Trump Officials' Frightening Incompetence

By now, you’ve heard about the unbelievable security breach by the Trump administration. In essense, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arranged a group chat on Signal, a private messaging app with servers outside the country. This chat included 18 high ranking senior Trump cabinet members including Marco Rubio and JD Vance. In the non-secure app, they discussed the plans and details of an upcoming military action against Houthis in Yemen.

Editor in Chief of the Atlantic Magazine, Jeffery Goldberg, identified at “JG” on Signal, was inadvertently included in the chat. At first thinking it a scam, Goldberg then realized it was not—- when what had been discussed on the chat became a reality later that day.

Goldberg reported on this yesterday, and did a lot of talk shows to discuss how our national security had been seriously breached. He was careful not to disclose much of what was said in the chat—locations, names, time stamps, etc- for fear of further endangering national security. But the administration’s response to this breach was non-chalant, Pete Hegseth insisting (as he insulted the Atlantic and Goldberg with crude words) that “no war plans were discussed.” Goldberg was forced to change his mind and today, the Atlantic published all of what he had read (with some names redacted) while he was in the chat. He called their bluff. This is an example of some of the detail:

“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Mr. Hegseth wrote in the chat. “1345: ‘Trigger Based’ F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME) — also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).”

Today, the Senate was already in hearings with the Intelligence Dept, something already scheduled, and Democrats took the opportunity to grill and pummel Trump administration officials. Democrats smell blood.

Trump’s response: “So this was not classified. Now if it’s classified information, it’s probably a little bit different, but I always say, you have to learn from every experience.” National security veterans are certain it was classified. How unclassified it and when is not known. They are downplaying the extraordiary breach that put American service men and women at risk.

You can read the leaked annotated Signal Chat here.

Here is the story in The Atlantic today, detailing what happened and when.

I drew this sketch above on the morning the story broke (Monday?) and submitted it to The New Yorker, but alas they didn’t run it. To me, the whole thing, from the way they chatted about the militaryaction to the childish emojis from these mostly white men betrays a cavalier, priviledged arrogance. They also insulted our allies in the chat. No offense to little boys, but it resembles little boys playing with guns, and feeling like big deals…except this is real life.

Hegseth never should have been confirmed, he is a lightweight and wholly unserious man. Democrats are calling for his resignation, hard to know what will happen. But it is very serious. It can’t die down, we need to make something of this, somehow. Can the GOP Congress ever be convinced that this Trump circus is a nightmare? I don’t know.

The Administration is trying to downplay what has happened. Sometimes in cases like these, there are investigations; but these investigations are usually conducted by the Dept of Defence (run by Hegseth) and the CIA (run by John Ratcliff, also on the chat)—so clearly it will be hard for the Democrats to get an investigation.

I am sure we will learn more tonight about what the Democrats plan to do to keep this story alive. It is so demonstrative of the frightening incompetence of this administration.

Thanks for being here, everybody! Have a good rest of your Wednesday.