Jeff Childers

Beware reply-all. The Wall Street Journal ran the latest and greatest mis-texting story under the headline, “Top Trump Officials Debated War Plans on Unclassified Chat Shared With Journalist.” But The Hill most captured the media’s tremulous excitement, breathlessly running dozens of articles on the story; its entire homepage was one “war chats” headline after another. Apparently it is the most important story in the world. Finally! A scandal they can use to sink the Trump Administration!

With that kind of wall-to-wall coverage, you would think something dangerous, damaging, or at least saucy was accidentally disclosed. So far though— nope. All of the Hill’s dozen over-excited stories have the same scraps of information.

On March 11th, the Atlantic’s executive editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was ‘accidentally’ added to a group Signal chat including most of Trump’s national security cabinet and Vice President Vance (but not President Trump). Golberg’s invitation to join —which the media immediately assumed was a mistake— apparently came from Mike Walz, Trump’s national security advisor.

Goldberg, of course, accepted the unsolicited invitation. He never announced his presence. He didn’t exit the chat after realizing he’d walked into the wrong digital dressing room. Instead, he became a peeper. He quietly huddled under some discarded Cats costumes in the corner, proving he is an unethical hyena instead of leaving any scrap of doubt.

Peeping-Goldberg claimed to have read real-time operational details of last week’s strike on the Houthis. Goldberg insisted he refrained from reporting the military details out of his praiseworthy concerns over US troops. But his restraint was probably also motivated by concerns over his own pimply backside, since if he had leaked them, Goldberg would have been arrested before he could finish saying, “Elon Musk is a Naz…”

Nor did Goldberg’s high principles extend to other parts of the group’s private discussion that Goldberg deemed unclassified. Yesterday, the Atlantic’s top editor reported that JD Vance, in particular, said he was disgusted the US was even bothering to attack the Houthis, since most of the trade affected by Houthi mad-missiles and dynamite-laden drone ships is European trade. Let the free-loading Europeans fight the Houthis themselves, was JD’s rather pointedly delivered theme.

“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance complained at one point. SecDef Pete Hegseth agreed with JD’s sentiment and went further, calling the Europeans “PATHETIC” (in all caps). “If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost, there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return,” unidentified user SM chimed in.

In other words, make the Europeans pay for it somehow.

Like clockwork, corporate media and Democrats descended into sheer hysteria, attempting to seize the classified breach and use it as a political drone to take down the entire Trump national security team. In his story in the Atlantic, Goldberg opined that, from his elite perspective, using Signal to discuss military strikes “may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of national defense information.” He forgot how much Biden’s team used Signal. Furious Senator Elizabeth “Firewater” Warren (D-Mass.) called it “blatantly illegal and dangerous beyond belief.” She sneered, “Our national security is in the hands of complete amateurs.”

And so on, ad infinitum. They’re madder than Houthi militants.

image 2.png
? Yesterday, confronted by reporters, Trump denied he’d even heard about the story. Later, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the President “continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.”

in a statement confirming the text messages were authentic, National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said, “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The continuing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.”

Other Trump allies, like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Gordon Sondland, Trump’s EU ambassador during the first term, defended the inadvertent disclosures. “The media will turn this into a story of incompetence or inexperience, which it is not. In the past, Signal has been as secure as many of the so-called top-secret encrypted systems, so I would not criticize its use,” Sonland told the WSJ.

“Whether this will be enough to quell the storm,” the Hill wondered darkly, “remains to be seen.” In other words, not if we can help it.

? It is far from clear the messages disclosed anything damaging to Trump. The Hill could only find two things about the chats to complain about. “Substantively” — meaning the only important bit — “the texts published by Goldberg are remarkable because of how they show Vance’s unease with some elements of Trump’s approach, and the Trump group’s general distaste for what they see as Europe’s lackadaisical reliance on the U.S.,” the Hill reported.

In other words, the whole thing amounts to a slam on Europe. It also included a classic, Trumpian internal conflict —catnip to corporate media— appearing to show a crack of daylight between Trump and Vance.

I realize that some will hear my next comment as a tortured effort to cover for a Trump Team blunder, by labeling things that look bad as actually being “4-D chess.” But to me, so far, the story has all the hallmarks of a classic Trump rope-a-dope, his trademarked strategic chaos. There’s the patented Trumpian appearance of minor conflict — a controlled fire — necessary to garner widespread media coverage, and packed with on-brand details helpfully advancing Trump’s agenda of pushing back against the pesky Europeans.

To wit: Europe needs to carry its own weight.

Vance gave away the game when he texted, “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.” He practically scripted the media’s narrative for them. JD’s ‘disclosure’ didn’t highlight any inconsistency. It resolved the apparent inconsistency between the Houthi strike and Trump’s America First policy.

The story actually reassures the base. And it does so thanks to breathless, wall-to-wall media coverage that Trump’s team could never have achieved had they merely issued a policy statement.

Maybe the most significant message was found in what was missing. The texts included no mention of the inflammatory issue of Israel. Rather, the texts appear to confirm Israel had nothing to do with it — a claim that half the Republican base would have disbelieved had it appeared in a dry position brief or in clumsy public comments.

This way, a hostile journalist convincingly and elegantly explained, indirectly, that the US was not doing Israel’s bidding, without Trump having to awkwardly deny it— a political unforced error that would have infuriated the Israelis.

As for any ‘security scandal,’ after the media’s and Democrats’ diehard defense of Hillary’s private email server, how can they now complain about this, without looking like the big fat hypocrites they are? Once again, the corporate media complex is forced to take the low ground and defend a creepy, rodent-like journalist who arguably violated ethical standards, possibly committed a crime by reporting on a private chat he was obviously never intended to be part of, and published … what? A bunch of dudes grumbling about European freeloading? That’s the “scandal”?

To me, it seems the relevant question is, as ever, cui bono? Not the Democrats.