“The National Security Council said in a statement that it was looking into how a journalist’s number was added to the chain in the Signal group chat.”
“:punch: :USA: :fire:”
— The U.S. National Security Advisor
Given the Trump Administration’s emphatic commitment to hiring the most qualified candidates for our nation’s most critical jobs, it’s hard to believe a level-headed guy like Pete Hegseth would do something so inexcusably sloppy like inviting the Atlantic editor-in-chief to an air strike group chat. Maybe we should cut him some slack since he’s a DUI candidate, and there is nowhere in the Constitution that explicitly states that you can’t rip a few nips before showing up to work. It’s remarkable that “air strike group chat” isn’t a euphemism, but since government operations are apparently now conducted via messaging apps, it would stand to reason that, before committing war crimes, there would be someone who sees an unrecognizable number and double-check that there is zero chance it’s an editor from a major news publication. There’s more diligence exercised in a group chat dedicated to making brunch plans.
The prose of all the messages is indistinguishable from Elon’s Twitter replies. The fire emoji is normally reserved for awkwardly flirting when replying to someone’s Instagram story, but now it can be used for celebrating a drone strike. They’re conducting their nasty business on Signal, but all these vile, soulless vermin emote like it’s a Slack channel for the HR team at a start-up. They’re probably planning the invasion of the Panama Canal on Twitch.
The praying and muscle emojis, the disdain for Europe more broadly, is not an act, but an honest articulation of a crabbed and curdled worldview that reflects the right’s childish certitude and their amphetamized, whimsical approach to running a country. For decades, “conservative governance” has reliably redirected the institutions built to serve the public good into something like their opposite. But now, with the president’s blessing, it isn’t enough to degrade these institutions, but to actively wreck them. Someone like Pete Hegseth was put in a position like Secretary of Defense for this reason, and a fumble like this only follows that old permission to its furthest and most destructive conclusion.
According to Goldberg’s account, he initially thought this was a trap to get the Atlantic to potentially bite on a fake story as part of this administration’s ongoing catfight with legacy news. If Trump’s minions were more discerning, this could’ve been a cunning attempt to discredit the media and get some egg on the face of a high-profile editor-in-chief, but the reality is far more stupid. Now it’s a national story that members of the Trump Administration regularly and probably illegally discuss classified information on group chats, and everyone involved looks like blundering morons. Goldberg voluntarily left the group chat before anyone noticed he was in it. He should have sent a rare Vance meme before he dipped.
For all the things it is, Trumpism is straightforwardly a gloating, recursive celebration of power and impunity. It is not a politics or ideology so much as it is the belief among MAGA acolytes that they will be as brutally free and unaccountable as he is. These goons were reckless with top-secret communications because they genuinely believe that they inhabit a hermetically sealed zone of zero consequence. The planetary density of Trump’s vanity has pulled a wobbling system entirely out of alignment and forced it into a chaotic new order, and all the Republicans trying to emulate his grievances are nothing more than a thwarted facsimile who demonstrate the same levels of brazen corruption and incompetence but none of the demented charisma. The way in which the Trump Administration governs in fits of spite and sudden blistering sadism is unique to Trump, but the fundamental nihilism and a very specific sense of entitlement at his core aren’t really out of line with how Republicans have behaved over the last couple of generations. This latest episode is only a more denigrated and demeaning iteration of that very fact, and the only thing missing from the group chat was a crying-laughing emoji to sum it all up.
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Author: Sam Colt
Karen O’Blivious – Senior political correspondent who insists she’s neutral but only interviews people who agree with her.