Psaki: National security is becoming "Trump's justification of choice for everything”

After days of factual, hard-nosed reporting from the New York Times about Trump's relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, the President of the United States seemed to get a little cranky about the coverage and decided it was time for the New York Times to be, quote, dealt with and stopped explaining it was a national security matter. A matter of national security. There you go.

Now, the day before that, on Sunday, Trump justified his desire to annex Greenland by saying it was a matter of national security. The reason Trump halted all American offshore wind power projects this week, even though they could power more than two and a half million homes, well, according to the Trump administration, that was a national security issue too. The reason the White House gave to justify why Trump's $400 million White House ballroom

construction project can't be stopped? You guessed it. I think you're on to me now. National security. National security has become Trump's justification of choice for everything these days. If there is something Trump wants to do but that thing is hard to justify, Trump simply claims it is a matter of national security. It's a neat trick for trying to stifle debate, I suppose. And when it comes to justifying actual matters

of national security, like say, hurtling the nation toward a potential war with Venezuela, Trump has yet another neat little trick. As the Wall Street Journal put it, Trump keeps shifting his rationale. Sometimes it's drugs, sometimes it's oil,

sometimes it's regime change. U.S. officials told the Journal that even internally, in internal Trump administration deliberations, multiple rationales are being cited as to why the U.S. military is doing what it is doing, leaving officials unsure what exactly the White House is trying to do. And a week ago, Trump's top national security officials, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, briefed Congress about the U.S. military strikes

in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific related to Venezuela. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said they received no clear answers on the administration's endgame here. aisle said they received no clear answers on the administration's endgame here. But whether there's an endgame here or not, Trump appears to be moving ahead anyway.