The most chilling lesson of Signalgate

It took two months, but we finally have our first "gate" of the second Trump administration: "Signalgate" — and it's a doozy. You are no doubt aware by now that The Atlantic has published an article reporting that the top national security officials known as the "Principals Committee" were gathered together in a Signal group chat to discuss the impending bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and accidentally included the magazine's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, in the chat without realizing it.

In the chat, they discussed policy concerns about the campaign, slagged the European allies, shared what experts say are by definition classified battle plans, which included "precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing" and even mentioned the name of a covert CIA officer. Goldberg published an article about it on Monday, complete with screenshots of the chat, although he did not publish the classified information or the name of the CIA officer. On Wednesday, the Atlantic published more from the group chat:

That these high-level national security officials were all using a commercial app on personal phones that could easily be breached by state-level actors is bad enough. (One of the members on the call, special envoy Steve Witkoff, was actually in Moscow at the time.) But considering their previous outrage at Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server, you would have thought that it would have crossed the mind of at least one of them that this was dangerous. There is no other way to interpret any of that except to assume that they commonly use Signal for such discussions in contravention of every security protocol in the U.S. government.

When you think about it, though, why wouldn't they? Their leader stubbornly refused to give up his own personal phone and made a fetish of blabbing national security secrets since his first term. Recall that right after he fired FBI Director James Comey, he had the Russian foreign minister and ambassador over to the Oval Office for a chat where he shared some very closely held classified information (which later turned out to be about Israel). After he was out of office, he stole boxes full of classified documents, stored them in his toilet and refused to give them back. He was indicted for that but the Justice Department dropped the charges when he won the election.

And when it comes to war plans, Trump certainly has no problem sharing them with reporters. After all, he was also indicted for showing stolen Pentagon plans for war with Iran to two reporters down at Mar-a-Lago. That's not just hearsay. It's on tape. He also blabbed highly confidential information about nuclear submarines to a member of his club, an Australian billionaire who, according to ABC News, "then allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists..."

So really, it's pretty much policy for the Trump administration to just blurt out classified information. He's probably still doing it every day on his unsecured phone between Truth Social posts.

The substance of the chat is very interesting, however, and provides a telling insight into the workings of the Trump inner circle. From what I understand, it's odd that the discussion would happen among this group once the order had been given. Normally, this sort of thing would be hashed out at the staff level.

There had clearly been a previous meeting among the principals that left them wondering whether it was a good idea and if President Trump had a clue about what he was doing. Vice President Vance suggested that the president didn't truly get the full picture and the whole thing is a waste because it benefits the Europeans more than America. He believed they should delay the attack, at the very least. (He apparently doesn't understand the concept of global supply chains, even after the pandemic.) Vance eventually agrees to be a team player, but it's clear that he doesn't see any value in using the military to protect shipping lanes for the direct benefit of anyone but the U.S. He's the MAGA America First isolationist purist.

Defense Secretary Hegseth, who sounds more like an eager beaver staffer (or the weekend Fox News host he was just a couple of months ago ) than the SecDef agrees that the Europeans are "PATHETIC" but explains that only the U.S. has the capability of securing its core national interest in "Freedom of Navigation." He's of the Trump 2.0 MAGA school that wants to show dominance, seize territory and take over the world.

Both of these concepts are true to their Dear Leader who has always held both those ideas in his head at the same time, but now that he's getting on in years, he is no longer able to finesse it in the same way. He's always wanted a war so he could demonstrate his manly power to the world as a military leader but he is also a coward who would rather buy his way out of any jam. Now he's so filled with resentment and bile about people seeing through his lies and attempting to hold him accountable that he's lost the thread. His people, loyal as they are, can't really tell what he wants anymore.

In this chat, it took the devil on Trump's shoulder to make sense of it for the group. Presidential adviser Stephen Miller, who everyone obviously assumed spoke for the president, stepped in for the first time and shut down the discussion with this comment:

As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn't remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.

In other words, the Trump foreign policy is to run the world as a protection racket. But with this crew at the top, it's even less professional and disciplined than "The Sopranos."

As for the president, his reaction has been one of befuddlement and confusion. When first confronted with the news when the story broke on Monday, he said he hadn't heard about it, which was odd. The story had been out for several hours at that point and Goldberg had earlier called the White House for comment. I believed him. You can tell when he's lying. And on Tuesday, when he talked about it he was clearly uncomfortable, trying to defend his people and downplaying the problem as usual. But his energy was off, he seemed almost feeble at times. I suspect it's because he didn't really understand what had happened or how it all worked. He seemed to think it was something like a conference call:

Trump: "What it was, we believe, is somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that worked with Mike Waltz at a lower level, had Goldberg's number or call through the app, and somehow this guy ended up on the call."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 25, 2025 at 9:08 PM

From what we could see on those text messages, his people don't know what he's talking about either, not even when he's ordering military strikes. The most chilling revelation to come out of all this may be that Stephen Miller is the person everyone turns to to explain what it is Trump really wants.