Text messages regarding the bombing of Yemen were shared with a non-cabinet member.
Being part of the president’s Cabinet carries significant responsibilities and those generally mean the standard of accountability for Cabinet members is high. After all, it is not a good look if the leaders of the most powerful country on earth are corrupt, lie to the media, work to restrict freedoms or persecute their political opponents. The highest public service official should adhere to these guidelines at least.
Yet, recently, the news broke that the vice president of the United States, the National Security Advisor to the president, and the secretary of defense — all of whom are barely two months into their jobs — were sharing classified war plans on a messaging app called Signal. Not only that but they also accidentally shared those plans with the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic newsmagazine Jeffrey Goldberg.
This scandal, like anything else newsworthy about the Trump administration, is as insidious as it is asinine. Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have three Ivy League degrees between them and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was a Green Beret, a branch of the United States Army Special Operations Command. Yet, none of these men had the foresight to check whether the number they were adding to their unauthorized group chat was the correct one. Certainly, the name Jeffrey Goldberg should have at least prompted them to check. Even if they did not add Goldberg, the fact that they were sharing war plans, which should be confidential, on a group text, which is not secure enough to deal with government information, in real time is inexcusable. Confidentiality exists for a reason; these messages could have put American lives in danger if they fell into the wrong hands.
What is worse than the fallout Waltz and Hegseth will likely receive (Trump has not ruled out firings as punishment) is that this whole snafu feels so mundane. The outcry that would ensue if this had happened during the Biden administration is unimaginable. Donald Trump has completely destroyed expectations for the federal government in mere months and it is not getting any better. The fact of the matter is that Trump and his cronies want to saturate the news space with ridiculous stories so that when their policies become more dangerous, their rhetoric more authoritarian and their plans more daring, Americans will all be too numb to care. Hegseth might feel like an idiot right now, but he is doing his part for the movement.
What is most striking is that the actual content of the messages has thus far largely been drowned out by the collective disbelief that they were shared at all. The Atlantic published the messages several days ago and they provide insight into the heart of the Trump administration. Based on the texts, it seems top US officials had very different ideas of what the president wanted and whether to move forward with discussed attacks on the Houthi rebel group in Yemen. Vance wrote that he hated “bailing Europe out again,” while Hegseth and Waltz argued that European navies were too “weak” to defend the Suez Canal, where the Houthis have attacked shipping for years. Hegseth described “European free-loading” as “PATHETIC” with regards to defense. None of the discussion regarding Europe and the president’s intention is criminal as government officials are allowed to use Signal for non-classified conversations. They cannot, however, send classified information over such a text channel. Yet, Hegseth did just that when he sent the group a timetable for an F-18 and drone strike against the Houthis mere minutes before launch. According to officials familiar with the plan, that information was “highly classified at the time,” although Trump has since declassified the plans.
Had a journalist not been added by chance to the wrong group chat, these texts would have been deleted after a week as Signal’s settings allow for automatic deletion, and the men involved would have escaped all accountability. However, considering that the Trump administration is not afraid to violate or bend the law as it does so openly every day, it is worth wondering what its denizens do when the watchmen are not watching.
