NYT’s Storytime on Trump’s Houthi Capitulation
NYT has a story that purports to explain, “Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia.” It’s a fantastic story, down to the detail that DOD never achieved air superiority over the Houthis.
But it is provably unreliable in at least two ways: the timeline, and the claimed involvement of Trump. Given that the story describes a clusterfuck, it does raise questions about whether there’s an even bigger clusterfuck (or Trump scandal) behind it.
Start with the timing. The entire story is premised on Trump approving a 30-day operation, and after that didn’t work, he pulled the plug.
When he approved a campaign to reopen shipping in the Red Sea by bombing the Houthi militant group into submission, President Trump wanted to see results within 30 days of the initial strikes two months ago.
By Day 31, Mr. Trump, ever leery of drawn-out military entanglements in the Middle East, demanded a progress report, according to administration officials.
But the results were not there. The United States had not even established air superiority over the Houthis. Instead, what was emerging after 30 days of a stepped-up campaign against the Yemeni group was another expensive but inconclusive American military engagement in the region.
The Houthis shot down several American MQ-9 Reaper drones and continued to fire at naval ships in the Red Sea, including an American aircraft carrier. And the U.S. strikes burned through weapons and munitions at a rate of about $1 billion in the first month alone.
It did not help that two $67 million F/A-18 Super Hornets from America’s flagship aircraft carrier tasked with conducting strikes against the Houthis accidentally tumbled off the carrier into the sea.
By then, Mr. Trump had had enough.
[snip]
At some point, General Kurilla’s eight- to 10-month campaign was given just 30 days to show results.
In those first 30 days, the Houthis shot down seven American MQ-9 drones (around $30 million each), hampering Central Command’s ability to track and strike the militant group. Several American F-16s and an F-35 fighter jet were nearly struck by Houthi air defenses, making real the possibility of American casualties, multiple U.S. officials said.
As the timeline below lays out, this decision didn’t happen at the 31-day mark. It happened at the 51-day mark.
And the loss of the two F/A-18s both happened after the 30-day mark; indeed, at least as currently reported, the second was lost on May 6, hours after Trump announced the halt (a decision that had been made “last night“).
Even the timing of the loss of the Reaper drones is wrong. One was shot down before the first strikes, six more were shot down between then and April 23, of which three appear to have been shot down after the 30-day mark. (The Houthis have successfully targeted Reapers for longer than that.)
And look at how those problems in the timeline intersect with the agency ascribed to Trump in the story (Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan are bylined).
Word three of the story describes Trump approving the campaign.
When he approved a campaign to reopen shipping in the Red Sea by bombing the Houthi militant group into submission, President Trump wanted to see results within 30 days of the initial strikes two months ago.
By Day 31, Mr. Trump, ever leery of drawn-out military entanglements in the Middle East, demanded a progress report, according to administration officials.
But that’s not what the Signal texts released by Jeffrey Goldberg show. They show that Trump ordered the reopening of shipping lanes, but his top advisors, including Stephen Miller, were still debating how and when to do that the day of the attack.
There’s good reason to believe that Miller’s interpretation of Trump’s views served as the approval for the timing of the attack.
While the NYT story describes the other top advisors involved in all this — Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine, Centcom Commander Michael Kurilla, Steve Witkoff, JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio, and Susie Wiles, all skeptics, with the exception of Kurilla — Miller is not mentioned in the story.
Embedded between claims about Trump’s agency — Trump had had enough, Trump was ready to move on, Trump had signed off on an eight- to 10-month campaign to which he gave just 30 days to show results, Trump became the most important skeptic, Trump decided to declare the operation a success — there are actually two better substantiated explanations for the end of the campaign. First, that newly-confirmed CJCS Caine was “concerned that an extended campaign against the Houthis would drain military resources away from the Asia-Pacific region” (presumably including the USS Vinson, which Hegseth had moved from the seas off China, one of the stories for which he launched a witch hunt to ID its sources), and that Oman proposed “a perfect offramp.”
By then, Mr. Trump had had enough.
Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, who was already in Omani-mediated nuclear talks with Iran, reported that Omani officials had suggested what could be a perfect offramp for Mr. Trump on the separate issue of the Houthis, according to American and Arab officials. The United States would halt the bombing campaign and the militia would no longer target American ships in the Red Sea, but without any agreement to stop disrupting shipping that the group deemed helpful to Israel.
