Signal Amid All the Noise

 

🚨🚨🚨Waltz’s team set up at least 20 Signal group chats for crises across the world https://t.co/FxTndiEMdk@DashaBurns @politico

— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) April 2, 2025

While we're all here dangling on a financial precipice, I just wanted to point out that this story yesterday, following on from Signalgate and the revelations that pretty much TrumpWorld (im)proper  is using the app and the Waltz himself regularly uses his private email account.  It's kind of a big deal that people would have time to be bothered about if.....

(Waves hands about frantically)  If not for all this. Which almost makes you wonder (or not "wonder") whether everything being on fire is supposed to distract you from all the other fires. 

Why Yes, It Does Look Like a Lot of Crimes

 

Now that we have the messages, please go compare what it's in it to the CENTCOM classification guide provisions below. This all very clearly classified at at least the SECRET level.

There was quite a bit of perjury yesterday. https://t.co/ohpct4dDRV pic.twitter.com/HAAB6RtIlV

— Secrets and Laws (@secretsandlaws) March 26, 2025

Jeffrey Goldberg followed up on yesterday's bombshell with more receipts, and well, yes, The chat itself is sketchy, Mike Waltz added Goldberg to the chat himself, the information Pete Hegseth shared with the group is what you might call "born classified" secret or top secret-level intelligence because it includes what weapons and what times, and yes, they were probably avoiding presidential record-keeping by having the chat set to disappear after a week and yes, cabinet member lied under oath about what happened, and while we are at it, a whole apartment building seems to have been leveled to get to one guy, which feel very war-crime-y. 

White House officials want to play semantic games but this is just what we're looking at--what they actually said, what statues and policy actually say. And who the journalist was or his political affiliation does not change those bare facts. 

Pobody's Nerfect!

 

Salazar: Remember, they're just starting in the job… Let's see how they do the next two years. And then we can judge them. But not because of one mistake that they put a reporter. Maybe they made a mistake and they put that. I mean, listen, those who do not have any sins, they… pic.twitter.com/aZrldiTswL

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 25, 2025

I think there's nothing more off-putting for me than the idea that you can actually brush off a national security breach with "But they're new!"   Like, this is an argument for if the waitress gives you a burger with pickles and you definitely said, "Hold the pickles," but it is not an argument for cabinet-level officials who have an insecure chat on their personal phones (because those work phones shouldn't even have Signal on them) and have others on the line who have no business accessing that information.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard literally evaded questions today in a way that implied she was not familiar with classification as a process or policy regarding secure comms. You'd think, wouldn't you, that sort of thing would be part of the basic job requirements, wouldn't you? Cabinet positions aren't entry-level--some competency is required. 

How About That OPSEC?

 

Look at that Murderer's Row in the above picture. You've got NSA Mike Waltz, who added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat, you've got very pompous VP JD Vance, SECDEF Pete Hegseth. who let us know America USED to be foolish (whatever we look like now, he will probably have to face in the morning after he's slept it off a bit), Secretary of State Lil Marco (Alleged Adult) Rubio, DNI Tulsi We Don't Compromise Classified Intel Gabbard, and Steve Witlesskopf--who was using his cell phone to join in from Moscow where Putin was making him wait. 

Everyone on that chat should have known better than to be on that Signal chat. If they preferred Signal for some reason, it's hard not to think it was to avoid FOIA. So, they chose being potentially open to access by GRU (known to try to exploit apps like Signal by following people of interest) over institutional transparency. 

Cowardice Chasing Stupidity

Welcome to a stupid enterprise--emissaries from the Trump Administration appearing in Riyadh ready to deal away things they have no control over to appease Russians who our best intelligence indicates have no intention whatsoever to end the war in Ukraine.  They sat there and discussed what we were willing to stipulate without Europe or (and ESPECIALLY) Ukraine there, like their input would not matter. 

Because what the hell is the country that was actually invaded even doing in the picture, right? Let alone our NATO partners, huh? Like, what ABOUT Poland?

The picture above is a portrait of "cowardice chasing stupidity". Collectively, they might know what they are doing has no fucking chance in the world of leading to anything productive because of course not--but they are all dancing to Trump's incredibly foolish tune.