The Daily Beast doesn’t normally publish a lot of cursewords in my columns, but I’m hoping they consider an exemption this week. Consider a quote from America’s Boy Scout Dad, Pete Buttigieg, a fella not prone to hair-on-fire theatrics, for example. Buttigieg’s hot take is in response to yet-another Trump scandal, this one involving National Security Advisor Mike Waltz accidentally inviting Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg into an unsecured group chat discussing war plans for recent airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Buttigieg, a former intelligence officer, called the scandal “an astonishing security failure…the highest level of f-ckup imaginable.”
Frankly, I’m surprised Mayor Pete even knows the “f-word.”
The fact that it fell out of that schoolboy face of his should tell us something about the magnitude of yesterday’s revelation. Consider a bevy of cabinet officials and higher-ups, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, gabbing on an unsecured group text filled with top secret details of a military strike, breaking both protocol and the law.
Now look, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I understand the full implications. I haven’t served in military or intelligence roles (and, honestly, I’m bad at keeping secrets). But my friend, the writer Charlotte Clymer, has done so, handling classified material as an enlisted soldier, so I believe her when she says, “What Pete Hegseth did is probably the worst thing a soldier could do in the eyes of the military short of murdering someone, and even then, I’d probably argue it’s worse because it could easily get others killed.”
That sounds bad, right?
A lot of people will want to play the hypocrisy game as this story unfolds. People will, correctly, point to videos of Hegseth during his Fox News days decrying similar but arguably less egregious screw-ups. (“But her emails!”) Or they will point to that Tulsi Gabbard tweet in which the Director of National Intelligence wrote, not even two weeks ago, “Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.”
Or they will point to the “Lock her up!” chants from Burger King’s first coronation. Yes, there will be much finger-pointing, deflecting and feigned ignorance over the coming days and weeks, but one thing I know about this administration: in the end, they will do the right thing.
I’m obviously kidding.
Instead, what is most likely to happen is… nothing. For his part, Secretary of Deez Nuts Hegseth has blithely dismissed the entire story, calling it a “hoax.” A hoax? His own National Security Council authenticated it! If there’s a hoax in play, it’s the fact that a fool like Hegseth was even in a position to accidentally send unsecured war plans to a reporter in the first place. Next, it’ll probably be d--k pics.
And we’ve already seen House Speaker Mike Johnson blowing off the scandal. When asked whether any disciplinary action ought to be meted out to Hegseth, Waltz or other surely-culpable participants in the text chain, he responded, “No, no, of course not.”
Of course not?
Johnson doesn’t even want to consider the implications of the Cabinet’s top officials texting war plans and fist bump emojis over an unsecured channel? These are people who have SCIFs built into their homes specifically so they never text war plans and fist bump emojis over unsecured channels!
Didn’t it occur to them that any (and every) nation on the planet—friend or foe—will expend money, men and manipulation to discern what’s going on in the upper echelons of the American government? And that planning your surprise war party on Signal might not be the best way to keep that information secure?
If this had happened during a Democratic administration, these same people downplaying the whole debacle would advocate for disappearing the offenders into an El Salvadoran slave prison. Here’s another difference: If it had happened during a Democratic administration, those people would already be fired.
The first Burger King presidency was bolstered by “the best people” getting sacked or turning on their boss because of his incompetence and lack of intellectual rigor—“a f---ing moron,” according to his first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. Rather than taking it as insult, Trump decided to use it as a hiring directive for his second term.
And so this is where we are: an administration headed by a f---ing moron, staffed by f---ing morons, doing f---ing moronic things on the daily without cause of care. These are stupid people. Stupid people do stupid things. At this level, stupid things get people killed. Again, I really hope the Daily Beast relaxes their profanity rules because there’s only one possible word to end this piece: F--K!
