Worst. Security. Breach. Ever. 🤯
And the Republicans are very concerned. Just kidding.
Fallout continues — and should continue hopefully forever — over the worst, stupidest US security breach in living memory: National Security Advisor Mike Waltz adding The Atlantic’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a group Signal chat of 18 people, including Secretary Kegbreath, DNI Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s white power nominee to run the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, JD Vance and his representative Dan Baker, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (and/or his representative Dan Katz), CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, White House Resident Nazi Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, some unnamed official from the CIA, and Brian McCormack of the NSC. Where they all blabbed for DAYS about WAR PLANS to bomb Houthis in Yemen, trash-talked Europe, discussed technical details of the airstrikes, and texted each other emojis.
In the normal world of 65 days ago, this would have led to multiple resignations in shame. If it were any other employees of the government, they would be looking at an FBI investigation, and possibly prison. But in this hellscape, Kash Patel is more concerned about a hippie holding a “swasticar” sign in front of a Tesla dealership, and Republicans are stumbling all over themselves to say it’s not a big deal, just a little oops! Like when a waiter tells you to enjoy your meal and you reply “you too.”
Goldberg’s account of it all is quite something.
And the Senate Intelligence Committee is holding the annual Worldwide Threats hearing right now, and Wonkette is liveblogging that hearing right now, and what else is there to talk about? Oh, Kash Patel says that there are some Mexicans in Arkansas now.
We should say again, these are ALL people who should have never been texting anything but a grocery list on fucking Signal to begin with; the app is known to have been breached by Russian and Belarusian hackers, and the phones themselves could be hacked or intercepted. Also, it’s against federal records law. AND fucking WAR PLAN conversations should have been in a secure facility! For security! These rules exist for a reason! All things that every single person on that list ought to know. And they are ALL people who should have been like hey, wait a minute, who’s even in this Signal chat? Maybe hiring unqualified loyalist dipshits who don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and have little to no experience at their jobs was a bad idea?
And OH LOOK, Steve Witkoff was on there too, texting the most emojis of all, five in a row (two hands-praying, a flexed bicep, and two American flags)! And guess where Steve Witkoff happened to be on Thursday, March 13? Why, in RUSSIA, getting choked up while Putin told him he’d prayed in church for Trump after he got shot in the ear. If every single emoji ever typed on Witkoff’s phone wasn’t captured by the time he got back on his plane with tears in his eyes, Russia is seriously slipping.
Hey, remember when the biggest, worst US security breach of all time was Hillary Clinton having John Podesta’s risotto recipe on a private email server, and James Comey’s FBI had an entire investigation about it that quite possibly (did) cost her the election? And Republicans never fucking got over it? CNN, Pepperidge Farm and everybody else remembers.
Look at Pete Hegseth’s sideburns all a-tremble:
Russia, or whoever else, being able to tap into what the loyalist dipshits are gabbing about is not just bad in principle, it risks the lives of soldiers carrying out these missions if the plans fall into the wrong hands. Plus, there’s the remains-to-be-seen damage when trash-talk about our supposed allies gets out. And VP Butthair, Sec. Def. Boozehole and Nazi hair-club dropout Miller had lots of trash-talking to do about Europe, and how keeping the Suez Canal safe to help Europe was the last thing they wanted to accomplish.
Vance: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.” Hegseth: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
Chimed in Miller: “Green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return.”
What do “we” expect in return for doing them a favor that they did not ask for? Bag of money emoji? Whatever it is sure sounds damn sleazy.
For the record, President Joe Biden also carried out airstrikes on the Houthis, and with the cooperation and help of Europe. The US could have asked for that this time too, instead of doing it all alone and then bitching about never getting any help.
Vance and Hegseth seemed most concerned about sending the right message — not to the Houthis, of course, but to the American public, to make sure that they do not think we were bombing to help out Europe in any way, no sir. Instead the important takeaway was that we were bombing because JOE BIDEN BAD. You know, that old guy who is not running for president, but still rides his bicycle around and licks his ice cream cone in their brains.
Biden designated the Houthis as a global terrorist group, then un-designated, then designated, depending on how attack-y they were being. But the important thing to know according to the emoji-chat group is that he did not kill all the Houthis, so therefore, according to Hegseth:
Hegseth: “we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”
Let us also not snooze here on how Trump truly did not seem to know that the whole text-chain-to-the-reporter thing had even happened. Why not? Jeffrey Goldberg emailed the National Security Council for confirmation, so somebody should have made Trump aware before the story was published. Were they scared to bring him bad news? Whatever happened, Poppy seemed genuinely confused about it. “I know nothing about it [...] you’re saying they had whut?”
Another interesting thing, Goldberg was added to the chat by Mike Waltz. Which means Goldberg was already in Waltz’s address book, and they had chatted before. And Goldberg is one of Trump’s most disliked people, ever since he broke that story of Trump disparaging soldiers as “suckers and losers.” Has Mike Waltz been getting leaky behind everybody’s back?
Also, why was anyone at the Treasury Department involved in this at all? Another mistaken add to the group chat, or was there a reason?
Anyway, as you might imagine, now that he knows about this, Trump is all cool with it, talking with NBC News’s Garrett Haake this morning: “The President told me he believes the story is essentially a non-issue, and that Goldberg's presence on the chat had ‘no impact at all.’ The attacks, he continued, were ‘perfectly successful.’” And “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he's a good man.”
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt is insist-lying that “no classified material was sent to the thread.” You know, except for the classified material that the National Security Council confirmed was sent to the thread, of course.
And LOL, the National Security Council spokesperson’s take was, “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
Yes, deep and thoughtful 🇺🇸👊🔥🙏 🦅!! Honestly we are surprised that Hegseth is actually doing any work at all, we figured by 11 a.m. on a Saturday he’d be at least a few beers in. (Maybe he was!) And, surprising to see VP Butthair pushing back on the President. Vance sure does hate Europe! “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his [go fuck yourself] message on Europe right now.”
Yes, consistency of messaging, that is of utmost importance!
Man, we are SO COOKED.
[The Atlantic / NBC]
I'm writing a Bloody Mary recipe for the weekend (trust me, it's like nothing you've ever seen). I thought that asking for 2 oz. of vodka might be too much. I'm starting to think it won't be enough.
The worst security breach ever was allowing a convicted felon in the White House