In other words, Trump may have been elected president the first time because of putative questions about national security hygiene.
281 Signalgate: What’s Really Stunning About JD Vance’s Leaked Foreign Policy Texts
FN:
It should be self evident by now-it was self evident pretty early in Trump’s first term and should have been axiomatic after he swiped all those classified and sensitive documents as he went out the door in January 2021 that the alleged concern over a “very careless handling of classified information” was a canard. During Trump’s term he and his staff couldn’t have been more cavilar in the handling of classified and sensitive information. In Trump 2.0 he’s pretty much drawn a road map for Russia to further hack and infiltrate us-with their girlfriend Tulsi Gabbard running the DNI.
As Phillip Bump says this is the final nail in the “But Her Emails” coffin
He was elected president the second time despite having made clear how little he actually cared about those sorts of niceties. And, in a staggering report from the Atlantic on Monday, we learned just how indifferent his new national security team is to protecting classified information (including, it seems, his own secretary of state).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/24/trump-clinton-email-hypocrisy/
But this is next level stuff. What this underscores is even those of us most cynical about Trump those of us who have been the biggest Cassandras about him the last nine and a half years can never anticipate just how bad he will be.
There are a lot of thoughts and questions begged about what is probably the biggest national security scandal in our history.
UPDATE: john kiriakou argues persuasively this breach is two or three violations of the Espionage Act
End UPDATE
For those Democrats fretting that the base hates them-
“They hate us”: Congressional Democrats confront their own furious Tea Party
-why don’t they take this opportunity to come out with articles of impeachment-no other Administration could survive this.
Again Keith Olberman is right-they ought to release new articles of impeachment eveyr month-or preferrably every week.
Back to Phillip Bump:
Even in 2015 and 2016, it was obvious that Trump’s criticisms of Clinton were insincere. He repeatedly made false claims about what Clinton had done, even as he publicly asked Russia to try to access the server and its sacrosanct contents. (Russia tried.) When he took office in 2017, stories of his team’s use of external communications systems quickly emerged. His daughter Ivanka Trump reportedly used private email or private tools to conduct official business in her role as a presidential adviser. So did her husband, Jared Kushner. So did deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland and former adviser Stephen K. Bannon and adviser Stephen Miller and former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn.
Then Trump left office, bringing boxes of presidential records — many classified — with him to his Florida home. The government attempted to get the documents back, successfully cajoling him into sending about a dozen boxes back to the National Archives. But it took a federal subpoena and, later, an FBI search to obtain more than 100 documents, some of which were classified at the highest levels of security
Republicans never tried to reconcile Trump’s actions with his (and their) criticisms of Clinton. Ultimately, it didn’t matter: Trump parlayed the investigation into his narrative about being unfairly singled out for investigation, and voters mostly shrugged at the issue on Election Day last year.
That might to some extent have been because the damage seemed theoretical. Trump was out of office, and the risk wasn’t obviously immediate. There might have been worse effects, for example, when Trump shared a photo on social media revealing the capabilities of American spy satellites.”
Yep it’s “almost” like facts and the truth don’t matter.
The Atlantic’s new story is different. In short, the magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to a group chat on the messaging app Signal. That chat, set up by national security adviser Michael Waltz, first centered on identifying staffers who would act as point people on a national security issue. Messages that appeared to come from Vice President JD Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of State Marco Rubio identified people within their departments to fill that role. (Gabbard identified Joe Kent, who’s been acting as her chief of staff as he awaits Senate confirmation for a separate role.)
A few days later, the intent of the ad hoc Signal group became apparent, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared obviously secret plans for military strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. And in fact, the strikes began just when Hegseth’s plans suggested they would.”
That this was information offered on a nongovernmental platform to users wherever they happened to be — and whomever was around — was one staggering failure to ensure security for an operation that put American forces in harm’s way. The security was so lax, though, that the members of the group chat weren’t even verified sufficiently to exclude a journalist.”
Exactly. Trump would later whine that he doesn’t like Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic. He claimed to know nothing about it-which is telling in itself on a lot of levels-assuming it’s true and it may well be I can always believe Trump is negligent and uninterested in actual policy implementation.
“If the President is telling the truth and no one’s briefed him about this yet, that’s another story in itself. In any other administration, CoS would have been in the Oval within nanoseconds of learning about something like this, wrote The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols via social media, referring to the White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Nichols is a retired U.S. Naval War College professor who is an expert on national security, international affairs, Russia, and nuclear weapons.
‘Who exactly is running the government?’ Trump’s war plans leak denial backfires
Hegseth would try to divert reporters’ question by attempting to demonize Jeffrey Goldberg-as Daily Beast put it he threw a hissy fit.
