There's No Way Out of the Signalgate Fiasco for the Trump Administration

Every road leads to another humiliating cul-de-sac of crisis

Behold, our defense officials

Last week, there was a revelation that many of our top government officials, mostly in defense and intelligence departments, were caught red-handed texting each other over the consumer messaging app Signal. Like, literally, their hands were red from all the finger typing.

But they weren’t just discussing evening plans, like, “Hey, guys, let’s go out for pizza and beers. Except you, Hegseth. You promised not to drink anymore, so you’re designated driver.”

They were discussing attack plans in the middle east. In real time. Just before the attack happened.

Not only that, but they also inadvertently let a high-profile journalist, Atlantic chief editor Jeffrey Goldberg, in on the discussion without anyone noticing. This is how the story broke. A journalist was included in this discussion and then wrote about it.

This is bad. Really, really bad.

There’s no way around it. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. It’s just a horribly embarrassing, damaging, shocking development perpetrated by our government leaders who are tasked with keeping the people of this nation safe.

I would think this regardless of who was in power. This sort of thing just cannot happen. Period. By Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, Anarchists. By anybody.

And surely—unlike Trump’s first administration’s behavior, his disastrous Covid response, Jan. 6, criminal attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and criminal spiriting away and loose storage habits of highly classified government documents—this could be the thing that unites the country and turns Republicans against him, right?

I’ve been used to just dismissing this possibility. I’ve generally given up hope that there would be a unifying cause that would make the Trump fever break, even just a little bit. Just enough to wake a small segment of his followers up.

But I’m holding out hope on this one. The reason that this issue is still lingering in the ether with the potential to create true bipartisan backlash is that there is no excuse that is not an immense scandal in and of itself. And it all goes to the core of the basic existence of this country and each individual in it.

No matter how one spins, slices, juliennes, or splatters against the wall this story, there’s nothing good that comes out of giving away a military operation to our enemies.

To illustrate my point, below I’ll examine some of the more prominent attempts at MAGA spin, and describe where each one leads. (Hint: they don’t lead somewhere even remotely good).

It wasn’t classified

Okay, but then one would wonder: “Why the fuck wouldn’t this be classified?”

This is one of the dumbest lines of defense. And amusingly, it is the most popular one. Tulsi Gabbard stated this several times in her Congressional testimony soon after this was uncovered.

First, the information in these texts was most definitely classified information. I don’t even have to know classification laws and rules to understand this; no American does.

Putting this information out there through wireless communication on consumer-level personal phones is akin to Eisenhower sending a standard wireless transmission to England in WWII giving times and methods of an upcoming bombing of Nazi-held Europe.

If this wasn’t important enough to be classified, then nothing is important enough to be classified. What else could possibly be more important than keeping secret our immediate military operations?

So even if Gabbard and other surrogates making this claim are somehow correct that there’s some gigantic loophole in our current classification policies that the people in this chat group took strategic advantage of, and therefore felt comfortable freely discussing this information, then that loophole needed to have been closed and not utilized under any circumstances.

For an administration that hates bureaucracy as much as this one claims it does, this is just about the most bureaucratic excuse one could make. They should keep the “deep state” bureaucracy around, if for no other reason than to blame them for anything that goes wrong. But the problem is that since they vilify it and have promised to root it out, using it as an excuse simply exposes them as failures in this regard.

This excuse is therefore a no-win situation. On the one hand, anyone with a sense of self-preservation knows that this should be classified information. On the other, the culprits are using byzantine rules of government to squirm their way out of this crisis, which is highly hypocritical and damning.

There were no specific names, locations, sources or methods

This is one of those arguments where something is technically true, but that doesn’t really matter. And it just highlights the stupidity of the players involved.

First, it’s notable there were times that were mentioned specifically. And they were mentioned before the attacks took place. That information alone is highly valuable to the people being attacked.

Second, even just some vague idea of what’s about to occur can be enough to cause an actionable defense response. Just knowing that bombs are going to drop versus soldiers attacking on the ground with guns is a useful distinction for the target.

Consider this thought experiment. You are sitting comfortably in your house one day. Your phone rings. You answer. There is no response, but you can hear a signal; there’s voices on the other line that your phone is somehow picking up. You hear voices talking about breaking into your home. There’s no specific information about how, but it sounds very much like someone out there is literally about to try and break into your home.

Do you shrug and say “Oh well, since I didn’t hear exactly how they are going to break in, there’s nothing I can do!” and then slink back into your couch? Probably not. You’d lock all the doors, windows, etc. You’d grab a weapon or two. Your mind would be racing to consider all potential responses. You’d be at the ready.

Just knowing that something dangerous was imminent would have been enough for the targets to be ready to some degree to defend and fight back. This would have created a situation that not only puts the mission in jeopardy and makes it less successful than it could have been, but it also puts the men and women conducting the mission in danger. It makes them more likely to get shot down than it would have been had there been no warning that an attack was imminent.