U.S. Central Command officials received a sudden order from the White House on May 5 to “pause” offensive operations.
[snip]
Mr. Trump has never bought into long-running military entanglements in the Middle East, and spent his first term trying to bring troops home from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
[snip]
By May 5, Mr. Trump was ready to move on, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials with knowledge of the discussions in the president’s national security circle.
[snip]
By early March, Mr. Trump had signed off on part of General Kurilla’s plan — airstrikes against Houthi air defense systems and strikes against the group’s leaders. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named the campaign Operation Rough Rider.
At some point, General Kurilla’s eight- to 10-month campaign was given just 30 days to show results.
[snip]
But Mr. Trump had become the most important skeptic.
[snip]
On Tuesday, two pilots aboard another Super Hornet, again on the Truman, were forced to eject after their fighter jet failed to catch the steel cable on the carrier deck, sending the plane into the Red Sea.
By then, Mr. Trump had decided to declare the operation a success. [my emphasis]
This casting of Trump by two Trump-whisperers as an agent that the Signal texts show he was not comes in a story that understates Trump’s first term belligerence (particularly as it pertains to ISIS) and the timing of his efforts to bring troops home.
Trump is the hero of this story, except much of that story conflicts with the timeline and known details.
Caine’s concern about withdrawing resources from China — finally, someone prioritizing the Administration’s stated goal of taking on China!! — is notable. The story doesn’t acknowledge it, but the objective of the operation — opening the shipping lanes — changed over the course of the operation to stopping the targeting of US ships, but not targeting of Israelis, much less trade between the Europeans and China about which there was so much animus expressed on the Signal chat (though, as mentioned here, the Signal chatters never actually mentioned China). Strategically, leaving China and Europe to deal with the Houthis is consistent with the trade war Trump subsequently launched. But that public discussion doesn’t appear in this story, much less admission that Trump failed to fulfill his stated objective.
Meanwhile, there are two paragraphs that describe the journalists’ sources rebutting an entirely different story (or stories).
The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said the operation was always meant to be limited. “Every aspect of the campaign was coordinated at the highest levels of civilian and military leadership,” he said in an emailed statement.
A former senior official familiar with the conversations about Yemen defended Michael Waltz, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, saying he took a coordinating role and was not pushing for any policy beyond wanting to see the president’s goal fulfilled.
One of those stories — the one Parnell, Hegseth’s propagandist, rebutted — is that the operation lacked coordination at the highest level of leadership. That story is consistent with Trump not approving the operation, which is consistent with many other details that appear in the story and also the discussion the day of the first attack about when to launch it.
The other story — from a former senior official (and so probably one of the people that either Laura Loomer, Pete Hegseth, or Trump himself has fired during this period) defending Mike Waltz — denies that Waltz was pushing a policy inconsistent with Trump’s goals. Given that Trump’s declared victory very pointedly doesn’t extend to Israel, and given the report that Trump distrusted Waltz because he coordinated with Bibi Netanyahu, and given the reports that Trump has not been coordinating with Bibi since Waltz’ departure, it’s possible that the story Waltz’ defender was trying to rebut is that he accounted for Israeli interests to an extent Trump didn’t care to.
It’s worth noting that American Oversight’s lawsuit keeps revealing additional parts to the Signal chat, so it’s possible we’ll learn more about these rebutted stories from pending FOIAs.
Anyway, it’s a nice story NYT has told and I have no doubt that the non-Trump whisperers have faithfully conveyed what their sources told them; likewise, I have no doubt that the expressed concerns of Parnell and the Waltz defender are real.
But given the clusterfuck described, it only raises questions about the real story underlying this one.
Timeline
March 15: First strikes
March 21: Redeployment of USS Vinson
April 14: 30 day mark; Dan Caine sworn in
Late April: Conference call with Hegseth, the Saudis, and Emiratis (no mention of Caine)
April 28 (day 44): Loss of first F/A-18
May 1: Trump fires Mike Waltz, in part because he coordinated closely with Bibi Netanyahu
May 5 (day 51): Order given to CentCom to “pause” offensive operations
May 6 (day 52), 12:09PM: Trump declares Houthi decision to halt attacks “last night”
May 6, 9PM local time; around 2PM DC time: Loss of second F/A-18
trump is erratic with a short attention span in all that he does, whether it’s starting military conflicts or trade conflicts. He always holds himself blameless for his failures, it’s his essence. Nothing new or surprising here.
