Summary
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied allegations that he texted classified war plans to a Signal group chat that mistakenly included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.
The National Security Council confirmed the chat’s authenticity but called the inclusion of Goldberg an inadvertent mistake.
Lawmakers from both parties demanded investigations, with former CIA Director Leon Panetta warning of potential espionage violations.
Hegseth dismissed Goldberg as a “deceitful” journalist. Trump denied knowledge of the incident.
Ah yes - the classic Trump approach… just yell Fake News as loud as possible.
I’m seriously hopeful that the people who have historically given into this lie are wising up.
Narrator: “They weren’t.”
My seed of hope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT-2EobJKzE
Nice!
In my circle they are, thankfully.
What do they think if this latest bit of bullshit?
Don’t hold your breath. The Repubs will just say they haven’t read the news.
While acknowledging that Trump voters are emotional and fear-prone, they’re not entirely stupid and generally not cultists, probably, maybe. Can we have some sliver of hope? The ones I know are certainly not stupid but are tragically misinformed and savants of confirmation bias. I’ve also noticed that they care a great deal. It seems more like a target misalignment problem than a broken turret.
The ones I know are certainly not stupid but are tragically misinformed and savants of confirmation bias
Can you please define “stupid”? Because this feels like a very apt definition of the word you’re trying to use
I think he means there are some otherwise intelligent people voting against their self interests because the echo chambers and media they are exposed to have convinced them to.
Smart people can be misinformed too. Finding a way for them to be informed could help those ones (I wish I knew some of them, because I think I could help, but the trumpets I know are the cultist ones with really screwed up morals).
A smart person is impossible to dupe twice. This is Trump second term, anyone voting for him a second time after the first one does not deserve to be called “intelligent”. They are as stupid as they come and they can only blame themselves for that, especially in an era where information are abundant and vary.
This is moronic, elitist, trash
The only characteristic of stupidity is being misinformed? Everyone is misinformed to some extent. There are myriad aspects to intelligence. We’re all imperfect monkeys.
Nobody is denying that we are all imperfect monkeys nor is stating that being misinformed is the only characteristic of being stupid. I’m simply sayig that making mistakes is human, perservering in being mistaken is diabolical, as we say here in Italy. They knew the man from the previous administration and they actively choose to support him still after they saw what he was able to do with January 6th, besides all other misdees he achieved between 2016 and 2020. They are either morons and idiots or bad people, no inbetween left imho. If you still believe they are capable of changing without receiving an heartfelt apology from them, buddy, I’ve got a coliseum to sell to you, contact me in private
I understand the rage completely. As an American, I have lost hair for it. The tiny optimist in me believes that these people have a limit. They will never apologize for anything, but we can hope that they’ll trend more toward sanity once they discover how fucked Trumpism is. Many of them are fucking idiots, but a lot of them aren’t.
They don’t care.
He’s hurting people they hate, that’s all they care about.
Also, start with talking bad of media that was involved (see Orange’s first comment).
He knows they have the screenshots and the NSC confirmed it, right?
https://x.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/1904221405618577650
NSC statement: “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.” - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes
The Trump administration does not deny this Signal group chat about the war planning for the Yemen strikes is real. Trump’s top national security advisers added reporter
@JeffreyGoldberg
@TheAtlantic
to the war planning text chain on non-government social media app, perhaps breaking secrecy laws. Read this shocking story below.
Pro tip: if you change the
x.comtoxcancel.comyou can make the link use a twitter mirror and not give Musk revenue if people click on the linkMore “sourcing the quote” than anything else, but thanks!
Sigh. Todays word of the day is kakistocracy.
The classified plans aren’t allowed out of the SCIF and the phone isn’t allowed in the SCIF. Anything you learn in the SCIF cannot be stored, shared, or spoken about outside of a SCIF especially on electronic media. If anyone in the military did this, like lets say Chelsea Manning, and shared it with a journalist, like say Julian Assange, they would end up in prison for a while.
Chelsea Manning*
All that is true. In addition, those communications are subject to records retention laws, so using signal and flagging them to be deleted is illegal in itself.
You dumb fuck, there are screenshots of all of it, plus your own people admitted it
These dipshits can’t get their thumbs out of each other’s butts long enough to get their story straight. I’d laugh if I thought there would be any real consequences for this nonsense.
Only 46 months to go…
pete hegseth was a DUI hire.
He’s in a really unique position in that he can claim to not remember doing something awful, and most likely be telling the truth.
At least Nixon recorded himself
Wow how did I never think of this.
Getting blackout drunk and sending texts isn’t uncommon for raging alcoholics. Source: I used to be an alcoholic (sober for 6 years)
To be clear, Hegseth (the guy with a history of getting blackout drunk) isn’t the same as Michael Waltz, the guy who invited Goldberg to the chat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Waltz
Waltz, unlike Hegseth, is not a random idiot, he definitely knows better.
“Waltz received four Bronze Stars while serving in the Special Forces during multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa. He served in the Bush administration as a defense policy director in the Pentagon and as counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney.”
As far as Hegseth (or any of the rest of them for that matter) was concerned, the list was all vetted and pre-approved people.
The fact that NONE of them actually vetted the list before saying anything speaks volumes.
They went down the line asking “Hey, who else in your department needs to be a contact on this?” and they all sounded off one by one, except Goldberg.
Nobody thought to ask “Hey, J.G., we haven’t heard from you yet. In fact, wait, who is J.G.?”
JFC we have better OPSEC in EvE Online!
