There is no way to keep up with “as the Trump regime turns.”

That’s partly by design (“flood the zone” and overwhelm, confuse and exhaust the media and the opposition). And it is partly because Donald Trump and most of his major deputies cannot help themselves.

Trump loves motion and chaos.

His underlings are given to pratfalls. Doing war planning on a group chat? It is stunningly stupid and reckless, like so much of the flood.

The President’s national security team — any president’s — has access, 24/​7, to totally secure lines of communication. The safest in the world.

This wasn’t a glitch. It was rank amateurism.

Watching Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and John Ratcliffe before the Senate, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry: The Three Stooges Do National Security.

How can Saturday Night Live satirize this?

It is farce in its essence.

To say these three are in over their heads is the understatement of the decade.

In time, the country will grow weary of all the hyper-intrusiveness and buffoonery of this administration.

Meanwhile there are three turns that give hope.

● The first is Signalgate. Not because the Trump national security team consists of incompetents and perjurers.

It is hopeful because it is a scandal with a catchy name and the kind of muck up-people immediately understand.

The stooges not only talked about both policy and tactical specifics on Signal.

They then lied to members of Congress about much of it being classified.

The Atlantic put out the transcript (sent to its editor inadvertently), which proved it was a lie.

The ignorance and irresponsibility of holding this conference on a group chat fazes these goofballs and their boss not a whit. None of them have any understanding of, or interest in, statecraft. They are playing soldiers in a video game.

But this is the hope: That Signalgate will make clear that incompetence has consequences. Amateurs get people killed. Amateur sailors, pilots, and race car drivers all get people killed.

Yes, the Trump core constituency is happy. But the other 75 percent of the voters, the non-voters of equal number, and the Biden voters from 2020 who sat on the couch in 2024, are starting to wonder.

Democrats must make a clear and simple point: Not only does incompetence get people killed, but incompetence is what Mr. Trump wanted.

And why is that?

Because incompetence is a double protection for him.

Almost all of his major appointments have pledged fealty to him. But many of them, including Gabbard, are essentially TV talking heads now charged with running complex organizations. By assuring that virtually every major department head in government is over his depth, Mr. Trump guarantees that no one will question or delay any whim or decree.

But he ALSO guarantees that there will be more Signalgates.

The IRS, FAA and Social Security Administration have all been turned upside down and shaken.

And think of the public health versions of Signalgate: A measles epidemic? The return of Polio and TB? New strains of AIDS and the coronavirus?

Put amateurs and comedians in charge of complex machines and this is what you get: Chaos and death.

We have already set both in motion by destroying AID (our foreign aid program).

● The second hopeful turn: The Bernie Sanders rallies. He is getting huge crowds, bigger than any in his, or anyone else’s, presidential campaigns, and often in purple or red states or congressional districts. And why is that?

Because Mr. Sanders is talking sense and truth when few are. He starts with affordability, moves to oligarchy, and ends with authoritarianism. There is nothing particularly left or socialist about defending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; or the rights and prerogatives of Congress and the courts. Advocating moderation and sanity is actually conservative.

Mr. Sanders may wind up uniting the party that rejected him as a presidential nominee twice. Because, guess what? Americans disturbed by extreme inequality, bullying, and bigotry, and desirous of a country of tolerance and pluralism, want their country back.

● The third: Some of our institutions are waking up. They seemed, in recent weeks, to be sleeping.

Or intimidated, like our universities and major law firms.

But the press and the House of Representatives came alive last week.

The Atlantic Magazine, which is a sort of Reader’s Digest for the earnest, played the part of defiant muckraker — a role played by the now defanged Washington Post during Watergate and in the Pentagon Papers case.

And Democrats in the House of Representatives, led by two long-time Connecticut Democrats, John Larson and Jim Himes, stood up to the regime. Mr. Himes called the Putin tilt what it is — an outright alliance.

Deeply corrupt. And Mr. Larson called the Elon Musk DOGE operation what it is — a rump and extra-constitutional government.

The Senate is brain dead, but the House has a beating heat.

Keith C. Burris is the former editor, vice president, and editorial director of Block Newspapers.

Contact him at burriscolumn@gmail.com.

First Published March 30, 2025, 4:00 a.m.