Pure, Expected Incompetence

Two months. That’s all it took for my prediction about Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, Stephen Miller and the second Trump administration to be proven right. Even in a quartet of fortnights best described as a hurricane of buffoonery and self-inflicted wounds, Monday 3/24/25 stands out. Signalgate is quite possibly the stupidest own-goal of the last four years, dethroning Lloyd Austin’s disappearance and even Hillary’s Emails, because this took active group incompetence to execute.

Let’s start from the beginning. Since the dawn of time, small working groups of leaders, primarily appointed political ones, have worked together to enact the agenda of the executive. Secretive, small, and less-than-wholly accountable for their actions in the court of public opinion; these councils/working groups/principles/whatever are the functional units that turn executive directives/orders/whims/whatnot into actionable policies. I’m not even knocking the necessity of these arrangements; I think they’re functionally vital to the function of any large organization that has to anticipate and plan for a multitude of factors without getting bogged down by them.

So, basically, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who is both a literal Special Forces veteran and a politician, sent an unexpected Signal messaging app invite to Jeffrey Goldberg, the longtime editor of The Atlantic magazine. It’s being called Signalgate. Literally a professional reporter. Goldberg, of course, accepted the invitation, because he is a professional reporter. It’s literally his livelihood, and the purpose of the press, to shed light on the workings of government. Presidency-defining moments like the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Whitewater, Sleepy Joe’s Gradual Dementia Decline and more have been the products of solid investigative journalism. For Goldberg, this invitation was an opportunity- one extended, I might add, by the Senate-confirmed, appointed National Security Advisor. Goldberg’s inadvertent addition to the group exposed the whole affair- thus, Signalgate.

This chat group involved 19 people; representing the White House (Susan Wiles and Stephen Miller), the CIA, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, Secretary of the Treasury (?), the Vice President and some other folks. Let me be clear- I am not (entirely) critical of the composition of this group. That is the prerogative of those appointed officials delegated to perform their tasks by the President. Maybe Scott Bessent has some need-to-know in how to perform military operations and anti-terror operations against Islamist rebels. I’m not even critical of the discussion within the group, with some exceptions (Pete Hegseth). What I am wholly critical of is the way this was carried out. Not a critique of Signal either, but of the administration.

Secrecy is a government necessity. The leadership teams of our government rely upon candid discussion to get things done, and in the moment, classification designations preserve secrecy while allowing for us to retain documentary evidence for future historical records…and as potential evidence for legislative or judicial oversight. Obviously, every administration has stretched these definitions and broken both the spirit and the letter of the laws governing federal records, but few have been stupid enough to get caught by adding a reporter to the group chat. Most of the time, it’s government officials in secret meetings, classified calls and emails, or simply shutting the fuck up unless there’s a need to know. But nope…Trump’s clown show lived up to the level of their ineptitude. You’d think that inadvertently adding a literal reporter (from a liberal-leaning legacy media outlet, nonetheless!) to the chat would be the worst of it. But then, the people in this thread decided to let their words flow without even verifying the identities of everyone in the chat. This is literally basic information security hygiene…you don’t talk about business unless you know who is listening, and even then, you don’t talk about business unless you know who isn’t listening.

So, anyways, these champions of discrete and effective leadership proceed to talk about what the administration is going to do to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. JD Vance expressed doubts that the strike was a good idea; John Ratcliffe quietly endorsed Vance’s doubts when he pointed out there was no time pressure and that they could use more time to refine the intelligence, Marco Rubio pointed out that the diplomatic situation was unlikely to change in any way. Pete Hegseth talked them into it by pointing out that the mission wasn’t so much about killing random Houthi fighters or even neutralizing an objective threat as it was about “restoring deterrence” and “reestablishing Freedom of Navigation” (is anyone else hearing Tonkin Gulf Incident noises here?), and this was enough to get JD and Co. on-side and supporting the strike. Once again, we know all of this, because it was literally being watched and screenshotted by a reporter. Yes, this is literally appointed and elected leadership of our country plotting acts of war against a foreign adversary (albeit a less-than-national one) in secret, outside of the record-keeping requirements of government, but that’s small potatoes, because it all falls back on President Trump’s authority anyway, so it’s not like we don’t know who is ultimately responsible. But it’s about to get way, way stupider.