Waltz, unlike Hegseth, is not a random idiot, he definitely knows better.
I’m pressing X to doubt so hard rn
You don’t get to work for Cheney if you’re an idiot.
Please, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Waltz as rebuking proof to your statement
That was ages ago. Each covid infection causes brain damage, each person has had covid 4 to 8 times by now, and older people are hurt the most by covid… So even if the guy was smart 30 years ago, we can’t assume he is smart today
Why do you think everyone has had covid a bunch of times? As far as I’m aware i’ve never had it and I’m sure there are billions more on the planet who haven’t.
I assume they meant in that group.
This makes me wonder if this was part of a ploy to let the public know how messed up things are in a “blink twice if you need help” kind of way. Or did Waltz feel these people are undeserving of their cabinet appointments and so managed to lift the veil so we can all see it? Is he mad that he wasn’t considered for the Secretary of Defense position? Is this his way of being Jim from The Office and looking into the camera?
6 years strong! Wooooo! Congrats!
6 years, wow. Nice one. Keep it up.
Gratulations! More years of soberness to come for you!
The fucking White House confirmed this shit.
Working the playbook. Step 1: Deny
Lmfao
The editor in chief of The Atlantic wrote an op-ed on the whole episode, and they have corroborated and confirmed from multiple sources that he was, indeed, inadvertently shown data that is considered SCI in a Signal group chat that was likely conducted through the personal devices of administration officials.
There is no debate here. That happened. This is like rear ending someone in your car and totaling both vehicles and just refusing to even acknowledge that you even felt anything.
It’s like the “We’re all trying to find the guy who did this” skit with the guy in the hotdog suit and the hotdog car.
I agree with your position, but think it’s even worse than the situation depicted in your analogy because of the security implications and the accountability implications. I don’t know how to represent those in your analogy, though. Lol
Even if everyone in the chat had a need-to-know, you do not use insecure 3rd-party software for classified communications. Secure networks already exist for this.
Not to mention why they are using it in the first place… so they can’t be FOIA’d
Doesn’t protect from FOIA, if you use your phone for official communication and it stores records, your phone can be FOIA’d.
Isn’t the issue that Signal messages aren’t stored on the phone and can be set to auto delete after some time? So there’s no tracking of official federal business? Or am I thinking about this the wrong way?
Signal messages ARE stored on the phone. They’re briefly stored on the signal servers with end to end encryption as well until they are transmitted to all the recipients, at which point signal deletes them from their server. And yes they can be auto-deleted.
Once they are on the phone though, all the encryption benefits are up to the user.
Did they password protect signal? Is their phone itself encrypted at rest? How long after the phone is unlocked and signal opened do the messages remain unencrypted where malware could then access them? How long does the phone remain unlocked once the password is entered but the screen is turned off? Are they even using secure passwords on phones or simple 4 digit pins?
I see - thank you. If they delete the messages from their phone there would be no tracking of official government business, right? Also, Gabbard wouldn’t disclose if she used a personal phone for this Signal chat or not which is troublesome.
Correct, there’s no tracking if deleted from the phones which would be a violation.
I don’t know, but I imagine the mere fact that it could be deleted with no trace would be a violation of itself.
No you’re absolutely right and the fact that this is apparently common practice in the admin is revelatory.
Legally yes. Practically, the people handling the FOIA request do not know about it and do not have access to it, so they will not look at it when responding to a FOIA request. Also practically, if you submit a FOIA request for operational details of military action, the response will be no, and every judge you stand before to challenge that no will side with the government.
According to the original article, the messages were set to auto delete after a max of 4 weeks :)
I think Signal is getting tarred unfairly here. The thing that made that channel insecure was their ineptitude, not verifying who was in the group.
They gave a journalist the encryption key to their secure channel.
There’s other, record keeping related, concerns with them using signal for communicating, but I don’t think the security of Signal is being called into question when used properly.
Correct. Signal is still an excellent app. The problem is that it can have a wide array of contacts that can be added by the slip of a thumb (aka User Error). I’d imagine that secure government software does not happen to have the editors in chief of major news publications saved on there. They probably also have a flag coded in there that alerts you if someone without proper security clearance is added by mistake.
Maybe he was drunk.
We are starting an office pool on how fast He goes into DT’s during Congressional questioning. It’s only fair that he sits in the chair at least as long as Hillary did.
It’s adorable you think “fair” matters at all to these people.
If anything, they’ll give him breaks to take emergency shots.
Sup Yemen bb. Houthi DTF 2nite? hmu
Read
Maybe?
These fucking guys only ever lie and deny.
Are we really too stupid and weak as a country to be able to do anything about this?
It would seem the case - the US is impotent while the sitting president twiddles his thumbs and denies knowing his upper eschelon staff are using unsecure comms. Makes me laugh about the tough-guy image they want versus the limp-dick energy the display.
Roy Cohn’s second rule: Deny everything, admit nothing.
May those who live like him die like him: painful, alone, and ironic
downs entire glass of whiskey “wasn’t me”
It was really the whiskey’s fault when you think about it.
Pretty sure thinking is gay.
Don’t forget Tuli was on the chat too, I sure do feel safe with our inept leaders.
Definitely showing her whole anti war schtick was always bullshit. JD Vance was the only one pushing back in that thread, and not for the right reasons.
Sooo Pete didn’t do it, but trump also says that Pete learned his lesson?
US is a joke. A very dangerous joke.
Admit it but say it isn’t a big deal, but also deny that it ever happened. Let your followers pick whichever version they prefer. Profit!
