Our National Security is in the Hands of Gaslighting Clowns
What are our national security allies thinking after Signalgate?
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Gaslight Nation
Pete Hegseth is not a serious person, nor did he ever bother playing one on tv. He spent a stint in the army, along with millions of other Americans. That, along with having a certain look and a proclivity to defend Donald Trump unconditionally, is what qualifies him to lead the world’s most lethal military.
So it is no surprise that Hegseth was on a Signal chat earlier this month, along with every other national security principal in the Trump Administration, discussing plans to launch airstrikes in Yemen. It is also not particularly surprising that these officials were discussing matters of life and death outside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) and on an app that anyone can download on an iPhone. They work for a president who stored classified material in the bathroom of his Florida country club, after all.
Nor is it surprising that they were so careless that they mistakenly included Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic on these chats. Goldberg was responsible enough to remove himself from the chat once he understood that he was in receipt of highly classified military plans. But that is a credit to him, not to them, because it sounds like they would have been obliviously plodding along, sending each other prayer and flag emojis and detailed war plans, had he not brought this massive breach to their attention.
As the New York Times noted, “Former national security officials said that if personal cellphones were used in the group chat, the behavior would be even more egregious because of ongoing Chinese hacking efforts.”
Who knows who else they might have included in other chats, about other classified information? Who knows if anyone else would have been as responsible as Goldberg, who removed himself once it became apparent that he was an inadvertent party to a massive national security breach? It goes without saying that this is not the first time this crew has resorted to violating myriad laws by texting each other over a commercially-available app. Had it been, one of them would have raised a red flag on the chat about why they were communicating in this way. According to Goldberg, that did not happen.
Yesterday, the National Security Council acknowledged that the text chain Goldberg describes is authentic. “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” a statement from the NSC said.
But Hegseth, who cut his teeth at Fox News (where gaslighting has been a way of life for decades), disputed Goldberg’s story. Traveling in Hawaii, he informed the press that “nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
And herein lies the danger of having a Fox News weekend anchor as a decision maker in matters of national security. Goldberg wrote a story where he exposed that Hegseth included war plans on a Signal text chain but declined to provide details about what those plans were because he did not want to put American troops and assets in harm’s way. When the news broke, the White House did not dispute his account, nor did the many other people on the chain, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
But in an Administration where gaslighting is a feature, not a bug, Hegseth sees no downside to emulating the boss and asking the rest of us to believe him and not our lying eyes. Multiple women accusing him of misconduct? Liars. Multiple co-workers accusing him of alcoholism? Liars. Multiple people accusing him of financial mismanagement? Liars.
Remember, gaslighting the nation about his record previously proved to be inordinately successful for Hegseth. It got him the jump from hosting cooking segments on Fox & Friends Weekend to running the Department of Defense. So why not attempt to gaslight us again about his immense breach of national security, even if no one else on that text chain would back him up?
Hegseth’s instincts proved to be excellent. Despite the National Security Council confirming the authenticity of the text chain yesterday, the White House press secretary decided to join in the gaslighting on X less than 24 hours later.
How long until Rubio, Gabbard and others are also trotted out to deny that the earth is round, now that the White has press secretary has deemed it so?
Leavitt knows that she has Goldberg in a bind. If he did not delete the highly sensitive war plans, the Department of Justice can make his life a living hell. If he did delete them, he has no evidence to prove that she is lying — even though, in a moment of atypical candor, one of her colleagues already confirmed that Goldberg is telling the truth. Regardless, her posture will give right-wing media all the excuse necessary to trash Goldberg, trash this story and protect the clown car that is the Trump Administration’s national security team.
We are living in Bizarro World and the White House knows it. The only character trait that Trump rewards, aside from blind obeisance to the boss, is the ability to bend the truth in order to create a singular MAGA reality. In that, Hegseth has proven himself successful yet again.
In any other Administration, Hegseth would have been fired immediately. Not only did he put the men and women serving under him in harm’s way but he has made it clear to our allies that any sensitive information they share with us will not be protected. Just imagine what the other members of the Five Eyes will do when they see that the United States national security apparatus consists of principals who think so little of protecting classified information that they discuss it on Signal group chats as though they are planning a work dinner.
Politico Playbook features a frightening reminder this morning:
How secure is Signal? “It’s far below the standards required for discussing any elements of a war plan,” Mark Montgomery, senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells POLITICO cybersecurity journos Maggie Miller and Dana Nickel. One key issue, they write, is that “in most cases,” Signal cannot be used on federal phones, raising the question of which devices Cabinet members were using. “Their personal phones are all hackable,” one ex-White House official warns. “It’s highly likely foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the shit out.”
The truth is that this Administration has put this nation in grave peril, not just because its leaders screwed up by including a reporter in a sensitive national security discussion but because they have made it clear that they are not serious people and that, in turn, they do not take issues of life and death seriously. After yesterday’s revelation, we know it and our allies know it too. So do our enemies.
Further Reading:
The Atlantic: The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
The Atlantic: A Conversation With Jeffrey Goldberg About His Extraordinary Scoop
The New York Times: Hegseth Disclosed Secret War Plans in a Group Chat
The Economist: Donald Trump v the Spies of Five Eyes
And not even good clowns.
Good grief! The gross incompetence is staggering!🤦🏻♂️