Hegseth Throws a Hissy Fit While Denying Bombshell War Plan Leak
A diversionary hissy fit as it makes him look pretty terrible. It turns out having a bunch of inexperienced incompetents run top US agencies-Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr isn’t quite the evil genius plan Trump apologists very well like to pretend it is. Indeed we’ve seen many examples of the splendid incompetence of the Trump 2.0 Administration-like maybe firing all the air traffic controllers and getting rid of all the FAA safety protocols wasn’t so inspired either seeing as we’ve had close to 10 if not more plane crashes in the two months since Trump was sworn in
 Even Sean Duffy pushed back on Musk. Rubio mocked Musk for firing people like nuclear security staff and then desperately trying to rehire them
FN:
Musk Spars With Trump Cabinet Officials In Tense Meeting: Report
End FN
Back to Bump:
Thankfully for the administration and for U.S. forces, Waltz added Goldberg and not a more nefarious actor. But who’s to say what other actors might have been included in this or other groups? How do we know that no one has access to any of the included users’ Signal accounts or phones? There’s a reason that cellphones aren’t allowed in the White House Situation Room.”
Well we really don’t know who else was privy to this conversation do we? As no one noticed Goldberg-whose name was clearly visible in the chat My thought is if it was so easy for Jeffrey Goldberg to come across this conversatoin-note he didn’t seek it out it just showed up on his phone how hard would it be for the Russians especially seein as Trump has basically taken away all guardrails against Russian infiltration? He’s literally stopped all offensive intelligence operations against Russia.
Jeffrey Goldberg:
It was actually chilling: 11:44 a.m., Saturday the 15th, eastern time, in my car in a parking lot, just checking my phone, and I see a text from Pete Hegseth, or somebody who’s hoaxing me as Pete Hegseth. It provides information about upcoming military operations with timings attached: This is going to happen. Then this happens, then this happens, and this happens. I’m sitting there in my car and thinking I’m about to find out if this was an elaborate scam or not. So I thought to myself, I’m sitting here for the next two hours with my hands around my phone. I check on X around 1:55, and yes, Sanaa is being bombed, so then I have the realization that this is almost certainly a real channel and not just an elaborate fakery of some sort. And that’s when I began to realize that I had to write about this massive security breach.”
A Conversation With Jeffrey Goldberg About His Extraordinary Scoop
To be clear Goldberg in no way sought this information it literally came into his lap. I do think his attitude here on the possibility of reprisals by Trump is the right attitude-though he did nothing wrong and it’s totally on Trump’s national security team they have tried to demonize him and attack the messenger as we saw above.
David:Â Are you concerned about retaliation from the Trump administration because of this story?
Jeffrey: It’s not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today—we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries—there’s too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs.
And I would say this is the right attitude not just for reporters-that too few take-but all of us. It’s not our role to be worrying about possible threats or retaliation our job is to stand up for our rights, our principles, our beliefs
Regarding the substance and content of these texts there are many striking things but the top questions raised for me all revolve around one man: JD Vance. First of all this seems to once again put the lie to an early Trump 2.0 narrative that Vance was sidelined-the Zelensky ambush exploded that myth. This further belies it. Indeed while Trump is a pathological liar who lies about 73% of the time as I suggested above this might be among the 27% of the time he speaks the truth-I can certainly believe that he knew nothing about it-he’s a Luddie who doesn’t do texting so far as I know-even with the tweeting he doesn’t write them himself-instead he would dictate them and edit them on paper-making him a veritable flat earther.
FN: Per an aide from Trump 1.0:
Donald Trump dictated his tweets and demanded capitals and exclamation marks, a former aide told his trial.
Madeleine Westerhout said Mr Trump preferred her to take notes rather than write himself. He would then edit them on paper and send.
“There are certain words he liked to capitalize… like ‘country’,” she said. “He liked exclamation points.”
Trump’s former aide tells how he dictated tweets
So I believe he knew nothing about this-how would he as he wasn’t on the text chain-couldn’t spell text chain? But this in itself is pretty damning. As Tom Nichols says the fact that Trump wasn’t briefed by the COS by this within minutes is a story in itself.
What these texts underscore is that Trump is out of the loop in terms of any implementation while Vance is very much read in. It’s striking how in the loop Vance is-this has historically hardly been the rule for Vice Presidents-it makes Vance seem more like Dick Cheney, ie a VP with his own agenda who is more read in than the President-although let’s be clear W was much more read in on foreign policy implementation than Trump evidently is.
