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