You Won’t Believe What One of the Boats Trump Struck Was Carrying
Detritus from one of the Caribbean boat strikes has washed up on the Colombian peninsula, and it’s not what the White House claimed.
The boats apparently wrecked in a November 6 strike arrived on Colombia’s Indigenous-governed Guajira Peninsula two days later with two mangled bodies and torched jerrycans. But at least one of the vessels also carried evidence of the drugs it was smuggling onboard, reported The New York Times: emptied packets of marijuana.
The Trump administration has justified its unfettered air strike campaign on the basis that small watercraft in the Caribbean were funnelling fentanyl into the U.S. To further legitimize the militaristic response—which so far has killed at least 107 people since early September—the president purported that the boats were run by “narcoterrorists” from Venezuela, and designated fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.”
But marijuana, a drug synonymous with the “peace and love” movement of the 1960s, is about as far from a tool of war as you can get. The substance is already legal in the vast majority of the U.S.: 40 states permit its use for medicinal purposes, while 24 states allow residents to get high for any reason whatsoever.
Earlier this month, Trump himself signed an executive order to expedite the process of reclassifying weed from a Schedule I drug—which are considered to have high abuse rates with little to no medical application—to a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act.
Overall, there seems to be little evidence that the boats have been headed toward the United States. In a classified meeting with U.S. lawmakers two weeks ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and State Secretary Marco Rubio revealed that the Trump administration was aware the boats were bound for Europe rather than America. They also disclosed that the administration had no intelligence indicating that fentanyl was coming out of Venezuela, but rather that some of the boats were believed to be carrying cocaine.
Paul Ingrassia, the failed Trump nominee with a self-described “Nazi streak,” has been making enemies at the General Services Administration—where he crash landed after even Senate Republicans rejected his bid to head the Office of Special Counsel due to his leaked countless racist, bigoted messages.
“I don’t know what he is or is not, but no one cares for him,” one anonymous GSA staffer told Politico in a story published Tuesday, adding that Ingrassia hasn’t been given anything “meaningful” to do because “[GSA] leadership doesn’t really want him.”
“What are we? A halfway house for bigots who can’t find jobs anywhere else in this administration?” another staffer said, going on to mention how incredibly unqualified Ingrassia was compared to his predecessor, Russell “Rusty” McGranahan. “Rusty was well qualified and served the administration well. I just want the government to be staffed with experienced people who are taken seriously.”
The Trump administration, however, seems to think Ingrassia is just the man for the job.
“Paul Ingrassia is a well-regarded attorney who has provided outstanding service to President Trump and will continue to do so as GSA’s acting general counsel,” GSA spokesperson Marianne Copenhaver said. “The GSA has complete confidence in his ability to further both its mission and the president’s priorities.”
For the uninitiated: Ingrassia made headlines back in October for a series of deeply hateful statements he made in a group chat.
“No moulignon holidays.… From kwanza [sic] to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth,” he wrote in one text, using an Italian slur for Black people in the beginning of the message. “Every single one needs to be eviscerated.”
“MLK Jr. was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” he said in another text. He also mentioned that he had a “bit of a Nazi streak” and to “never trust a chinaman or Indian. NEVER.”
Ingrassia was also accused of sexually harassing a coworker at the Department of Homeland Security.
This is the man the Trump administration deemed to be “well-regarded”—although it’s clear that his peers think otherwise.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles might have revealed more than she ought to about the Epstein files.
The Vanity Fair profile on the president’s famed “ice maiden” has continued to haunt the administration weeks after its publication, in large part thanks to Wiles’s candid responses. Now, Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Dick Durbin have demanded answers regarding a particularly lurid detail that came out of the article: Wiles’s apparent familiarity with the contents of the Epstein files.
In a joint letter made public Tuesday, Whitehouse and Durbin questioned which components of the investigation she had reviewed, how she obtained the sensitive material, and “under what authority” she gained access to it.
The lawmakers asked Wiles a series of questions, requesting her responses by January 5.
“Had material in the file you reviewed been presented to a grand jury? When did you first gain access to ‘the Epstein file’ and what was the schedule of your review of it? For what purpose did you gain access to this information?” they inquired.
The duo also questioned if........© New Republic

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