BUT, the NYT seems do be doing PR for him, casting his role in a much more favorable light than the facts provide.
A billion in munitions (in 30 days) plus $400M of aircraft & drones to accomplishing nothing more than projecting his tough guy image beating up on a rag-tag bunch of brigands.
Silver lining is that exposes Reapers as expensive & vulnerable war machines. Other third would militaries have shot them down too.
Next I expect NYT to window dress trump for Nobel Peace Prize for stopping India/Pak war via trade deals (pure fiction)
Maybe the “win” was declared so he could go to Middle East for the dog and pony show with Elon and the gang without the fear him being photographed running off to a bunker because the Houthi’s launched a drone attack on his party..
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It’s funny. Vance in the signal chat said the Europeans needed to pay US for the attack because opening the shipping lanes benefited them more than us
Indeed. This is one of the extremely inconvenient sources to undercut the latest NYT propaganda. Frankly, it’s been a running joke for a long time how much the NYT kisses Convict-1 / Krasnov’s butt even though Rupert already has a reliable mouthpiece in the NY Post.
Why is there no accountability in the courtier press? Because it’s now about access rather than truth.
“We lost two $67 million jets. Even more reason for me to accept the free jet from Qatar.”
I can imagine him thinking that.
No amount of explaining will get him to understand that they aren’t equivalent.
Including the one shot down by a SAM from the USS Gettysburg (crew ejected and safe), make that three $67 million F-18 Super Hornets. Also don’t forget emergency repairs in a Grecian shipyard, necessitated by their warm encounter with a merchant ship near the Suez Canal earlier this year.
Not a good year for the Truman. An overextended, duty-worn ship and crew are an accident waiting to happen…and the longer they’re at sea, the more likely something—ship or sailor—is to break.
Yep. The Air Boss and CO will probably get cashiered like the CO of the Gettysburg. It’s the Navy way, and we were all aware of those risks.
With that said, is there much pushback on Maggie’s new cover story?
I appreciate Marcy’s detailed analysis. Been paying more than the usual amount of attention, as my youngest son’s ship with the USS Carl Vinson Strike Group, diverted to the Gulf from their leisurely South Seas cruise to keep the lonely USS Truman company. Original return to San Diego was about now and it’s his young wife’s first experience with needs-of-the-Navy-come-first—she’s a little freaked out, and they haven’t been out nearly as long as the Truman.
Marcy’s post today provides more examples of something I’ve worried about since Trump 45. As typified by his recent trollish whim to erase veterans from Veterans Day, Trump seems to be doing his best to spread his corrupting worldview to America’s Armed Forces. And that’s certainly not the only or worst thing he’s done to ruin our reputation, which probably was appointing a sycophantic Fox News influencer of little meaningful experience and few apparent principles or abilities—basically, a clownishly non-serious person in every important way—as leader of the Department of Defense. But he’s also subverting and corrupting the Armed Forces mission by…
⦁ Twisting our tradition of civilian control of the military, into Caudillo control of the military
⦁ Removing senior military leaders valuing competence, honor and their oath to the Constitution, over personal Trump loyalty
⦁ Recruiting or promoting officer and enlisted personnel filtered for their Trumpist views
⦁ Aspiring to pit armed soldiers against civilian protesters and migrants
With a 1975-1996 Air Force career (retired as SMSgt), I’m fortunate that much of my adult life coincided with a time of near-societal-wide appreciation of and support for servicemembers and veterans. But it wasn’t always so, and I’m afraid that era of respect is coming to an end. It seems likely my son—under the worst Commander in Chief and Secretary of Defense any of us have ever known doing their best to politicize the military and monetize it to the benefit of a sycophantic kleptocracy—will not experience the decades of societal respect accorded to me and my comrades in arms.
As he brags, Trump alone could do this.
As I recall, respect for the vets was not universal in the years between Vietnam and the first Gulf War ejecting Saddam out of Kuwait. That was my time in the USN. But, things improved as the country realized what we actually had been able to do.
