Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump's selection to lead the FBI, was blamed for an incident that threatened to jeopardize a U.S. SEAL Team 6 rescue mission in Nigeria during Trump's first administration.
The incident in question occurred in late October 2020 when an American named Philipe Nathan Walton was kidnapped from his farm in southern Niger and brought to Nigeria. The armed kidnappers demanded a ransom, and U.S. officials were concerned that they could kill Walton or hand him over to an Islamic terrorist group.
Then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper detailed the incident in his memoir about his time in the first Trump administration. He describes a tangled web of incomplete information being relayed to various agencies that should have been involved, directly or indirectly, in the planning and execution of the rescue mission.
The United States was awaiting approval from the Nigerian government to enter its airspace and carry out the raid. Patel, who was at the NSC, reportedly informed Tony Tata, acting principal deputy undersecretary for policy, that they had gotten the requisite approval for the mission. However, hours later, with the U.S. forces only 15 miles from the border, Esper found out they did not, in fact, have the Nigerians' approval.
He and Gen. Mark Milley, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decided to have the U.S. military aircraft circle in approved airspace until they received the green light.
"My staff told me that, upon hearing this news, Tata called Patel back and engaged in a heated conversation with him over the NSC staffer's bad report," Esper wrote in his book, while the Atlantic reported that Tata shouted at him, “You could’ve gotten these guys killed!” adding, “What the f*** were you thinking?”
"Kash Patel apparently runs a 'America First' clothing line," posted writer Derek Guy, whose work appears in the New York Times and the Washington Post, among others, on Bluesky.
"'Tired of seeing your money go overseas?' reads a product page. 'Support your fellow Americans by purchasing a Protect Our People t-shirt.' Shirt appears to be made on Next Level blanks ... which are made in Central America and Haiti."
She said he’s “a nominee I will have to do a lot of work on” when asked about Patel’s more controversial proposals such as shutting down the FBI’s headquarters in Washington and firing its top ranks.
“That’s why it’s so important that we have an FBI background check, a committee review with extensive questions and questionnaires and a public hearing,” Collins said.
Asked about Patel’s nomination, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said his staff is “digging into some of the work that he did in various roles of the Trump administration, what he’s done after that.”
Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Patel would get a rigorous vetting in the Senate, as would Trump’s other nominees.
Patel’s list, which can be found in his 2023 book Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for our Democracy, includes a number of prominent Republicans and former Trump appointees.
Those people include Christopher Wray, whom Patel is set to replace before his 10-year term is up. Trump and his Republican sycophants went after Wray after he testified about the failed assassination attempt on Trump, saying he wasn’t sure whether Trump had been struck by an actual bullet.
The list includes Bill Barr, Trump’s former attorney general who publicly endorsed him even though he previously called Trump “nauseating” and “despicable.” Also on the list are Rod Rosenstein, a deputy attorney general; Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel; and Pat Philbin, a deputy White House counsel.
Ex-comms director Alyssa Farah Griffin appears on the list, as well as Stephanie Grisham, the former chief of staff for Melania who sounded the alarm against Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who turned star witness for the House January 6 investigative committee is mentioned, too. Hutchinson publicly described a hostile work environment ruled by Trump’s volatile temperament.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
Tuesday, December 3, 2024. The sad and pathetic go after Joe Biden, Jill Stein declared victory prematurely on election night, THE ATLANTIC pretends to explore Kamala's campaign, a ZOOM tonight will actually explore the race, Trump's already declaring war on Palestinians in Gaza, and much more.
Have the cucks and capons exhausted themselves humping their inflatable mattresses while muttering "Hunter Biden! Hunter Biden!" yet?
Oh, that wasn't an insult to MAGA. We may get to those idiots this snapshot, we may not. I'm referring to Jon Stewart, Jared Polis and all the other nutless men of the left slamming Joe Biden for pardoning Hunter.
Don't you love the nutless boys, we haven't really seen them -- at least not embarrassing themselves so much -- since 1988.
Oh, look, it's the cuck and capon all in one with Michael Dukakis.
That's what they want from Joe. And that's why they're the joke right now. I'm not laughing with you, Jon, I'm laughing at you and your ridiculous DAILY SHOW moment that tried to both-sides it -- and failed.
Joe Biden protected his son from Donald Trump's vengeance. Most people can grasp that and most people would have done the same. Jon, Jared, Michael and the rest of you? You don't look smart, you don't come off funny, you look like detached idiots without any emotions or human connections -- in other words, you look like Michael Dukakis discussing his own wife's what-if rape and murder with icy detachment.
While they're striking poses and going for chuckles, the rest of us are stuck in the real world. And noting how few others are here with us.
How much did Harris’s race or gender affect the outcome? Can a woman win the presidency in today’s America?
Plouffe: I’m really eager for political scientists and researchers to try to get an answer to this, because we certainly picked up some headwinds. Maybe statistically this will be disproven, but I think, given the ’16 experience and this experience, it’s probably a bigger burden to be elected president running as a woman than as a person of color.