Two hours before the strikes (ones ordered by President Trump, as communicated through DoD to the combatant commands ultimately responsible for carrying them out), SECDEF Pete Hegseth decided to start posting weirdly specific updates. Given what we know of the chat, it’s fair to say that little things like letting people know when strike fighters are launching to go after a known target, expected time-on-target, or the fact that there’s active real-time surveillance of said target would be remarkably relevant to defending forces and Houthi security forces. Granted, even a certified cynic like me is relatively sure that the Houthis aren’t reading every Signal chatroom (although I do think that one involving accounts linked to high-level US officials labeled ‘Houthi’ would be a strong candidate for something for them to pay attention to if they had a mind to do it), but even leaking this information at all betrays a fundamental ignorance of the fundamentals of operational security by the literal, combat-veteran Secretary of Defense. This time, it was dick-waving to other Trump appointees about airstrikes against a Third World target, and it was “only” revealing information that put a few dozen American airmen and unknown personnel on the ground at risk. What about next time? For that matter, what secrets has team “we are currently clean on OPSEC” divulged we don’t know about? And is anyone really confident that the Russians or Chinese or Iranians haven’t invested at least some effort into monitoring the personal communications of our most senior political leadership? If it hadn’t been for Goldberg’s disclosure, we may well have had a catastrophic failure and loss of life had this done something like alert enemy air defenses over Iran. We will probably never know if this tomfoolery has already cost lives- but given that the appointed political leadership of the CIA, DoD, the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Advisor were all involved, I wouldn’t rule it out. None of these people, many of whom are literally veteran officers of the armed forces, had the entry-level awareness of fundamental operational security to keep from leaking sensitive information to a group so semi-anonymous that they literally never thought to see who was in it. The mind boggles.

Of course, this isn’t just a critique of indiscretion. This betrays a fundamental truth of the Trump Administration- that he has chosen a leadership staff that is fundamentally inept. Why? Who knows? His first term’s first leadership cadre was outstanding, and should be credited with many of his successes. Trump-induced turnover happened, but he still managed to find qualified people who were able to run their departments well and avoid major scandal in most cases. This time around though, he has chosen Fox News hosts, loyalist politicians, and oligarchs he’s obligated to for his leadership team. These people are manifestly unprepared for the roles that they are attempting to fill and it shows- be it Pete Hegseth’s tortured protests that he didn’t actually share important, sensitive information, Tulsi Gabbard’s guarded testimony as she navigates a minefield partially of her own creation, or Mike Waltz’s mea culpa with a side of mudslinging because it’s apparently the reporter’s fault that Team Trump doesn’t know how to sort contacts or practice basic information security. We’re already seeing these consequences play out as high-reliability, high-import organizations like Social Security and USDA and DoD founder. And at the end of the day, these failures don’t belong to Pete Hegseth or Tulsi Gabbard or Mike Waltz or Leland Dudek or even Elon Musk. They belong to President Donald John Trump, the man who hired them despite ample evidence of their impairment. Maybe seeking DEI in terms of hiring incompetent people for critical positions wasn’t a great plan?

Post-script 1: And yes, this is jet fuel for Democrats. Aside from the easily-anticipated questions like “why are you sharing classified information in a probably-illegal non-governmental group chat on a private app?”, there’s also easy follow-on questions like “was the Secretary of Defense, who is a part of National Command Authority and is someone in the direct chain of command for nuclear weapon deployment, intoxicated by alcohol while discussing these issues?” Republican politicians and partisans dismayed by this should probably be asking why the political appointees they voted to confirm are validating so many of the criticisms levied against them. At some point, those same politicians need to be able to defend their choices, and having to defend the DUI hire and the guys scaring old people about their life-sustaining Social Security payments is a heavy lift when they’re also trying to cut healthcare.

Post-script 2: We’re also discussing this in isolation from the greater context, which is that the United States is launching attacks on rebel-controlled Yemen without a clear objective, without defined exit criteria, and for extremely vague reasons. Not to say that Houthi attacks on shipping aren’t a problem, but entering into yet another Middle Eastern war isn’t a particularly attractive option for Americans in general and the American government isn’t exactly trustworthy in its claims when it comes to “limited combat operations to restore freedom of navigation” or whatnot. Maybe, just maybe, the American people expect and deserve leadership that doesn’t have to use Signal or Snapchat or Truth Social to plot official acts.

Post-script 3: You know, for a dude who is like 200% against the establishment and the Deep State, it’s important that we consider exactly what is being done here. 19 senior political leaders, mostly appointees, are using a non-governmental private chat function to plot in secret in such a way that he has no idea what they are doing to enact their interpretation of his will. How is this much different than the Trump 1.0-era allegations of people deliberately slow-walking his directives? I mean, if I’m Orange Julius, I’d want to know precisely what my people are doing and what they’re telling one another, particularly as my political power wanes and my legacy gets closer to finishing. Hearing things like my VP Fellatiobeard questioning my judgement and being backed up by my CIA and SECSTATE would be troubling to me; particularly when they’re doing it in secret. Even Trump respects polite, respectful insight and pushback when it’s wrapped in praise; what Vance and company have done is a pretty cowardly betrayal. I mean, charitably, this could easily become fuel for the Sleepy Donald theory that he’s so insulated from the levers of power that his own department heads have resorted to secret chats far away from him. More ominously for Donald, these little secret groups could easily become Republican resistance from within, which can spike his agenda more effectively than even a Democratic win.

Post-script 4: It’s also really interesting watching the devolution of conservative media in how they are defending this. “It’s a small mistake”, challenging the motivations of “the libs”, etc. I think it’s safe to say there’s no credibility left in conservative media.