Obviously, someone made a big mistake and added a journalist. Nothing against journalists, but you’re not supposed to be on that thing.
Secretary of State Rubio (on Signal leak)
Welcome to Signalgate. Two weeks ago, national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a group chat on a government-issued encrypted app; thereby allowing the journalist to spy on senior national-security officials. A confidence-sapping moment if ever, because defense secretary Hegseth’s texts regarded airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
Democrats finally have a real screw-up by Team Trump, and they want heads to roll. Except CIA director Ratcliffe said (under oath) his secure phone had been provided by the agency, and Sen. Tom Cotton (Intel Committee chair) said, “the Biden administration authorized Signal as a means of communication that was consistent with presidential record-keeping requirements” (source: Fox News).
President Trump said Waltz had “learned a lesson” and was “a good man,” and the Vice President said Waltz and Hegseth would not be fired (source: NBC News). Asked if they should be fired, House Speaker Johnson said, “No, no, of course not” (source: The Hill). After all, the airstrikes hit their targets, no American lives were lost, and Democrats can only bloviate.
When CNBC’s Joe Kernen asked why Biden didn’t fire his defense secretary after he got 13 US military killed in Kabul and gave the Taliban $80 billion in US armaments, Sen. Coons (D-DE) said this was completely different. No kidding, this mission was successful, no US military died, and Waltz claimed “full responsibility” for failing to “make sure everything’s coordinated” (source: Newsweek). Which is to say this isn’t Watergate.
Accidents Aren’t Always Human Error
Despite this security lapse (NSC) not rising to the level of the Three Mile Island (NRC), Shuttle Columbia (NASA), or 9-11 (FBI and TSA) failures, so-called experts like CNN’s John Bolton cannot remain circumspect: “The key point here is the US spent billions to create the world’s most secure phone, video, computer…why they would shift off that’s the original sin.”
The finger-pointing Bolton should have watched Fox’s Brett Baier interview eight DOGE wizards before clowning himself, because the “original sin” is the billions spent by the US government on command-and-control systems. Maybe Bolton can explain why the government paid $1,000,000,000 for a 10-question survey they could do with Survey Monkey for $10,000 (a DOGE finding).
A 2008 IG report on the IRS flagged the 15 million citizens over the age of 120 that Social Security (which still relies on COBOL programming language) still reports as living, the NIH has 27 CIOs in 27 different IT centers running 700 different IT systems that can’t speak to each other, the FAA still uses floppy disks to update its navigation databases, and the Signal app is on my iPad (too).
With federal IT systems this bad, it’s a miracle I wasn’t part of the Signal group-chat.
Both Sides Now
Democrats remain curiously incurious as to HOW Goldberg got into the group in the first place, preferring to indict three decorated Army officers, two former senators, and a former Director of National Intelligence. After leakers undermined the DOJ and endangered ICE agents, why don’t liberal pols and media suspect partisan holdovers from the Biden administration?
I’m a Goldberg agnostic, initially because the “suckers and losers” quote he attributed to Trump was debunked (source: The Federalist). And now, after he said he wouldn’t release “the attack plans” in order to protect US military lives and methods, and then released them the very next day…hmm.
Who has genuine concern for “US military lives and methods” and knowingly walks around with sensitive military information on his smartphone? Goldberg strikes me as self-important; after being faulted by Hegseth for using “Attack Plans” rather than war plans, he snarked on MSNBC, “I don’t even know what that means” (Hegseth’s point).
I’d ordinarily think less of Waltz and Hegseth but for today’s Democrats (allowed federal outlays to spike 63.3%) and their media cronies (hid that Biden was not the real president). Today, I’d blame every screw-up on bungling bureaucrats before looking elsewhere. Go ahead. Fire Hegseth. The screw-ups will continue.