I think America is ready to elect a woman president. Running for president and winning is an indescribably hard obstacle course. This throws another obstacle into the field. And that makes me incredibly sad to say that.
This year marked a clear turning point as both campaigns shifted their attention from mainstream outlets to niche media sources aimed at more narrow segments of the electorate. How did these new dynamics shape the campaign, and what do they mean for elections going forward?
Fulks: Republicans have a very good echo chamber regarding how they get their information out. Democrats will need to loosen up and take advantage of a changing media environment.
Flaherty: Trump did 30 podcasts to one audience. We did podcasts to a bunch of different audiences, which meant we never really got that frequency. The other lesson is that the nature of attention is fleeting, particularly in this media ecosystem. That is one of the things we struggled with. We were an attention machine for the first four weeks, then it was an open [competition] for attention—and that’s a cage fight with a guy whose entire life has been about getting attention for himself.
We clean up with the most politically engaged people. For folks who don’t have time to engage in politics, or folks who are just receiving a little bit of information here and there, usually from friends and family, the information environment is much more difficult, much more competitive, and much more tied to culture. If we Democrats want to win, particularly nationally, that’s the space that we’ve got to figure out, and quick.
Plouffe: If you had said two years ago Harris will be the nominee and she’ll do as well with seniors as she did, you might have said no. The reason is [that] those tend to be larger consumers of information. They also tended to be the voters who understood the stakes of the second Trump term more. The threat, whether it was abortion or democracy or rule of law, mattered more to them than younger parts of the electorate.
Sam Seder is a comic. Not a particularly funny one. He's never had a stand-up career that really paid off. The DSA is the Democratic Socialists of America. They aren't Democrats. They're from a fringe group that, if you go back far enough, were spending the early seventies defending the US war on Vietnam. DSA comes from that rancid ground.
Today, JACOBIN is the bible of the DSA. That would be the same JACOBIN that allowed a podcaster doing a podcast for them to attack Katie Halper. Katie's got 101 problems and we won't pretend she doesn't. However, there was no reason for her to be attacked in that segment. And rational people grasped that. JACOBIN did not. They went with the host attacking Katie. A host who is no longer with JACOBIN and is now known as the grifter she actually always was. Anahit Misak Kasparian is this century's Jeane Kirkpatrick -- the woman raised Socialist who turned on the Democratic Party to become a neocon and advise Ronald Reagan. Ana Kasparian's right-wing grift was evident long before she began attacking transgender people, trafficking in racism and become a defender (and member) of MAGA.
Last week, idiot met idiot on THE MAJORITY REPORT's segment "Harris Campaign Had Volunteers 'Knocking On Republican Doors' During Wisconsin Campaign." What happens when a self-identified DSA idiot calls in?
Journalistic malpractice.
Sam -- and Emma -- let the idiot spout his crazy. He had been block walking -- he didn't use the term and we're pretty sure he's never heard of it -- in Wisconsin ahead of the election. Kamala Harris' campaign, he whined, sent him to Republican areas!!!!
Emma and Sam tried to console him.
With no adults in the room, the viewers were left with the impression something awful had happened -- that this was proof of bad campaign tactics on the part of Kamala's campaign.
No.
You're a stupid idiot if you bought that crap.
Block walking. A campaign and/or political party depends upon volunteers to block walk. We have both done that many times over the years. Has Sam? Emma?
Sometimes, unions will transport people to block walk and actually pay them for it. (We have never been paid for block walking and one of us, C.I., back in college refused the payment the union was attempting to offer at the end of the day.)
With block walking, you're going through a neighborhood. It takes several hours. You go door to door, you explain you're canvasing for whatever candidate or candidates or party. You ask if the person has a few minutes to talk? Some people will say no. Some people will slam their doors in your face. Some will want to talk. Some who do support your candidate, some who do are not supporters of your candidate but are interested in politics and want to have an exchange.
That's block walking.
DSA moron couldn't believe that Kamala's team 'wasted' time and money on this effort.
It's one of the more effective tools, first off. Second, it was a general election. Not every Democrat is going to vote for the Democrat in the race (Jeane Kirkpatrick never voted for a Democrat again after Jimmy Carter beat Scoop Jackson in the 1976 Democratic Party primary) not every Republican is going to vote for a Republican candidate and a lot of people are undecided ahead of an election.
Block walking is a means to try to connect with voters face to face, one-on-one.
You need to down every street in every state.
But even more to the point, Wisconsin? It's an open primary state.
We doubt the DSA idiot or Sam or Emma grasps what that means since they all refused to mention -- let alone address -- that reality.
An open primary state? Anyone can vote in the Democratic Party primary or the Republican Party primary. States with closed primaries? You have to be a registered Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary. you have to be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary.
Meaning? Ohio political parties have no concrete information on who is what.