Indeed, I’ve been wondering if Bob Woodward will get his normal scoops with this Administration as he’s now clearly personal non grata with Trump-though that didn’t stop Michael Wolff from another tell all book. But Woodward’s books always show a very engaged Commander in Chief in the nation’s foreign policy. So all my biggest questions regarding this simply appalling scandal that absolutely should result in articles of impeachment-no the GOP will never support them but again PACE Keith Olbermann Dems should do them anyway and PROMOTE THEM. They should do a Sunday morning presser at 8 AM and promote them to set the morning’s narrative. The Dems always seem to be allergic to making news. They should go on Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Medias Touch and Brian Tyler Cowen and promote them. They won’t but they should and if they did they wouldn’t have to fret that their voters hate them-they should also do some town halls and rallies like Bernie and AOC. As Keith Olbermann says the first thing these textx confirm is Trump is not running the US government
All my biggest questions center around: JD Vance. Indeed when I first read his texts in the leak I was kind of upside down-like I couldn’t quite make sense of what he said. It WAS notable that he was advising AGAINST bombing the Houthis. This led the#GenocideJoe folks to swoon-JD was standing up for the Palestinians!
But that’s not it if you read his actual words Vance doesn’t give a shit about the Palestinians-did he complain when Trump gave Bibi the greenlight to kill 500 Palestinian in one day recently?
What’s really shocking is not that Vance broke on the Houthi strikes but why: because he worries it would benefit the Europeans too much. He seriously hates Europe-which now that this has leaked they now get more evidence how much he does.
I don’t think he was bullied by a French guy he’s just in the tank to Vladimir Putin-hard not to notice that Vance’s Europe Derangement Syndrome is very convenient for Russia.
JD’s complaint wasn’t that this would kill hundreds of innocent people in Yemen though it would much less the Left wing premise that the Houthis are in some sense heroic for standing up for the Palestinians but he hates that going after the Houthis benefits the Europeans. Hegseth responded that he shares his hatred of helping the Europeans but that they should do it anyway:
It marks the first reported incident since Trump took office that Vance has butted heads with the president and other top officials in his hard-line isolationist stance against Europe.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/24/vance-broke-with-trump-over-houthi-airstrikes-group-chat-report-says-00245996
Well sure but it wasn’t supposed to be reported it wasn’t supposed to ever be public so it’s doubtful it’s the first time-this goes to my question as to how much influence Vance really has-my hypothesis that he has a lot more than is commonly believed.
“I think we are making a mistake,” Vance said to the group chat, which included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, national security adviser Mike Waltz and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, according to the report. It doesn’t appear that the president was included in the group chat.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance added. “There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”
When I had first read this I had noticed that he was arguing against Trump’s directive to bomb the Houthis but was sort of off balance about the idea that Trump isn’t aware how inconsistent his message on Europe was. I mean Trump by definition is always inconsistent intellectually and morally but it wasn’t clear what the inconsistency in bombing Yemen was here regarding Europe-I didn’t follow Vance until I saw the other text quoted above that the Houthis damage the Europeans far more than the US.
This once again raises the questions about JD I have had for some time.
1. First of all who really chose him to be Trump’s VP? The conventional view is that his sons pushed him into it. That might be nominally true but I’m certain there was much more to it. My assumption is that Peter Thiel had an outsized role-after all JD Vance was one of his protegees.
What We Know About J.D. Vance’s Relationship With Billionaire GOP Donor Peter Thiel
2. How did Vance come to be in Oval Office with Trump and Zelensky in that press conference? The premise that some had at the time that Trump “sincerely” wanted the mineral deal-which in itself was a very bad deal for Ukraine in any case-was belied by Vance’s very presence in light of his self evident hostility and contempt for Zelensky and Ukraine. As we saw in Chapter Charles Johnson Vance had snarkily in his text chain with Johnson-notice a pattern? Vance always seems to get caught in text chains-dismissed Ukraine declaring he never takes calls he gets in the Senate from Ukranian officials.
FN: We looked at Charles Johnson’s history with Vance in more detail in Chapter Charles Johnson but here are the links to some of his most interesting posts about Vance. While it’s clear Johnson is an often very unreliable narrator-whose narratives often get diverted into his obsessive biases against Jews and Mormons, et al-the stuff on Vance as well as Thiel is very interesting. As is his history with Jonathan Buma which he wrote about again very recently.
“Clear and Present Danger” to American Interests: Why I Leaked J.D. Vance’s Text Messages
Again if nothing else his
Whoever had decided that Vance would be in that room in that presser clearly didn’t want a good faith meeting-they wanted what they got. So who was it? How did Vance come to occupy it?
