Mar.25

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

This Is What a Clown Show Looks Like

Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey is jealous right now, because they have absolutely nothing on the clowns currently running the U.S. defense establishment. Most readers have probably heard by now, but in case you haven't, numerous high-ranking members of the Trump administration were using Signal to discuss plans for bombing Yemen's Houthi fighters. And one of the people in the group chat accidentally included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg in the group text, with the result that he knew exactly what was going to happen hours before the bombing began.

Let us start with the most obvious point here, namely how unbelievably stupid and careless this was. Undoubtedly, the group used Signal because it's heavily encrypted. We would guess that tech bro J.D. Vance, who was part of the chat, sang the praises of that particular service. However, it's ridiculous to think that any private concern, no matter how skilled, can plausibly provide secure encryption better than what the U.S. government can provide. Beyond that, the weakest link in the chain isn't Signal and its encryption, it's the phones. All the encryption in the world doesn't help much if an unfriendly gains access to one or more of the phones that are receiving (and decoding) the encrypted messages.

And finally, even if you have heavy-duty encryption and even if you have properly secured phones, that's of little use if your message hygiene is so poor that you're not even sure who's getting the message. There were reportedly 18 people in the group chat, including NSA Mike Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special U.S. Envoy for Bigotry Stephen Miller. Can those folks really be sure that someone problematic—say, Russian ambassador to the U.S. Alexander Darchiyev, or notable loudmouth Tucker Carlson, or Elon "Everything I Hear Immediately Goes on eX-Twitter" Musk—was not on the chain? The answer to that question is clearly "no," since the participants did not even realize Goldberg was on the chain until he wrote a story for his publication yesterday.

Having dispensed with how stupid and careless Team Trump was, let us now talk about what hypocrites they are. To start, there are quite a few people involved in this meltdown, starting with Donald Trump himself, who leaned heavily into "but her e-mails." The criticism there was that Hillary Clinton, despite following advice from her two immediate predecessors, MIGHT potentially have exposed classified information to people without security clearances. Well, the Trumpers actually DID expose classified information—no "might have" about it. And the information they exposed was not one of those classified-but-really-shouldn't-be-classified things, like "the vice president of Ghana requires a gluten-free meal at state dinners" or "the U.S. Secretary of Energy spoke to the Secretary for Public Administration of Nauru about bird-guano futures today." It was legitimately sensitive information about a future, but imminent, military operation. When information like this leaks, people can die.

Several of the folks involved in the leaked thread have also leaned heavily into additional criticism of (invariably) Democrats, and the blue team's allegedly lax handling of information. To take one example, Waltz has excoriated his predecessor as NSA, Jake Sullivan, for being careless with classified information. Last we checked, Sullivan never leaked plans for an imminent military strike to some random magazine editor.

Still, everyone knows that when a Trumper does something, no matter how bad, it's either not wrong or not their fault. The rush to excuse this breach was so rapid that a passing beam of light said "Damn! That's fast!" A rundown of some of the more prominent apologists, along with their angles:

• Donald Trump, reminding everyone of what he really cares about (Hint: not national security), said: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. It's to me, it's a magazine that's going out of business. I think it's not much of a magazine."
  
  
• Pete Hegseth declared that the whole thing is a hoax, and that Goldberg made it all up. This despite the fact that Goldberg had all sorts of details that were spot-on correct, and that others in the group text had already admitted that Goldberg's reporting was correct.
  
  
• Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), in his role as the Trump administration's lead congressional lapdog, said that he doesn't think anyone involved should be disciplined, because they're going to make real sure it never happens again. We dunno, Mike, did you make certain they crossed their hearts, hope to die?
  
  
• Josh Hawley, in his role as one of the Trump administration's congressional sub-lapdogs, expressed shock that people are upset "about who's on a text message."
  
  
• Will Cain, the talk show host who is fluent in Newspeak, praised the administration for its transparency and its collaborative decision-making.
  
  
• Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, both of whom are employed by the state-run media operation, slammed Goldberg for reporting on the story. We believe that is known as "shooting the messenger."

The overall lesson here, particularly given the response to Hillary Clinton's e-mails, would seem to be: "Do as I say, not as I do."

Now that the conversation is public, there are a few instructive things to be learned about the dynamics of the Trump administration:

• The fly in the ointment, as it were, was Vance. He did not think bombing Yemen was a wise idea, either tactically or politically, and suspected that Trump didn't really understand the decision that he was asked to make. In other words, Vance has apparently reached the same conclusion as so many others who worked in close proximity to the President, namely that he's a nitwit. Needless to say, that kind of independent thinking, particularly when it involves (implied) criticism of Trump, is not going to be great for Vance's long-term prospects in the administration.
  
  
• Vance and Hegseth really hate the United States' European allies, thinking of them as freeloading goldbrickers.
  
  
• While there was some concern about national security, the more prominent theme of the conversation was messaging, and how the attacks would look to the voting public.
  
  
• Waltz is a pretty awful human being. After the bombings, which killed at least 50 people, he celebrated with a string of emojis: a fist, an American flag, and fire. (Other participants in the chat at least had the decency to respond with praying hands.)

If you would like to read Goldberg's actual report, the link is here, though an Atlantic subscription is required. Also, he withheld anything that he thought might be classified.

If you are a reader who is not a fan of the Trump administration—and that is nearly all of our readers—we have both good and bad news for you. Let's start with the bad: There are going to be no real consequences to this inexcusable breach of national security. There is talk that Waltz's head might roll, but we think it's more likely than not that he keeps his job. And even if he does get cashiered, he'll get replaced by some other whackadoodle alpha male. Trump seems to have an infinite supply of Looney Tunes NSAs, from Michael Flynn to John Bolton to Robert O'Brien to Waltz. And whatever happens with Waltz, this will all be forgotten within weeks, as the unending tidal wave of crazypantsery that comes out of the White House pushes the whole thing out of people's minds.

And now the good news for the anti-Trumpers. This is an administration that just cannot stay out of its own way. Trump's underlings shoot themselves in the foot so often they should all be issued bulletproof loafers. And so, even if the Democratic resistance is disorganized and ineffectual—and that's basically the story so far—folks who are not happy with this administration can still sit back and wait for the next big, unforced blunder. Which, if the usual pace holds, should come sometime around 1:30 this afternoon—assuming the administration is having an unusually good day, of course. (Z)