secure tips line. It's the bulwark.com tips. It's a secure tips line. We check it. Would love to get some photos of signal chats if you see them. Till then, thank you for listening to this. Thank you for subscribing to the feed. Really genuinely appreciate it. We'll talk soon. Later.