MAGA Can’t Keep Its Signal Story Straight
It’s a lie. Or a hoax. Or a hack. Plus: Tesla sales numbers in Europe.
1. Wagons, Circles
You can learn a lot about a person (or an organization) from how they respond to failure.
So let’s look at MAGA’s various responses to the revelation that the vice president, SecDef, SecState, and others used Signal to conduct official government business and transmitted sensitive information in the open.
1) We did nothing wrong.
“Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that,” said Pete Hegseth.
“There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” said DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
“My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information,” said CIA director John Ratcliffe.
“It wasn’t classified information,” said Donald Trump.
2) Jeff Goldberg is in possession of sensitive national security information.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt:
[T]here was no classified information transmitted in the group chat. However, as the CIA Director and National Security Advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation. This was intended to be a an [sic] internal and private deliberation amongst high-level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed. So for those reason [sic] — yes, we object to the release.
The online MAGAs go a good bit further:
3) Signal is secure.
Trump: “They used a app, if you want to call it an app, that a lot of people use. A lot of people in government use, a lot of people in the media use.”
Shy-MAGA tech reporter Ben Thompson: “So it is with encryption: there really isn’t a more secure messaging product than Signal, even if it were designed by the NSA.”1
4) Jeffrey Goldberg is a liar.
“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes,” Hegseth explained. “This is a guy who peddles in garbage.”
Elon Musk: “For Jeffrey Goldberg, lying is like breathing. It’s what he does all day, every day.”2
5) Goldberg was included on the Signal chain by mistake.
Mike Waltz during an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox on March 25: “We made a mistake. We’re moving forward,” said Waltz, adding that he took “full responsibility” for the episode.
6) Or maybe Goldberg hacked his way into the Signal chain.
Mike Waltz on March 25 during a cabinet meeting at the White House: “We are looking into and reviewing how the heck he [Goldberg] got into this room.”
Also Mike Waltz on March 25, in the Fox interview: “Of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we’re trying to figure out.”
Byron York: “It’s coming down to two questions: 1) How did the virulently anti-Trump journalist Jeffrey Goldberg end up on the text? and 2) Was classified information involved? So far, the answers don’t quite add up.”
Jesse Watters: “Journalists like Goldberg will sometimes send out fake names with a contact with their cells to deceive politicians. . . . It wouldn’t surprise me if Goldberg sneaked his way in.”
It’s all so confusing! As of this morning, the Atlantic has released a lightly-redacted transcript, which you can read for yourself. You tell me: Is this a “war plan”? Is it “confidential”? Or merely “sensitive”?