The Trump administration really doesn’t think it was such a big deal that a massive dose of classified information was put out over an non-secured network with at least one unintended stranger listening in earlier this month. In what has burned its way already into the annals of history, the inadvertent inclusion of a journalist into a group chat of top level Trump cabinet members was so preposterous that it defies description.
CIA veterans had cautioned against the use of the Signal messaging provider these clowns were texting over because of its susceptibility to being intercepted by foreign adversaries. But that didn’t stop them from using it, and probably through their personal devices, as well. One person in this chat was in Moscow at the time, for heaven’s sake.
But the Trump people don’t think it is such a big deal because their hubris, their arrogance, is so overwhelming they think they can do no wrong, and don’t care if they do.
Former chair and now ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner of Virginia was so flabbergasted by the revelations that the Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg provided about the chat stream he was invited to join that he sputtered when trying to find words in a telephone briefing to Virginia reporters this Wednesday. Earlier that morning, Warner spent an hour on MSNBC after playing a seminal role in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing the day before.
“It was a complete and royal screw up,” he began. “Egregious and not a one-off, but in a stunning pattern of incompetence…colossal screw up…I didn’t think they could shock me, but they have…so sloppy….such sloppiness.”
He put it in the context of the names of over 200 CIA agents that were placed on an unclassified website, and posting of a classified office location by the “Doge boys” who also made secret information from the Treasury Department public, all in ways that compromised and has made impossible the execution of many important intelligence operations by the U.S.
But as is so often the case in matters like this, it is the lying and attempted covering up after the fact that become the most grievous crimes.
On Tuesday, at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, it was the blatant lying under oath by Trump appointees Tulsi Gabbard, the National Intelligence Office director, and John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, that elevated the scandal to a whole new level. After they lied Tuesday, Goldberg decided to reveal more of the actual texts on Wednesday that proved their lies.
Beyond that, it was Trump, and his press secretary Karoline Levitt and the Trump team writ large that lied, defected, downplayed and tried to defame and blame Goldberg in some of the most flagrant and transparent disinformation efforts we’ve seen from a Trump operation that is so well known for its disinformation.
But, like I said, this is par for the course for them, all in a day’s work. What remains the great conundrum is the extent to which Republican leaders continue to hold their noses and kowtow to it all.
Few can deny that this incident could have cost lives and still might. It is a huge blow to the trust that is so important for the U.S. to maintain with its allies. Warner mentioned the case of Austria’s intelligence services uncovering a plot in Vienna that could have cost thousands of lives at a Taylor Swift concert last year.
While the Washington Post downplayed the incident, relegating its story to Page 6 on Wednesday, Warner insisted that a lot of work will have to be done to redress the damage. He called for all the phones involved to be turned in and examined, massive efforts required to restore trust with our allies, and holding key parties accountable, such as by firing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
At the root of this issue is an arrogance that allows for profound error under the false pretext of extreme entitlement. The great flawed one, Trump, has brought around him a wicked coven of proteges that learn by emulating his own profoundly corrupt soul’s methods and means. The cabinet of the damned.
