The details are still coming into focus, but the publicly available information is clearly alarming. Four U.S. soldiers, who were conducting tactical training, recently went missing while training in Lithuania. The Associated Press reported, “The U.S. Army said the Hercules armored vehicle the four U.S. soldiers were in during a training exercise had been found submerged in a body of water. It said recovery efforts were underway by U.S. Army and Lithuanian Armed Forces and civilian agencies.”
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte initially said the American troops had perished in the incident, though he soon after clarified that the search is ongoing. As if this weren’t serious enough, there’s also the relevance of the location: The exercise was conducted at a training ground roughly 6 miles from the border with Belarus — and Belarus is closely aligned with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Given all of this, it stands to reason that Donald Trump would be up to speed on the details and the status of the search for the American service members. He is, after all, the president and the commander in chief of the armed forces. And yet, HuffPost noted:
Donald Trump appeared unaware on Wednesday that four U.S. soldiers had gone missing during a NATO training exercise in Lithuania. When asked by a reporter if he had been briefed on the situation that began to unfurl hours before, the president replied, “No, I haven’t.”
He didn’t elaborate. In fact, the president simply moved on to another question.
To be sure, it’s difficult to know whether Trump was telling the truth. Perhaps he’d been briefed but chose to lie about his knowledge of the incident. But taken at face value, four U.S. troops went missing roughly 6 miles from a Russia-aligned country, and the American president was left totally in the dark about the state of the efforts to find them.
Around the same time, the Republican was also asked about the Signal group chat scandal and whether he believed classified information was shared. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m not sure, you have to ask the various people involved.”
The comments came after the public saw the details of the online chat, which included a message from Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, telling the White House’s national security team that he wasn’t sure “the president is aware how inconsistent” the proposed strike in Yemen was “with his message on Europe.”
The same text chain featured the White House’s Stephen Miller adding, in apparent reference to the attack plan, “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light.”
The problems should be obvious: Vance was uncertain about Trump’s knowledge of the relevant details, and one of the president’s right-hand loyalists added an “as I heard it” qualifier to the commander in chief’s directive about a deadly military operation abroad.
Taken together, it’s difficult not to wonder just how out of the loop the president is in his own White House.
Five years ago this month, as the severity of the pandemic came into focus, The New York Times published a memorable analysis that included a word to describe Trump that stood out for me as significant: “bystander.”
“While he presents himself as the nation’s commanding figure, Mr. Trump has essentially become a bystander as school superintendents, sports commissioners, college presidents, governors and business owners across the country take it upon themselves to shut down much of American life without clear guidance from the president,” the Times explained.
A half-decade later, it appears President Bystander has returned. Trump has taken a keen interest in playing golf, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, banning paper straws, watching an enormous amount of television and helping steer the Kennedy Center — but on life-or-death issues, he’s offering the public a lot of shrugged shoulders and blank stares.
For a president who’s heavily invested in the idea that his immediate predecessor had no idea what was going on around him, Trump’s apparent cluelessness should be a serious problem.
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau remains one of the best examples of progressive governance in the 21st century. From taking on banks to the student loan industry, payday lenders to mortgage companies, the bureau — an idea first championed by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — has looked out for Americans’ interests since its inception.
As Joe Biden’s presidency neared its end, Helaine Olen explained, “Over its almost 13 years, the agency has stopped numerous financial ripoffs and returned billions of dollars to the public. Its mere existence provides an ongoing demonstration of how the government can effectively stand up to big money interests and protect the American people.”
A New York Times report added soon after that this one agency “has clawed back $21 billion for consumers. It slashed overdraft fees, reformed the student loan servicing market, transformed mortgage lending rules and forced banks and money transmitters to compensate fraud victims.”
All of those breakthroughs, of course, happened before Donald Trump took office and appointed his right-wing budget director, Russell Vought, to oversee the CFPB. As The New York Times reported this week, the agency’s direction has taken a radically regressive turn.
Under President Trump, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped nearly a dozen enforcement cases brought during the Biden administration, ending lawsuits against banks and lenders for a variety of financial practices that the watchdog agency no longer considers illegal. But on Wednesday, the bureau went a step further: It is seeking to give back $105,000 that a mortgage lender paid to settle racial discrimination claims last fall.
The closer one looks at the relevant details, the more striking the developments appear: In Trump’s first term, the Republican president appointed Kathleen Kraninger to run the consumer bureau, and she brought a case against a Chicago-based lender that was accused of racially discriminatory practices. The effort succeeded, and the lender ultimately agreed to a settlement after losing a court fight.
Remember, it was Trump’s own administration — not the Obama administration or Biden administration — that pursued the matter.
Evidently, that didn’t matter to Vought, who concluded that the CFPB had relied on “radical ‘equity’ arguments” and the lender deserved some kind of refund.
Christine Chen Zinner, a senior lawyer at Americans for Financial Reform, a progressive advocacy group, told the Times that the consumer bureau’s attempt to overturn the settlement is “bananacakes.”
Part of what makes this extraordinary, of course is the administration’s approach to housing discrimination. But it’s also striking to see the Trumpified CFPB taking steps to give money to a mortgage lender, instead of trying to get money from a mortgage lender.
The next time someone suggests the Trump administration has embraced economic populism, keep this story in mind.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* With only a few days remaining before Florida’s congressional special elections, Republican officials are scrambling to boost state Sen. Randy Fine’s candidacy in White House national security advisor Mike Waltz’s former district, fearing a tougher-than-expected race in one of the state’s GOP strongholds.
* On a related note, a super PAC tied to Elon Musk has started investing in both of the April 1 congressional special elections in Florida, both of which were expected to be easy wins for the Republican candidates.
* In a bit of a surprise, Democratic Rep. Hillary Scholten of Michigan announced this week that she’s passing on the state’s open U.S. Senate race. The incumbent congresswoman will instead seek a third term in the U.S. House next year.
* While Utah has operated a problem-free vote-by-mail system for years, Republican Gov. Spencer Cox nevertheless signed a sweeping overhaul of the system. Going forward, Utahns will no longer automatically receive ballots through the mail and will no longer have a grace period for postmarked ballots that arrive after Election Day.
* While the special election to replace the late Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner has not yet been set, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee kicked off his Democratic candidacy in Texas last week.
* Though there was some scuttlebutt that Rep. Clay Higgins might take on Sen. Bill Cassidy in a Republican primary next year, the Louisiana congressman decided to stick with the U.S. House.
* While Election Day 2026 is still a year and a half away, Donald Trump used his social media platform to issue a series of endorsements this week, including support for Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, as well as Republican Rep. John McGuire of Virginia.
