DC is abuzz with a ton of Trump-hating journalists and politicians all of a sudden learning that national security is a thing about which to be concerned.

The Beltway has been seizing and pouncing on a story that they believe is an opening to attack Donald Trump, or at least slow down his pace of progress in the first couple of months by slinging mud at his cabinet and senior advisors.

The story doesn't interest me in the slightest. It's not hard to see the motivation of those now calling for resignations and firings. They're exploiting a mistake in order to scandal the new administration into a standstill.

What I do find of extraordinary importance is what is taking place on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean that happens to contain a very long 12,000-foot runway.

Diego Garcia Air Force Base is a joint U.S. and U.K. base on the largest of the Chagos Islands.

The Brits have controlled much of the region as part of their British Indian Ocean Territories, but in 2024, they negotiated transfer of the island to Mauritania, with the exception of a 99-year lease for the Air Base, which is now operated and used by both the Brits and the Americans.

It also happens to be due south of Iran.

In the last week, a pretty significant buildup of U.S. aerial assets have been arriving on the archipelago, and the amount of open source information thus far is something that very well might be of great consequence to the greater Middle East very soon.

The American president has lost patience with the Russian leader – so have his own people.

The Kremlin is nervous.

On Saturday night, a limousine caught fire north of the headquarters of the Russian security services.

Last week, footage showed servicemen being frisked by special protection officers.

Those same officers were later seen opening up sewer hatches in a hunt for bombs near where the Russian leader was speaking.

To Western intelligence agencies, the situation is becoming clear:  within Russia’s top brass, the knives are out for their leader.

Western analysts are often accused of wishful thinking. Rightly so.

In March 2022, an op-ed in the New York Times described Russia as a “Potemkin superpower,” naively suggesting that just the faintest push would cause the whole regime to suddenly collapse.

Such a projection has not come to pass.

But there is one thing the rising paranoia does certainly reveal:  Putin does think he’s vulnerable.

You can understand why. Let’s first consider the feeling within Russian society at large.

250,000 soldiers have died – grieving mothers are now starting to write to president Putin demanding explanations, with one telling Sky News, “It’s impossible to live like this.”

When Moscow was at war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it was the mothers of soldiers that formed the frontline of the anti-war movement.

Then there’s the key demand made by Putin in negotiations with the US…

We’re three days into what the Democrats and their willing accomplices in the mainstream press are trying to turn into a “scandal” — the accidental inclusion of Atlantic Editor Jeffrey Goldberg in a chat about the Trump administration’s operations against the Houthis on the texting app Signal.

The more we learn, the more we know that the whole affair is a massive nothingburger with everything on it and a big ol’ side of fake news fries.

Key members of the administration’s intelligence apparatus testified that the Signal messaging thread didn’t divulge any classified information.

And for all the commendation of Goldberg for not spilling too many beans, we have a better idea that there weren’t many beans to spill.

It's hard not to speculate on why the left is so desperate to blow this thing out of proportion and make it more than it should be.

Obviously, the left wants nothing more than to slap the scarlet letter S for “scandal” on this administration because it has been so effective and popular with the American people.

But a White House press release from Tuesday reveals the most plausible reason why the left wants to discredit the administration when it comes to action against the Houthis.

“Democrats and their media allies have seemingly forgotten that President Donald J. Trump and his National Security team successfully killed terrorists who have targeted U.S. troops and disrupted one of the most consequential shipping routes in the world. “This is a coordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America’s enemies pay and keep Americans safe. The Biden Administration sat back as a band of pirates — with precision-guided, Iran-provided weaponry — exacted a toll in one of the most important shipping lanes in the world.”

The Brits are having a field day ridiculing and condemning what’s becoming known as Signalgate.  It’s not just the ridiculous security lapse but the childishly ignorant banter primarily between Vance and Hegseth:

Below is the take of former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, originally published in this morning’s (3/26) London Telegraph.]

The United States' military isn't often outnumbered by a foreign nation's military power, nut it is when it comes to a naval fleet.

Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has spent 12 years investing in an ambitious military shipbuilding program.

That communist country now has a navy with one-third more combat ships than the U.S.

It's much more than a status thing. A large navy can project a country's power virtually anywhere in the world.

We heard about that in recent days when President Donald Trump ordered the destruction of much of the Houthis' military capabilities in Yemen.

That would be by U.S. naval forces in the region.

Armed by Iran, the world's largest exporter of terrorism, the Houthis have crippled much of the world's maritime trade through the Middle East, forcing ships to travel all around Africa at much greater cost in money and time instead of using the Suez  Canal.

Last weekend, President Trump issued a lengthy statement that said, in part:

“Today, I have ordered the United States Military to launch decisive and powerful Military action against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen. They have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones.

Joe Biden's response was pathetically weak, so the unrestrained Houthis just kept going. It has been over a year since a U.S. flagged commercial ship safely sailed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, or the Gulf of Aden.”