Lessons From the Signal Chat on the Houthis
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Democrats had fun pounding away at the Trump Administration Tuesday over a security leak to a journalist on the Signal messaging app, and we trust the White House has learned a lesson. It’s amusing to hear journalists who dine out on leaks deplore this leak. But the lasting import won’t be the security breach as much as what Trump officials really think about our European allies.
The White House is insisting that no classified information appeared on the now infamous group chat about the Houthis, and Mr. Trump’s chief spooks Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe said as much at a Capitol Hill hearing on Tuesday. It was nonetheless notable to watch Ms. Gabbard, the supposed enemy of the intelligence deep state before she became director of national intelligence, obfuscate about the thread’s contents. What you admit apparently depends on where you sit.
President Trump reacted to the blunder better than anyone. He defended as “a good man” his national security adviser Mike Waltz, who may have been the one to add the Atlantic editor to the group chat. Democrats want heads to roll. Mr. Waltz appears to have been defending the President’s decision to protect freedom of navigation from the Houthis, and telling his colleagues they could find classified information on the usual secure channels.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s behavior looks less defensible a day later, as he may have been cavalier about the details of incoming military strikes. He also tried to shift the blame for the fiasco on the journalist who was put on the chat, which is silly given that the Atlantic editor did nothing but listen and says he declined to publish information he said might jeopardize U.S. troops.
A real security scandal is that the Signal chat apparently included Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s envoy to wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. Press reports say Mr. Witkoff was receiving these messages on the commercial app while in Moscow. This is security malpractice. Russian intelligence services must be listening to Mr. Witkoff’s every eyebrow flutter. This adds to the building perception that Mr. Witkoff, the President’s friend from New York, is out of his depth in dealing with world crises.
That was a good decision by the Commander in Chief. The Houthis are terrorizing global shipping and taking shots at U.S. military ships and planes, which nobody should be allowed to do without paying a price. Mr. Trump understands that element of deterrence.
Yet Vice President JD Vance second-guessed the President’s strikes on the chat because he said only “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez” canal, while “40 percent of European trade does.” That understates the U.S. interest in freedom of navigation. Mr. Vance even suggested his boss didn’t understand that striking the Houthis was at odds with Mr. Trump’s “message on Europe right now.” He added that “I just hate bailing Europe out again.” So the Vice President is willing to let the Houthis shut down shipping to spite the Europeans?
The lesson Europeans—and many friends elsewhere—will take from this episode is that officials at the top of the Trump Administration think the U.S. relationship isn’t based on common interests or values. It’s closer to a protection racket ( see nearby ). It’s another reason many of America’s allies may conclude they can no longer trust the U.S. in a crisis.
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For those unaware, the WSJ hired Molly Ball and instantly and irrevocably morphed into whatever ism the right does not like.
What? Reporting the facts?
Ms Ball also worked for, shudder, The Atlantic.
Burn the Witch!
putting country over party? perish the thought ...
Only in a crisis? I wouldn't trust the present American government now in ANY circumstance, and if any nation did they would be entering a ''Fools' Paradise''.
"Pete Hegseth’s behavior looks less defensible a day later, as he may have been cavalier about the details of incoming military strikes. He also tried to shift the blame for the fiasco on the journalist who was put on the chat,"
And as we can tell on this site, he succeeded!
"That was a good decision by the Commander in Chief. The Houthis are terrorizing global shipping and taking shots at U.S. military ships and planes, which nobody should be allowed to do without paying a price. Mr. Trump understands that element of deterrence."
That's a lot more than his dimwit predecessor did.
Perhaps, but this is today with its very own slew of dimwits to point fingers at.
I'm starting to get the feeling Waltz is going to be thrown under the bus instead of Hegseth, or both. Hegseth is way too "bro" for Trump to dump him.
The fall guy never gets rewarded with anything other than shit and flies.
"Bro"? That man doesn't have a cool bone in his body. He got lucky to be married twice otherwise he would be an incel
Who said the current "bros" are cool ?
The very uncool kids right here at NT
Based on what was released, there was to target identified, no dates for when this would all would occur, no time for all this to go occur. The only unsecure issue was including Goldberg in the group and Goldberg releasing the texts.
But lets ignore all those facts, set our hair on fire and make up scenarios.
Oh I know, the WSJ editorial board is chockfull of drooling Pravdavians who just are too dumb to see your scenario.
Well, let's be real. This really should not have happened. IMO the chat was general enough that it didn't give away enough to zero in on targets but with the timestamping that was included, any enemy could have taken the time to have air defenses on high alert if they felt they might be the target. So it was not as bad as it could have been. I dare say had the reporter not been included in the chat then this would never have made the news. I hope the principals involved do learn from this and work harder to insure secure communications in the future. It makes me wonder just how often this type of talk occurs in administrations. We know that no matter how high up in Washington one gets, they still get either lazy or complacent around security and don't exercise the type of care that lower ranked people would.
The highly partisan nature of this discussion group guarantees that some of the responses will be hair-on-fire and some will be no-big-deal. Kind of like back in the evacuation from Afghanistan where some were very vocal about the screwup and others were rather low-key on what happened.
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