Where Are the Best and the Brightest?
Trump's national security team displays astonishing incompetence
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Unfit and on Full display
Two months of Trump 2.0, and the hits keep on coming. For those among us weeping and gnashing our teeth over the wrecking-ball antics of Elon Musk and his DOGE-boys, this week’s episode of misgovernment would provide comic release if it weren’t so grievous. In what the media is calling ‘Signalgate’, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, was mistakenly invited to join a group chat on the commercial app Signal of Trump Administration national security officials discussing the details of a planned attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The sloppiness of this clusterfuck is either frightening or delicious, depending on whether you take natsec issues seriously or you enjoy watching the Trump team do their denial dance.
There were 19 members in the chat group. The principals were Mike Waltz, National Security Advisor; Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense; Marco Rubio, Secretary of State; Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence; John Ratcliffe, CIA Director; Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary; Vice-President J.D. Vance; White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles; and Special Envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. Ten members were staffers, and the nineteenth was the journalist Goldberg, who had no clue why he’d been invited by Waltz and was dubious about the authenticity of the texts. 1
So much for OPSEC (“operational security”).
Then, there is the matter of using Signal, an open-source encrypted messaging service. Several issues raise red flags and beg obvious questions:
1) Government officials are required to use government-issued cell phones for communication. This is both for security reasons and so that records of communications are preserved as required by law. Were these people attempting to erase the record of this interaction, thereby bypassing the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act?
2) Before this chat on Signal, the NSA (National Security Agency) had issued “an operational security special bulletin to its employees in February 2025 warning them of vulnerabilities in using the encrypted messaging application Signal, according to internal NSA documents obtained by CBS News.” Moreover, NPR obtained a 2023 Defense Department memo that warned of using Signal for any nonpublic official information. Why were these warnings ignored?
3) These warnings were about the Signal app installed on personal cell phones. These are susceptable to “phishing attacks” that allow hackers to access the actual Signal texts. This is concerning because Witkoff, the President’s envoy, was in Moscow at the time the chat took place. He did not have his government phone and used his personal cell instead. Is Witkoff so naive or ignorant that he thinks the Russians wouldn’t attempt to hack his communications?
Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
Not having learned from Richard Nixon’s downfall that the coverup is worse than the crime, this cabal of miscreants moved onto the lame excuse phase of the boondoggle. On Monday, Goldberg published an article describing how he’d come to be in the chat. He reported that, two hours before the strike took place, “war plans” were discussed in the chat, but he omitted details of the planned strike. At a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Waltz, Gabbard, and Ratcliffe stonewalled. (Gabbard, for instance, would not answer Sen. Mark Warner when he asked if she was using her government phone or her personal phone.) All of them claimed there was no classified information presented during the chat. This claim was repeated in public statements by Hegseth and the President himself. Since the Administration was taking the no-harm/no-foul position (the strike was a success, and no Americans were lost), Goldberg and writer Shane Harris decided to publish the details omitted from Monday’s article on Wednesday.
Now, the Trump regime’s shambolic approach to national security and foreign policy is on full display in the pages of The Atlantic. It is damaging enough that operational details of the strike (e.g., when, where, and which aircraft, missiles, and drones would strike) were revealed, but Vance and Hegseth had used the chat to make disparaging remarks about Europe. We managed to bomb the Houthis and attack our allies as well.
It did seem that heads would roll.
That is, however, not the Trumpian way. The Hill reported earlier today that the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman statedd during an interview on CNN that:
Trump is very clear that, according to a number of people I’ve spoken to, he does not want to fire someone, because he sees that as giving in to the media. People around him see that as weak. And I think you will hear that for a while. Whether this is sustainable for them is another story.
Deny, deny, deny… Standard reply to being caught red-handed. There is also the catch-all answer, “I don’t recall,” used by John Ratcliffe. Convenient because denial might be a lie, but it’s difficult to assess the veracity of memory loss. If these don’t work, attack the source: Trump called Goldberg a “total sleazebag” and The Atlantic a “failed magazine”. Waltz remarked that he did not know how Goldberg had “snuck” into the chat, speculating that he may have his way hacked in. For extra measure, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavett trotted out the semantic argument that “war plans” were not discussed and that Goldberg had admitted this when he referred to them as “attack plans” in his Wednesday follow-up article.2
The whole affair threatens to continue to draw scrutiny despite Trump’s efforts at distraction. Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Vice-Chair Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) have requested an expedited investigation by the Defense Department’s Inspector General. In Washington DC District Court, the judge in a suit brought by a watchdog group seeking to preserve the records of the chat under the Federal Records Act ordered the government not to destroy the records.
It seems Signalgate will linger. While it is too soon to say whether or not it grows into a full-blown scandal like Nixon’s Watergate fiasco, given the demonstrable ineptitude of these people- and that includes Trump himself- there is a real potential that they continue to tie their shoelaces together each morning and plant their feet firmly in their mouths.