Far from being a South Seas exercise, we spent the significant part of our deployment time in the North Arabian Sea (and we had the ‘Arabian Gulf’ mandate for DoD references, ridiculous even then). The Soviets would send out a ship to drop a hook at Socotra (South Yemen) and we’d set up shop at Masirah (Oman) where the running joke was that there was a girl behind every tree. We wouldn’t just drop hooks and sit, though, because we were dealing with the Iranians and Iraqis in the vicinity, escorting tankers and so forth.
If there was a homeport change deployments could easily double in length, but for me that didn’t happen. It was a bad sign when Shrub and Rummy used stop-loss (another nasty surprise) and extended year-long + deployments to the sandbox to wage their war on the cheap. That strain was not good.
Yup, like I said, I was fortunate, fully understanding “…it wasn’t always so.” And I agree that the first Gulf War was when the new era started slowly phasing in, and it eventually went a little overboard at times. My concern is the seemingly purposeful overturning of that era, which will be brought about by 47’s corrosive, subversive view and behavior toward/random, whimsically destructive orders to, the military.
The “leisurely South Seas cruise” was my son’s joke; they’d already made port from Malaysia to Japan, with a large multi-nation exercise and bunch of show-the-flag stops in between. The end was coming into sight what they were diverted. The Truman is finally heading home next week…Vinson is staying with no known end date yet.
Demonstrating the kernel of truth in the stereotype, nothing in my AF career matches the stress and effort of an at-sea deployment. Closest was a 6-month TDY, 7-day/12-hour shifts running a comm van on the tarmac of King Fahd International Airport, supporting the mid-1980’s pre-Gulf War Middle East AWACS mission…and even at that, slept in an airport hotel room (private for Officers/senior NCOs), w/free 24-hour buffet, all provided by King Fahd to the AWACS squadrons rotating in and out.
Fun fact, even though the USN is officially dry, we’re allowed 2 cans of beer after 45 straight days at sea. I had a chance to do so after 54 days, when our CO got us Fosters. Yum, and good man.
One thing is that a ship will have its ‘official’ nickname and the sailors will come up with their own. For example, the Vinson was ‘San Francisco’s Own’ (we were homeported at NAS Alameda then) but the unofficial nickname was the ‘Chuckboat’ before becoming the ‘Mobile Chernobyl’ in 1987. We’re a tad cynical as snipes.
That Washington Post article about Waltz being fired May 1 because he was too tight wit Netanyahu in February caught my attention.
Particularly since Trump is super pro Israel, probably owes them a lot due to election assistance, and also since Waltz was replaced by Rubio. And looking through Rubio’s foreign policy positions, he comes across as super pro Israel. In fact, the Nick Fuentes types view Rubio to be just as pro Israel and likely to be pro war with Iran.
So what’s the difference between Rubio and Waltz? The WaPo article buries a sentence about Waltz being hawkish on Russia. A contrast with the New Rubio.
So was Waltz fired for not being pro Russia? Did he blink and hesitate when Trump gave a pro Russia policy? It sure seems that is the case to me.
Then for whatever reasons, the Trump admin used the opportunity to send a message that Waltz was fired over being too pro Israel. But why and who is that message for? Israel? Saudis and Qataris? Netanyahu? American domestic factions like Fuentes? Hide the pro Russia switch to Rubio?
The NY Times did put out an article by Michael Shear that indeed discuss the main difference between Rubio is stance on Russia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/world/europe/trump-rubio-national-security-adviser.html
Archived: https://archive.is/TTtn2
5/1: Waltz fired
5/2: NY Times explaining Rubio as more amenable to pro Russia policy
5/3: WaPo article Waltz fired for being cozy w Netanyahu in Feb
Let’s not forget trump throwing netanyahu under the bus when he declared US ops against houthis were over.
Yeah, what’s going on there and why?
Trump is meeting MBS. He might be greenlighting the Saudis to act, with the U.S. selling arms and aircraft. Or greenlighting Israel to retaliate against rocket attacks with needed materiel shipments assured.
An aside – this Middle East trip is without an Israeli stop. Whether much can be made of that or not, it is a fact. I’ve seen no reporting of Trump curtailing arms to Israel.
Just not an agenda item. (Perhaps it’s a strategic thing. The Israelis have yet to give him a spiffy big airplane.)
You had me at ClusterF…
Definitely more real-time analysis of what is actually happening inside the Trump administration will be appreciated by future historians long down the road.