Presidents—they’re just like the rest of us. Yesterday, Donald Trump had a deeply human experience: repeatedly dozing off throughout a meeting after burning the candle at both ends on an epic all-night social media binge. Unfortunately, that meeting was a televised cabinet gathering, and the content Trump snoozed through was a mountain of praise from his cabinet members of what a good job he’s doing saving America. It all made for some pretty funny viewing—and some headlines that the White House doesn’t love. Happy Wednesday.

MAGA Media Gets Its Moment

by Andrew Egger

Yesterday, Defense Department Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson took to the Pentagon briefing room for her first on-camera press briefing of the year. It’s a time of high controversy for the Defense Department, with Secretary Pete Hegseth under pressure about his involvement in a double-tap strike on an alleged drug-trafficking boat off the coast of Venezuela. So reporters made sure to hold Wilson’s feet to the fire with a barrage of probing questions. . . .

Ha! Just kidding! Wilson wasn’t speaking to the once-independent DoD press. She was addressing the motley crew of right-wing influencers and Trump-media reporters who were willing to sign on to the quasi-loyalty pledge hatched by Hegseth earlier this year.

That new-look Potemkin Pentagon press corps had come to D.C. this week for a ludicrous meet-and-greet event, where the Defense Department is letting them go through the motions of being real honest-to-God reporters—working out of the Pentagon press pen, wearing little PRESS badges, sitting in the briefing room—in exchange for them blasting out content about what a swell job Hegseth & Co. are doing and how the mean ol’ establishment media won’t give them any credit.

The result was yesterday’s “briefing,” where a rookie spokesperson for the world’s most powerful military made a towering procession of outrageous and ridiculous claims. Among them: that the Washington Post had fabricated its story that broke the news of the double-tap strike, that congressional Democrats who released a video reminding soldiers they had a duty not to follow unlawful orders had committed sedition, and that “every single boat that we strike saves 25,000 American lives.” Each of these claims received zero pushback from the folks asking the questions in the room.

That’s not to say there weren’t some good questions. While the questioners were content to give Wilson a pass on her smears of Democrats and the media, many struck a skeptical posture toward other elements of the White House’s foreign policy.

There was the strange spectacle of former Rep. Matt Gaetz—you could tell it was him by the “Representative Matt Gaetz” quarter-zip he was wearing—asking probing questions about the implications of Trump declaring Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela a “narco-terrorist” regime: Is it the policy of the United States that everyone serving in Venezuela’s government or military is “definitionally” a narco-terrorist? A few minutes later, Laura Loomer had a sharp question of her own, asking Wilson to explain why the Defense Department was pushing ahead with closer military ties with Qatar at the exact same moment that the White House is preparing to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign Islamic terrorist organization.

Wilson’s canned responses shed little light on either question. But they were a reminder that parts of MAGA have been anything but enthused about parts of Trump’s approach to his use of the military abroad. The odd irony of the current Pentagon press strategy may be that it’s the one part of Trump’s government that has taken pains to exclude all but the most MAGA-ish voices from its press pool, but it’s also the one part of Trump’s government these days that MAGA voices are finding their own reasons to criticize.

And those reasons keep growing. Trump, emboldened by the public’s collective shrug at his strikes on Venezuelan boats, suggested at a cabinet meeting yesterday that his campaign against Maduro and the drug trade may venture onto Venezuelan land soon enough. “We’re going to start doing those strikes on land, too,” he said. “You know, the land is much easier.”

Back at the Pentagon, Wilson was asked what the Defense Department’s posture was on congressional calls for regime change in Venezuela. She was again tight-lipped: “The Department of War stands behind the president 100 percent, and we will execute on the orders our commander-in-chief gives us, and we’re proud to do so,” she said. “And again any decision that is going to be made about certain military actions in the Western Hemisphere region will be the president’s alone.”

The Pentagon may have constructed the press corps of its dreams. But that doesn’t mean it’s getting good press.