Embarrassing Lapse Leads to Calls for Resignation of Trump’s Intel Leadership
Should Trump’s top officials responsible for national security step down after their irresponsible handling of sensitive information on live chat? This is a story that has rapidly flared up into a national scandal. This question rides atop the fierce criticism from the left, with some conservatives also choosing not to defend Trump’s national security leadership against the outrage.
It started with a shocking article on Monday (March 24) by Jeffrey Goldberg of the leftist news platform The Atlantic. Goldberg wrote that Trump’s intel/defense team texted him the administration’s war plans for Yemen shortly before those plans were put into action. His article said:
U.S. national security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
Goldberg specifically named Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the person who texted him the attack plan two hours before it was executed in Yemen on March 15. The texts came to him on the instant messaging app Signal over which a group of 18 Trump admin officials was holding a live chat. Among them, they included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Goldberg’s article sent shockwaves through the country, raising serious concerns about the competence and sense of responsibility of these officials. How was a journalist added to such an online meeting where an actual military action plan against a foreign adversary was being discussed in live time? Is it not an act of national security breach? These are only a few of the many questions haunting the nation in the wake of the Signal leak. An urgent hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee was held on Tuesday (March 25), where Democrat senators grilled a few of the top officials involved in the Signal group chat.
The officials appeared shaken and struggled to answer the critical questions regarding the sensitivity of the information accidentally shared with the newsman and their respective roles in ensuring confidentiality for national security. The Republican senators on the committee asked the officials to focus on external threats and intelligence sharing while avoiding the Signal chat leak issue, thus giving the officials intervals of relief.
Many in conservative media, however, did not spare the trump administration officials involved in the Signal group chat. Mark Antonio Wright of National Review opined that President Trump should Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth because of the seriousness of the lapse. He argued that doing so was needed to demonstrate that his administration is different from the Biden administration where such lapses were shrugged off by the White House.
On Tuesday, Mike Waltz told Fox News that he takes responsibility for the lapse while maintaining that he has no idea how Goldberg ended up in that live group chat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmEH2PLNVhc
Following Waltz’s statement, The Gateway Pundit (TGP) wrote that Goldberg has claimed that he was added to the chat by Waltz. Amid these conflicting claims by both sides, the responsibility seems to lie on Waltz and TGP wondered whether it would be the end of Waltz’s political career in the Trump cabinet.
For his part, President Trump has come to defend Waltz. On Tuesday, the President told NBC:
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”
Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma downplayed the Signal leak and instead fired back at the Democrats by reminding them of how Hillary Clinton mishandled sensitive information. On his X page, the senator wrote:
“Signal contained no classified information. For years, Hillary Clinton shared classified national security secrets from her personal email.”
Nice story Joe. Amazed you take no stand on the scandal.
My only question is how many should be fired and or can we apologize to Hillary for that email server with a bold “never mind?
18 people on unsecure ap using personal cellphones with one dumb bitch not even knowing what fucking Asian country she was in at the time, and another in Moscow. and I bet, not in a secure “tent” set up by Secret Service, as it should be. Somebody invited a journalist without security clearance. Trump still has no clue what’s going on 48 hours later. The team reacted by blaming the journalist for their inviting him and he not releasing the call notes due to national security which they boasted was not top secret. So, he printed them to show how they lied, lied in testimony to Congress, and should be held for perjurious testimony to the full extent by both sides of Congress. Joe, they may have outed our secret resource on the ground at the scene that now the Houthi’s know is there.
And you have no opinion on that?
I’m impressed. For the first time in a long while a right wing journalist is seeing the right for what they are. Incompetent. Maybe there is hope for the United States after all. Now if only all media can see these clowns for what they really are….
Nobody owes killery an apology. There’s a world of difference in her situation. That bitch violated the law on purpose because she knew that nothing would be done about it. I agree that someone fucked up with the text and I will dare say that they should be fired. Next you will be wanting someone to apologize to bathhouse Barry obozo for calling him out for fast and furious. And nobody can say that wasn’t a much worse situation. That wasn’t a mistake. That was a fucking Kenyan National trying to turn people against the 2nd amendment. So don’t compare oranges and apples with me. It’s not working. At least our congress members haven’t mocked a paralyzed man. But your communist monkey bitch did. So STFU asshole. We will work through this. But like I said. I damned sure would fire someone. And I usually don’t repeat myself. So have a great evening and enjoy time with your daughter.
While I would agree that Joe is showing a bit of common sense with this post, the real issue (that is not being discussed nearly enough) is not that Goldberg was on the chat, but that classified information was being discussed outside of the classified email channels that the government has, or better yet, inside an area that has been designed for such discussions to be held. Instead, these discussions were held through a messaging app on standard, cell phones, while one of the recipients was apparently in Russia? Screwups can happen, and adding the wrong person to a group chat can definitely be called a ‘screwup’, but discussing classified information in a manner that is not authorized is not a ‘screwup’, that is breaking the law. Hegseth should be fired, and all the others on the group chat severely reprimanded for not reporting this matter to the appropriate authorities. And, please don’t compare this to Hillary’s emails. While I definitely believe that it was wrong of her to conduct government business on a private server (having worked in the government and knowing what can happen), it was allowed at the time, and was something that her predecessor in the Bush administration recommended. There were no instances of her sending classified information from this system, only her receiving information that was inadvertently disclosed by the sender….