So, this excuse relies on people believing that there’s no difference between a target being completely ignorant of an imminent attack versus being aware of an imminent attack without exact specifics. There’s a fucking difference, and every sentient person that has any sense of self-preservation knows this.

It was a successful mission, so there’s nothing to complain about

But nothing bad came out of this, right? The mission was executed to perfection. The target was not made privy to this text discussion and no damage done. Why aren’t you focusing on that, instead of the texts? Are you not a patriot? This was a bona fide successful military operation by us mighty Americans. USA! USA! USA!

There’s three main problems with this excuse, and, again, neither one leads to a good place.

First, we don’t really know if this operation was truly successful. Or, even if it was, exactly how successful it was. Did it take out it’s intended target? Was there collateral damage? If so, how much? Did innocent people die? Children? Did it anger and mobilize the local population into joining the ranks of the target and making them stronger…the ones we are supposedly defending against?

Or were there aspects of this mission that did not go as planned that can be traced right back to the information in this text discussion? Was a target tipped off? Did they evade the bombing? Did they make sure innocent people were nearby to increase the collateral damage to make us look bad?

We don’t really know any of these things. And in a normal military operation like this, most American civilians wouldn’t care much, or ask any of these questions. But now, this otherwise routine attack is going to get the most intense scrutiny imaginable. Every aspect of it will be analyzed and cross-referenced with the Signal text discussion that took place right before it.

It would not be surprising if 3-6 months from now, there was a leak or a whistleblower report that a cover up occurred to make this mission look much more successful than it was. Or that the leadership in this Signal text group caused it to fail or be ineffective.

So the narrative that this mission was an absolute success will be scrutinized and potentially challenged. And it may be proven not to be true at all

The second main problem with this excuse is that even if the mission was 100% successful, we may have given away valuable information to our targets that they can now use to mitigate our future success.

We used intelligence on the ground to dictate this attack. There was presumably a “target” with a “known location” (quoted from the texts directly). We presumably targeted that location with missiles.

Now, maybe just the fact that we attacked the location that we did is enough for our adversaries to infer that we knew something we shouldn’t have. I don’t know, I’m not an expert. But the fact that it’s now obvious from the signal texts messages that we did have a “known location” and bombed it surely creates more than an “inference”. We have effectively advertised that we somehow knew exactly where this target would be and exactly when they would be there. So our adversaries are probably figuring out how we got this knowledge and who amongst them could have given us this information.

In short, we are indirectly giving up our sources on the ground through this behavior. We are blatantly putting our intelligence operatives at risk. And this particular event is the only one that’s been publicized. If this is how we communicated about this military operation, surely it was deemed acceptable by these same people to have a group text on Signal about other operations as well.

Who knows how many operations have been put at risk or will be put at risk by this careless method of communication by our leaders?

The third main problem is our allies now know for sure they can’t trust us with sensitive information. Even if they were already wary due to Trump’s strange new policies but begrudgingly still offering intelligence assistance to us, they now know that we can’t be trusted simply with protecting the information itself, regardless of what our policies might be.

Why would they ever give us sensitive information again, if we're going to transmit it through the airwaves for any adversary to pick up? Even if this were the Biden administration and it wasn’t a question that we were all on the same side, this would be a highly damaging situation that would fray our relationships with our allies.

In a normal administration anything short of mass resignations and firings would probably not be enough to allay our allies’ fears. The personnel would be the biggest factor as you could just bring in more competent people to do the jobs.

In the case of this administration, however, that is probably not even enough. The personnel are not nearly as important if you know the policies are not friendly to you and are likely not going to change. Right now, our allies are questioning whether or not America is actually their ally. So there’s little that can happen to recover from this monumental blunder. In their eyes, our allegiance is questionable and we’re incompetent. Not a very redeemable position for us to be in.

It wasn’t “war plans”

This semantic game is not a good road to go down, because all it does is allow us to parse out exactly what was made public. Okay, maybe it wasn’t “war plans”. But it was some kind of plans that involved our military bombing a target. So no matter what kind of plans you call it—”war”, “attack”, “military”, etc—they were still plans that we wouldn’t want the target to know.

In fact, when you really think about it, it was even worse than “war plans”, because “war plans” are presumably hypothetical scenarios that are concocted so that we can be prepared for many possible crises or conflicts that will likely never happen. We are not currently at “war”, so “war plans” are generally inactive right now. And if this info did get leaked out to our enemies, while they could take some action against them, the conflict likely wouldn’t come to fruition; or the plans could change over time as new information is known, resulting in amended war plans being in effect by the time the war actually kicks in.

