Laughable, I like that word... funny... funny like clowns.
The president’s officials must know that what they did in the Signal group chat was wrong—and dangerous.
By Tom Nichols
The defense of the United States is a serious business. Breaches of national security are especially dangerous. So perhaps I should not have laughed at the reactions of Donald Trump and his staff and Cabinet members to the revelations by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, and staff writer Shane Harris about a group chat on Signal (one that accidentally included Jeff) dedicated to planning strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
I laughed because I am a former government employee and Senate staffer with a fair amount of experience in dealing with classified information, and the administration’s position that nothing in the chat was classified is ludicrous. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth added a bit of topspin to that position on Monday when he got off a plane in Honolulu and, seemingly in a panic, fulminated against Jeff and tried to deny that any “war plans” were shared in the chat.
Over the next 24 hours, the excuses became even more laughable. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz went on Fox News, accepted “full responsibility,” and called Jeff “scum.” But then Waltz suggested that The Atlantic’s editor in chief had perhaps hacked or schemed his way into the chat, and that this possibility had to be investigated.
What’s funny—again, in an awful way—is that Waltz is the person who invited Jeff into the Signal group. (If you’ve never seen the “hot-dog man” meme, it’s an image of a guy in a hot-dog costume pleading with a crowd to find the person responsible for crashing a nearby wrecked hot-dog car. It’s being used all over social media in relation to this story, and for good reason.) Also appallingly funny is that the president’s own national security adviser doesn’t seem to understand that discussing on an app the details of a U.S. military strike and then admitting that a random person could find himself in the middle of such a discussion—it’s not like he waltzed his way in, if you’ll pardon the expression—makes this whole story even worse.
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@NorthernHawkeye your boys are clowns.
The president’s officials must know that what they did in the Signal group chat was wrong—and dangerous.
By Tom Nichols
The defense of the United States is a serious business. Breaches of national security are especially dangerous. So perhaps I should not have laughed at the reactions of Donald Trump and his staff and Cabinet members to the revelations by The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, and staff writer Shane Harris about a group chat on Signal (one that accidentally included Jeff) dedicated to planning strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
I laughed because I am a former government employee and Senate staffer with a fair amount of experience in dealing with classified information, and the administration’s position that nothing in the chat was classified is ludicrous. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth added a bit of topspin to that position on Monday when he got off a plane in Honolulu and, seemingly in a panic, fulminated against Jeff and tried to deny that any “war plans” were shared in the chat.
Over the next 24 hours, the excuses became even more laughable. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz went on Fox News, accepted “full responsibility,” and called Jeff “scum.” But then Waltz suggested that The Atlantic’s editor in chief had perhaps hacked or schemed his way into the chat, and that this possibility had to be investigated.
What’s funny—again, in an awful way—is that Waltz is the person who invited Jeff into the Signal group. (If you’ve never seen the “hot-dog man” meme, it’s an image of a guy in a hot-dog costume pleading with a crowd to find the person responsible for crashing a nearby wrecked hot-dog car. It’s being used all over social media in relation to this story, and for good reason.) Also appallingly funny is that the president’s own national security adviser doesn’t seem to understand that discussing on an app the details of a U.S. military strike and then admitting that a random person could find himself in the middle of such a discussion—it’s not like he waltzed his way in, if you’ll pardon the expression—makes this whole story even worse.
Read more:
@NorthernHawkeye your boys are clowns.