There's no "We have 98% registered Republicans in this neighborhood."
You could try extrapolating from who they voted into office in a district. But that would be a lot of guess work. And many, many streets make up a district.
The DSA idiot is a moron whining about a problem that he basically invented. Learn politics, you damn fool.
And that goes double for Emma and Sam.
They presented misinformation and signed off on it. Because they're idiots.
Stop talking and/or writing about things you are ignorant of.
Your bad media is not helping the left. You advancing lies are actually harming us all.
Do Republicans have a systematic advantage in reaching lower-propensity voters?
Flaherty: There’s the conservative ecosystem, which is Fox, Ben Shapiro, [Sean] Hannity, Newsmax—all these folks that are politically and ideologically aligned with Donald Trump and the work of electing conservatives. They built and cultivated that ecosystem. They also built and cultivated an ecosystem that was less political but more cultural. You can call it the “manosphere,” but I don’t think the manosphere is inherently partisan. Joe Rogan talked about politics, but that’s not his whole thing. That was an audience that [Republicans] viewed as key to mobilizing, and so they did a lot of work to migrate information, values, and Trump himself between the conservative ecosystem and this culturally aligned ecosystem.
There’s just not an analogous system on the left. It doesn’t exist because our voters don’t have the same demand signal for alternative media to the mainstream press. There just isn’t the same kind of profit incentive for alternative media.
Black Iraqis are the descendants of immigrants and enslaved people from Sub-Saharan and East Africa. Their presence in Iraq dates back to the Abbasid empire, starting from the ninth century when some newcomers came to the region as sailors, workers, captured slaves, or enslaved soldiers. They largely originated from the coast of modern-day Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, and other African countries. In the absence of formal statistics, their community leaders estimate their numbers today to be as high as 1.5 to 2 million inhabitants. Black Iraqis are scattered across diverse regions of the country, concentrating in the governorates of Basra, Maysan, and Dhi Qar. There are also a few families in Baghdad, Wassit, and other cities. However, the largest community resides on the outskirts of the cities of Basra and Zubair.
Despite slavery being officially abolished in the nineteenth century and supported by Article 14 of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution, which stipulates “equality without racial-based discrimination,” Black Iraqis still endure systematic discrimination, marginalization, and structural racism embedded in historical stigmas and xenophobia against black people in the Arab world, according to activists I spoke to. Iraq is a melting pot of other ethnic, religious, and cultural communities. Yet, many of these groups are “invisible” and can easily fade in the crowd due to similar physical features. In contrast, Black Iraqis are the “visible others” who cannot be unseen or concealed. Hundreds of invisible cultural and social lines segregate the two communities, ostracize Black Iraqis, and reaffirm their otherness in urban design, tribal allegiances, and marriage arrangements.
One intriguing conversation I had with a group of non-black Iraqi academics, opened my eyes to the extent of denial most people feel about the subject. I was told repetitively, “We don’t have black and white in Iraq. We are all equal,” and was asked to drop the appellation black Iraqis or Afro-Iraqis and replace it with asmar or abu samra, which means tanned or brown in Arabic. Little did they know how offensive it is to deny the community its blackness and attempt to dilute it with a drop of whiteness. In contrast, the Black Iraqis I have been working with, including Dr. Thawra Yousif, Dr. Abdulkareem Aboud, and Dr. Abdel-Zahra Sami Farag, all influential figures in their community, proudly claim their blackness and celebrate it.
Structural racism and the absence of a tribal umbrella have relegated most black Iraqis to the margins of the economy and locked them into a number of small manual jobs as domestic help or performers. According to their representatives, the population also suffers from low educational attainment rates, unemployment, and poverty. Additionally, there is not a single Black Iraqi holding a high-ranking position in the government, nor do they have any political representation. Recently, human rights activists from the community have suffered assassination attempts and violence to oppress their demands, according to international reports.
With the ensuing development of an Iraqi civil society after 2003, Jalal Diab Thijeel, an Iraqi-Africans, founded the Free Iraqi Movement in 2007 to represent his community of approximately two million, primarily located in Basra province.
The movement seeks to overcome their marginalisation, advocating civil rights, government recognition of the community, and anti-discrimination laws to address the racism they endure.
When it was founded, no one from their community served as a cabinet level minister, MP in parliament, or even in a municipal council. The state’s recognition as a minority would entitle them to government-mandated quotas for elected positions.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama served as an inspiration for their community, and Thijeel hung a photo of the president in his classroom, where he taught courses on black Iraqi history, and fostered an Iraqi hip-hop scene to protest endemic discrimination.
On April 26, 2013, Thijeel was assassinated, most likely by political factions opposed to his attempt to run for office. Nonetheless, the Movement survived the death of its founder, and found a renewed rallying point again stemming from the US. While the election of Obama to America’s highest executive post in 2008 served as an inspiration for Iraqi-Africans, so did the grassroots initiatives of the Black Lives Matter movement.