It’s hard not to ask about Russian’s influence in getting Vance in as Trump’s VP as Vance has been so convenient for Russian interests. As is clear in this book my position on coincidences is that certainly they happen but you need to be pretty skeptical of any this convenient and a lot of very convenient things have happened for Putin in American politics that last 10 years. As for those who STILL NOW agree with Trump that “this story about Trump and Russia is a made up story” let’s face it these folks are batting 1000-they”ve been wrong every step of the way.
CF: Chapter Make Russia Great Again
While ihave subsequently had to admit that Johnson is at best hit and miss as any type of a reliable narrator-his theories are wrong if not absurd at least as often as they are worth thinking about-he does have a lot of very iteresting posts on Vance-as well as Peter Theile as we discussed in that chapter.
End CF
Again Vance’s Europe Derangement Syndrome is once again very convenient for Putin-Trump himself has been falsely saying that the EU was created to hurt the US-opposite of reality but that’s never stopped Trump until now. This brings us to a third question:
3. What is Vance’s agenda? Clearly Russia First. Vance himself has framed his agenda as the “de Baathification of America.”
This idea has obsessed Vance.
DOGE2025 Is Getting the Catastrophic De-Ba’athification They Demanded – emptywheel
In this post Marcy Wheeler focuses on the illegal destruction of USAID. Of course destroying USAID is also very convenient to Russia and the de Baathification of America and much of the world we had previously been helping.
All Vance’s expressed views and positions are terrible. During the election his opposition to abortion in all cases and opposition to no fault divorce were discussed. We’ve discussed his Russophilia. While the Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq was morally and intellectually wrong what made it truly disastrous was Rumsfeld’s abrupt chaotic destruction of the Baath party. You have to give it to JD-it’s impressive to have literally the worst position on every issue but he seems to do it. Even when he’s right-like against bombing Yemen-his reasoning is terrible.
It would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that he’s next in line for the Presidency, Trump is old and incompetent, and who knows maybe his handlers in Silicon Valley or Russia want Vance to replace Trump sooner than 2028-or maybe Trump doesn’t make it to 2028.
So kind of funny but even more terrifying for the world. As Masha Gessen said recently Russian dissidents came to America to escape Putin but with the Trump-Putin pact there may be nowhere on this planet to escape.
Call it the debaathification of the world-aka JD Vance’s world. Like Stuart Stevens-or Tim Miller?-put it a month ago many are not going to like the post US hegemony world.
UPDATE: Marcy Wheeler has a new piece on this latest fiasco.
Seven Reasons Trump’s Entire National Security Team Should Resign in Disgrace – emptywheel
The latest is an attempt to make Mike Martz the fall guy-protecting the rest of the Trump natoinal security team who should also resign in disagrace
UPDATE 2.0:
Wired also has some original reporting
UPDATE 3.0:
UPDATE 4.0
UPDATE 5.0:
UPDATE 6.0
Good point by Marcy Wheeler that technically Stephen Miller shouldn’t even have been in this conversation in this text chain-he’s certainly not on the foreign policy team-but he comes across as the “Decider” the debate that JD foments based on his Europe Derangement Syndrome is stopped by Miiller’s ad Homin men assertion that Trump said to bomb the Houthis
Again these messages made clear Trump is hardly driving this train much less running his foreign policy and I argued above that they do suggest an outsize role for Vance-they also show a very influential role by Stephen Miller-his words here were the “conseration stopper” to use Richard Rorty’s phrase.
UPDATE 7.0:
UPDATE 8.0:
UPDATE 9:0 Another tough Republican townhall-crowd hated GOPer Victoria Spartz’s refusal to ask for Pete Hegseth’s resignation
UPDATE 10:
Belongs in Make Russia Great Again Chapter?
Trump’s New Ukraine Proposal Looks Like an Offer It Must Refuse
UPDATE 10
Signal War Plans Chat: Read Leaked Texts in Full – Newsweek
UPDATE 11: Place above under Vance commentary?
UPDATE 12:
There are so many raised questions on the Signalgate Houthi chat texts-here’s another one: why is Joe Kent who Trump nominated but has not yet been confirmed for counterterrorism in the chat? Yet another illegality
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/former-wa-candidate-joe-kent-involved-in-signal-chat-scandal/
UPDATE 13:
FN:
JD Vance’s role in Signal chat angers senior Republican lawmakers
UPDATE 14: Once again: But Her Emails
UPDATE 15:
The latest
Here’s What Happened to Those SignalGate Messages
A lawsuit over the Trump administration’s infamous Houthi Signal group chat has revealed what steps departments took to preserve the messages—and how little they actually saved.
Here’s What Happened to Those SignalGate Messages | WIRED
I’d be pretty skeptical of what steps they actually took.