D’oh, Trump’s Press Secretary Is Off To A Brilliant Start!

INSIDE: Elon Musk ... Pete Hegseth ... Kash Patel

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

‘I Can’t Believe I’m Saying That’

In just her second week on the job, Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is breaking new ground in creating bad news for her boss.

It started Tuesday with her first televised press briefing from the White House, a format that is so highly formalized and choreographed that it long ago outlived its usefulness. Leavitt breathed new life into the form when she:

• confirmed that the order for the DOJ purge of Trump prosecutors came from the White House;

• let slip the real agenda of the White House’s abrupt funding freeze by saying OMB nominee Russell Vought’s door was open to any department or agency that wanted to plead its case for why it was entitled to use the funding Congress had already appropriated it. White House control over spending instead of Congress’, it turns out, was the point.

But Leavitt really hit her stride yesterday when she managed in a single tweet to screw up the Trump administration’s legal defense of its chaos-inducing funding freeze. Around midday, amid all the confusion and blowback wrought by the funding freeze, the White House purported to rescind the OMB memo from Monday night that had kicked it all off. But Leavitt then tweeted:

Her tweet completely undercut Justice Department lawyers who were in court yesterday afternoon arguing the case brought by aggrieved states against the funding freeze was now moot because the OMB memo had been rescinded.

In light of Leavitt’s tweet, U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island wasn’t buying DOJ’s argument that the policy was no longer in effect, leading to this classic of judicial exasperation: “That’s my read of the tweet. I can’t believe I’m saying that.”

The judge indicated he would side with the states and enter an order blocking the freeze. A DC federal judge had similarly blocked the freeze a day earlier in a separate case.

Nice press work all around.

Elon Musk’s Fingerprints Are All Over OPM

WaPo:

Musk personally visited the OPM’s offices Friday, and several of his longtime surrogates — including Anthony Armstrong, who helped Musk buy Twitter; Brian Bjelde, who ran human resources for Musk’s firm SpaceX; and Amanda Scales, who worked at Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, xAI — have been installed in senior leadership roles at its offices in downtown Washington, the people said.

Musk’s team also was critical to building the system that sent an email from “hr@opm.gov” to most federal employees across a dizzying array of agencies — a capacity that had not existed before last week.

‘Diversity Is Not Our Strength’

Simply an astounding statement from the secretary of defense that shows how racist and misogynistic vitriol doesn’t just harm its intended targets. In this case, the U.S. military’s long, not-always-perfect history of bringing cohesion and unity to troops who come from the vastly different backgrounds contained within America’s melting pot is carelessly shoved into a Pentagon dustbin without a second thought:

Holocaust Remembrance Is Too ‘DEI’

“In response to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the Pentagon’s intelligence agency has paused special event programs and related events, including for Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and Pride Month, according to a memo obtained by ABC News.”–ABC News

Will The Ugly Misuse Of Gitmo Never End?

I’m Sure This Has Nothing To Do With Skin Color

Puerto Ricans and Native Americans are getting swept up in the Trump administration’s performative immigration raids across the country.

LIVE: Kash Patel Confirmation Hearing

TPM is in the hearing room and will be liveblogging it starting at 9:30 a.m. ET.

Gabbard In The Hot Seat

The confirmation hearing of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence is also happening today. For your background:

• TPM’s Hunter Walker: Why Former Followers Of Her Guru Fear Tulsi Gabbard As Director Of National Intelligence

• NYT: “Tulsi Gabbard grew up in a secretive offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement and has made a dizzying journey from conservative to liberal darling to Trump ally.”

• WSJ: As a Rising Political Star, Gabbard Paid to Mask Her Sect’s Ties to Alleged Scheme

The Grim Destruction Of DOJ Continues

A trio of corrupt, dangerous, and unprecedented developments yesterday as President Trump turns DOJ his own plaything. The politically-motivated and self-serving-to-Trump moves in included:

• ending the Mar-a-Lago documents prosecution against Trump’s aides;

• dismissing the indictment of former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE);

• discussing dropping the corruption charges against NYC Mayor

Meanwhile, former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his bribery conviction.

Trump II: Keystone Cops Editions

I wouldn’t have dreamed of making this up, via the WSJ:

A week before Trump’s inauguration, the Trump transition reached out to Robert Kissane, a bureau official running counterterrorism operations in New York, to serve as the FBI’s temporary leader, according to people familiar with the matter. Officials asked Brian Driscoll, who worked in the bureau’s hostage rescue operations, to serve as deputy. Driscoll is known to sign his name ‘Drizz,’ and his friends affectionately liken him the fictional Captain Jack Sparrow, from “The Pirates of the Caribbean.”

Each man had one conversation with Patel, traveled to Washington and had set up in their respective suites on Inauguration Day when word reached them that the White House had incorrectly listed Driscoll as the acting director on its website, according to people familiar with the matter.

Instead of fixing the error, the pair swapped their temporary FBI roles—and offices.

Nice Symmetry

When acting U.S. Attorney in DC, Ed Martin, sent out a thin-skinned, whiny email to staff complaining that someone had leaked his prior email about investigating the Jan. 6 investigators, the second email was leaked, too.

Not Going Quietly

“Security agents escorted the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture out of her office on Monday after she refused to comply with her firing by the Trump administration, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.”–Reuters

What Could Possibly Be Corrupt Here?

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is paying $25 million to settle a bogus lawsuit by Donald Trump for suspending his accounts following the Jan. 6 attack. Here’s how Trump strong-armed a willing Zuckerberg, according to the WSJ:

Toward the end of the November dinner, Trump raised the matter of the lawsuit, the people said. The president signaled that the litigation had to be resolved before Zuckerberg could be “brought into the tent,” one of the people said.

Weeks later, in early January, Zuckerberg returned to Mar-a-Lago for a full day of mediation. Trump was present for part of the session, though he stepped out at one point to be sentenced—appearing virtually—for covering up hush money paid to a porn star, one of the people said. He also golfed, reappearing in golf clothes and talking about the round he had just played, the person said.

‘Do You Have The CJR In Sight?’

With President Trump unhelpfully pointing fingers and a lot of “common sense” non-expert knowledge being tossed around since last night’s mid-air collision over the Potomac, giving investigators and aviation safety officials time and space to do their work like they always do will be especially important.

The radio traffic from last night isn’t easy to listen to, but it’s not gratuitous or voyeuristic:

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