I am reminded of the scene from the movie All the President’s Men where Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) meets with his anonymous source, ‘Deep Throat’ (Hal Holbrook), in a parking garage. The source tells Woodward about the White House operatives, “Forget the myths the media has created about the White House. Truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”3
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.4
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In his article in The Atlantic on Monday, Goldberg wrote “I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans.“
The term "war plans” has a specific meaning in military circles. It refers to strategic plans for a war with a specific adversary. Before World Wat II, for example, the US Navy in the 1920s and 1930s developed a series of plans dealing with the possibility of war with Japan. These were color-coded, the most well-known being the Orange Plan. It is doubtful Ms. Leavett knew this distinction.
I did attempt to insert a clip of this scene in the post, but either the YouTube gods or the Substack gremlins interfered.
This quote is usually attributed to Mark Twain. The twist here is that Hal Holbrook, who played Deep Throat, won a Tony Award for his performance in his one-man show, Mark Twain Tonight! (1966)
You should be able to view a clip of the Deep Throat scene at
https://youtu.be/vETxuL7Ij3Q?si=6_kUYrJif_1ILZ92
This is certainly the Junior Varsity of GOP; it's the B-Team; it's the left-overs from recent history GOP politics and/or those who could never make the team/never be chosen if it weren't for Trump wanting only sycophants in his presence.
I was always suspicious of the Biden team that they weren't equal partners in presenting the good works and accomplishments of that administration. Competent people, accomplished pols, those doing good works in public service would be rattling the cage to be spreaders of the programs and services they dispensed from Biden's good negotiations with Congress. Buttigieg in Transportation should have been on the road everywhere to tout the infrastructure contracts agreed in shovel-ready and longer-term bridges, road, buildings and other expense capital projects finally started with federal money. I'm not talking about ribbon-cutting ceremonies where every politician gets in the photo-op at the end of construction; there must have been many capital projects underway recognizing the capital projects take months and years to be completed. Anyone familiar with Capital Budgets, Planning and Zoning Commission work, transparent bid-letting and local politics knows this. There were millions/billions sent or promised to localities and states that deserved more publicity.
Some attention was given to the reduced pricing of Medicare drugs, but the new cash-back, expanded options programs were a virtual secret until phones started ringing off the hook by drug companies' sales agents during Trump's first few months in office. Xavier Beccera, HHS Secretary was nowhere to be found pounding this accomplishment. All press releases and public statements were reserved by Biden who looked increasingly frail, in everyone's eyes, but nobody's mouth to get him off the podium ala Woodrow Wilson's final days in office, or even FDR's 'journalists understanding' they would report no infirmity by that president.
Now the firehose of activities by both Pres. Trump and co-Pres. Elon Musk, are obvious to all and neither is reluctant to go on camera about his nefarious actions against our Constitution and the American people, let alone immigrants. And still reporters are ill-prepared to repulse the lies and distractions foisted on the press and broadcasters by everyone in the Trump orbit, in real time, with actual facts, and the ability to interrupt haranguing politicians being interviewed. Nobody seems able to stop any Congress person lying about the news, any administration speaker lying about current events, or any sycophant spewing Project 2025 aims and justifications. The following points were published in The New York Times, about January 17, 2017 to rave reviews by editors and readers alike: 1. all those working with Trump opening his mouth should prepare intensely prior to meeting him to refresh and learn the truth of the relevant issues; 2. stop all interviews at the first onset of lies and misstatements with immediate correction or confrontation for any lying or faux speaking; 3. make every effort to slow down his fire hose rapid speaking tactic to minimize the prevarication; and 4. challenge his frequent forays into fantasyland story telling. I now add any Trump administration office holder to the list of those needing thwarting for lying to Americans.
Whether it's Sen. Lindsay Graham, former JAG military attorney, Steve Bannon, former convict for inciting January 6th insurrection at the Capitol Building, Marco Rubio, former Florida Senator and current Secretary of State, who knows better about immigrant legal rights, any reporter interviewing them must first stop the lies and deceptions spewing from their campaign and presidential-support speeches and statements, confront them with the past and factual reality, and hold up the mirror of reality apparent to audience and (supposedly) politicians themselves.
I also urge that broadcast and print media alike refuse to interview obvious partisans while pursuing any issue that requires the public to understand facts and reality. Interview the relatively innocent voter poll workers in Georgia accused of election fraud acts, but not the State's governor, secretary of state (elections), or local politicians. They only muddy the issue for listeners or readers and have fewer facts ordinarily than the on-site poll workers. It may be a form of censorship, but we're fighting fire and backfires are often necessary for truth and reality to emerge.
Today with relatively few administrators or legislators willing to talk on the record about Trump, it's even more important that anyone coming forward with a statement be confronted, with a little less thanks and gratitude expressed by interviewers. The four points above must be applied: Are you reading Kristin Welker from Meet The Press on NBC Sundays?