But what these people were discussing were basically “imminent attack plans”, which is by far more actionable on the part of the targets in question. The actions they could take would be highly effective and much more likely to do imminent damage to the mission and to the soldiers carrying it out.

The essence of the “not war plans” excuse is that leaking war plans against, say, Bolivia—which I assume probably exist somewhere in a filing cabinet in the Pentagon—is the same as what was leaked on these Signal texts: details of an imminent attack on the Houthis in Yemen.

It wasn’t some dormant sketch of theoretical plans that might have occurred in another alternate timeline of reality that was leaked. It was actual intentions by us in our current immediate reality.

The real question is how a journalist got included in the chat

This excuse is just pure distraction. But it does pinpoint another major problem with this incident.

While feigning puzzlement about the fact that a prominent journalist was inadvertently added to this group text, they are highlighting the outright incompetence of the members of the group.

Sure, when most people are on a group text, they don’t necessarily check to see who is included. But then again, most people aren’t literally knowingly texting about our national defense and military operations.

Just having this discussion over Signal messaging is unforgivable enough and potentially exposes sensitive information to our enemies. But then inadvertently offering this information to a member of the general public is just unconscionably stupid and damaging.

What if, instead of Jeffrey Goldberg, it had been someone less scrupulous? Maybe someone in deep debt, desperate for relief? There are many people out there who would find this information highly valuable, perhaps even life-altering.

This lackadaisical treatment of highly sensitive actionable information is the kind of thing that can alter history or the balance of world power. And I’m not hyperbolically referring to just this incident. We have to assume at this point that Signal group texting is the preferred method of communication for not only these officials, but many other sets of officials in this administration. And it would be safe to assume that in these other settings, another inadvertently added contact was included.

We can’t know how many sensitive secrets are out there in the wrong hands, or the level of sensitivity. But the cavalier attitude and excuse-making exhibited by these individuals suggest we should not rest easy that this was just a one-off mistake.

A corollary to this distraction is that there was perhaps some technical glitch with Signal that caused Goldberg to accidentally be brought into the conversation. This just puts the spotlight further on the fact that Signal is not the appropriate medium through which to have these conversations.

And then, in the same way that one might continuously punch themselves in the face, they are bringing in Elon Musk to help troubleshoot what happened. Which turns the spotlight even hotter, since he is one of the most divisive figures in American politics and is feared to be already getting his hands too dirty with our government’s most sensitive information. If you want a story to go away, this definitely is not the way to do it.

One mistake shouldn’t nullify the great things Trump has done so far

This isn’t really an excuse but largely another distraction. It is best exemplified by Jesse Watters in his recent statements (roughly 3:30 into the video) about how Trump “throws 20 touchdowns in a row, but then he finally throws a pick-six, and that’s what everybody wants to talk about. The only way to get people to stop talking about it is you throw another touchdown.”

For those not football-literate, a “pick-six” is really bad. It’s when the other team intercepts a quarterback’s pass and runs it in for a touchdown. But then the game goes on, and when it’s over the players and fans go back to their lives, and it’s safe to assume that no one was in danger during or after the game.

In this case, the mistake is a life-or-death blunder that could have ramifications for the future security of our country (see above RE distrust of allies, adversaries’ gaining knowledge, etc.).

This angle generally admits that a mistake was made, but it was just a temporary mistake, not a huge deal, and can be rectified by another “win” of some kind. It’s a bit scary to think about what it might be that’s a big enough “win” to distract the country from their leaders’ carelessly giving an advantage to our enemies.

But this mistake is the epitome of why we don’t want our government officials communicating this way. And every single person, regardless of party or political leaning can understand this because it goes to their self-preservation.

I’ve often wondered whether or not we’d even come together in unity if aliens came down from outer space and invaded us. I still don’t have the highest hopes in that case. But if whoever was in charge at the time inadvertently gave the aliens help with their attack, I do think we could all agree that they should be removed from power.

No one here is in on the side of the Houthis or their Iranian government sponsors. We might be picking sides with the degree of idiocy of our government or the amount of trust we should place with them. But we can all see that we wouldn’t have wanted the Houthi targets to know about our attack right before it happened. Any white person without a college degree would see that roughly the same way as a highly educated black person. The diversity, equity, and inclusion in the pool of people that can understand this would be through the roof.

So it doesn’t matter how many gulfs Trump renames or allies he puffs his chest towards. This is basic security of every individual in the country, no matter their background or socioeconomic level. This hits home to everyone.

The old standby

Trump had an interview with NBC this weekend where he just did the only thing he knows how to do when something bad happens and there’s no excuse: he called it a “witch hunt” and “fake news”. These lines have worked wonders for him in the past, and may end up quashing this story out of the national consciousness this time as well.

But I have to wonder….since the ramifications of this effect everyone’s security, the instinct of self-preservation might kick in in ways it hasn’t before.

Even MAGA can understand the problems with this one.