If you’re anything like I am, you have probably spent a considerable amount of time over the past two months trying to figure out what these dull fuckers think they’re doing. I won’t take your time providing a full list of what they’ve done since Trump sat down in the Oval Office on inauguration night and started signing executive orders, but let us at least review the last week’s events.

Last weekend, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security set forth to deport about 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang. They have managed to get themselves hung up on violating a judge’s order to stop the deportation. It has been revealed that some of those deported were not gang members. They have refused to provide a list of the deportees. Lawyers for the Department of Justice have refused to answer the judge’s questions on grounds of “national security” and plan to invoke something called the “state secret privilege” in denying information about the deportation flights and handling of deportees, which were covered nearly door-to-door by Fox News.

A federal judge ruled that the closure of the United States Agency for International Development and firing of thousands of federal workers employed there was “likely unconstitutional” and ordered the government to reinstate them and give them access to their USAID email accounts and access to official information that will enable them to do their jobs.

Another federal judge ordered the Social Security Administration not to allow Elon Musk and his team of rat-fuckers to access the private information of millions of Social Security recipients, including their SS numbers, drivers license numbers, ages, and addresses.

Yet another federal judge stopped Trump’s ban of transgender troops at least in part because government orders are not made by “tweets,” and the government does not have any information about how many transgender individuals serve in the U.S. military, so the government does not know who would be affected by the ban. The Pentagon tried to change the definition of the ban from “transgender” to “people with symptoms of gender dysphoria.” The judge was not buying the attempted change in the ban, telling the Pentagon lawyer, “The policy’s impact is the same. This is still a ban on transgender service members.”

White House adviser and known immigration paranoid Stephen Miller, who is descended from a family of Belarussian Jewish immigrants, denounced the court decisions that have failed to go Trump’s way as “the insane edicts of radical rogue judges,” and multiple articles of impeachment have been filed against judges who have ruled against Trump by radical, rogue House Republicans, who drew a rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.

And then, over the last 24 hours, we have been treated to what appears to be one of the great Department of Defense clusterfucks of the last 50 years. Elon Musk was apparently scheduled to get an ultra-top secret briefing at the Pentagon today that would have taken place in the equally ultra-top secret ”tank,” about US plans to defend the island of Taiwan in the event of an attack by the Chinese military.

My old friend and West Point history professor Terrence Goggin wrote on his Substack today an excellent analysis of what actually happened. Goggin thinks an order came down from the White House to give Musk the top secret briefing and the Pentagon was sufficiently disturbed by the idea of sharing such top secret information with a civilian who had nowhere near the clearance to hear it, that news of the briefing was deliberately leaked to the New York Times, which promptly published it on the front page. Once the unusual, to put it mildly, information about Musk’s special briefing was made public, it was cancelled, and the White House and Musk scrambled to come up with another excuse for his Pentagon visit.

Goggin’s informed speculation is that what we witnessed was the Pentagon's way of disobeying a presidential order without appearing to, and of course without ruffling Trump’s hair-sprayed feathers. He may be right, or the whole thing may have been a gigantic mistake made by a bunch of nonmilitary trained amateurs, but either way, exactly nobody in the whole mess -- not Trump, not his aides, not Hegseth, and not his aides, and certainly not Elon Musk -- evidenced even a smidgen of competence or knowledge of and respect for national security.

So, what's really going on here? Trump and Miller and Musk and the various Republican maniacs who surround them are clearly trying to disassemble what they have called the deep state. Hell, they advertised as much when they told a thousand lies during the campaign that they had nothing to do with Project 2025, which they have followed almost to the letter since Inauguration Day.

But given all that planning, don't you think that they'd be able to execute their plan a little better? They've had not months but years to have lawyers scrutinize every move they planned to make sure it would pass at least minimal legal muster, not to mention that their plans would fall within the outer bounds of constitutionality. Not only has it that not happened, they haven't even come close. Which is why we've been hearing the chorus of complaints about judges, some of whom have been Democratic appointees, but just as many have come from Republican presidents.

Sure, the rank incompetence stands out, as does the quicksand of lawlessness the whole mess floats on. You can tell that they're even getting nervous about their bought and paid for Supreme Court when you begin hearing not just mutterings but squawks of outrage about Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Roberts, both of whom have been reliable votes for Republicans until now.

Is it just that they're going too far too fast? The whole enterprise is beginning to show cracks of excess and madness that are getting wider seemingly by the day. They couldn’t even get rid of a bunch of heavily tattooed drug gang members without fucking the whole thing up, and their attempt to let Elon in on state secrets that he could turn over to his Chinese friends and use to stuff a few extra 100 billion in his pockets was so ham-handed it looked like a Three Stooges skit.

You would think that long-time aspirants to fascism would be more practiced with their tiny fists wrapped tightly around the levers of power, wouldn't you? They’re as dangerous as a cornered wolverine, but smart wolverines don’t allow themselves to get backed into corners of courthouses by people wearing long black robes.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. He writes every day at luciantruscott.substack.com and you can follow him on Bluesky @lktiv.bsky.social and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter