Another Pleasant Valley Sunday

So this happened:

In an extraordinary move, the Pentagon chief “fired” the Navy secretary Sunday for going outside his chain of command by proposing a “secret agreement with the White House,” according to a senior defense official.
The agreement that led to Navy Secretary Richard Spencer’s forced resignation involved the case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, one of three service members facing war crimes allegations whose cases have caused unprecedented tension between the Pentagon and President Donald Trump.

Spencer had appeared to be seeking a way to resolve a standoff between the Pentagon and White House over Gallagher’s case, but competing narratives that emerged in the chaotic hours after Spencer’s dismissal suggest the depth of the upheaval, disconnection and discord that remains.

Trump suggested on Twitter that Spencer’s dismissal had to do with cost overruns and the way Gallagher had been treated by the Navy. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he asked Spencer to resign because he had lost “trust and confidence in him regarding his lack of candor,” according to a Pentagon spokesman.

And Spencer pointed squarely to the President, suggesting that Trump was undermining the “key principle of good order and discipline” of the US military by intervening in Gallagher’s case.
“I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” Spencer wrote in his letter to the President acknowledging his termination.

And this happened:

Short version: Trump decided to withhold appropriated aid to Ukraine and then told his staff to come up with a legal rationale for doing so after the fact, and the White House has been obstructing justice by not turning over the documents that memorialize this shakedown scheme.

Scott just blogged about that third thing that happened.

This is all normal now.