Trump & Co Blame Journalist For Major National Security Slip Up

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

Signalgate, the Signal messages heard round the world wherein key US intelligence advisors talked about highly sensitive military operations on a commercial messaging app and somehow accidentally added the editor in chief of the Atlantic and literally no one noticed until he brought it up, is the latest absolute fucking blunder from the Trump administration that they are of course attempting to downplay as just another overblown piece of fake news being peddled by that nasty mainstream media. And while the leak demonstrates a shocking mishandling of sensitive intelligence information that likely broke civil and criminal laws, the Trump administration response weaponizes its decade-long propaganda machine against the news media in a way that should be concerning for all of us. Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene is somewhere inside a house committee chamber screaming about drag queens on PBS. In an era where the politicians in charge want to operate in secrecy without pesky oversight from journalists they try to discredit at every turn, the watchdog function of our news outlets is more important than ever. Today we’re talking about the leak, the response, and how Trump is using every opportunity to erode our news media landscape. Let’s get into it.

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On Monday, Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, a major US news organization, published an article titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans” in which he detailed how Trump’s national security advisor Michael Waltz accidentally added him to a private chat on the Signal app, a popular app used for its ability to encrypt messages and make them more secure from prying eyes and hacking. The chat included other major intelligence names such as Vice President JD, Secretary of state Marco Rubio, director of National intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA. At first the journalist, Goldberg, assumed it was a spoof trying to entrap him, though he was impressed with the amount of security knowledge and lingo this AI bot seemed to possess. Then, extremely detailed messages came through outlining precise timings and targets of bombings against Houthi rebels in Yemen. When the bombs actually dropped, Goldberg realized this chat thread was legit, and that he had been added by mistake and NOBODY in the group apparently noticed. He initially published the story with brief excerpts from the chat, acknowledging that there were parts of information he received, apparently inadvertently, that could pose a risk to the safety of US armed forces or intelligence personnel.

Then the denials started pouring in. The National Security Council admitted that the message thread appeared to be authentic, but at a Senate intelligence committee hearing yesterday in which intelligence officials were grilled about this apparent security breach, they all repeatedly confirmed that there was no sensitive or confidential information shared in that text chain. John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard said on record that nothing classified was shared. Trump himself said it wasn’t classified information. This despite the fact that information about actively happening military operations is generally considered confidential by default. And while it is possible for the secretary of defense or the President to declassify information, even retroactively, neither has done as much or even accepted responsibility or acknowledged that any of the information was even classified in the first place. The messages contained explicit take off times for when US armed forces would be initiating the bombing, sent approximately two hours before the attack was to occur. Had this gotten into the hands of a foreign government or even a person with social media who decided to share screenshots, that could have seriously jeopardized not just the mission but the safety and lives of the armed forces carrying out the mission in Yemen.

After multiple officials denied that anything confidential was shared in that chat, and after The Atlantic reached out to multiple officials within the government for comment, the magazine moved forward this morning and published the entire chat, screenshots and all. The only part that remained redacted was the name of an active intelligence officer. The most damning message appears to be one sent by Fox News Host turned inept defense secretary Pete Hegseth, in which he laid out, minute by minute, how the attacks were to go down.

Response has been shock and dismay across the political spectrum. Because somehow despite the fact that this administration does something monumentally shocking and stupid every other day, it still somehow manages to outdo itself from time to time.

Because even though it is true that Signal uses end to end encryption that makes it more secure than regular text messages, what is also true is that EVERYONE in the US intelligence community from the top on down KNOWS that Signal or any other commercial messaging app, should NEVER be used to communicate highly sensitive information. Because while Trump officials are focusing on denying that anything classified was shared, it is clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that this information was incredibly sensitive and clearly could have dramatically impacted US intelligence operations had it fallen into the wrong hands. And so while government officials DO use signal to communicate, it is only used for basic details like coordinating meetings, or to tell someone to check other secure messaging systems for a new classified communication, it is not used to SEND highly sensitive information. And I know this because the Atlantic followed up on this as well, I’ve linked all my sources in the description. According to their reporting, typically intelligence and other government officials must use a quote “specially designed space known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF–most Cabinet-level national-security officials have one installed in their home–or communicate only on approved government equipment.” So government officials literally get something installed in their home to do communications in, and so clearly they would know that there are expectations around communications security. Cell phones aren’t even allowed inside a SCIF. There is no way these high level officials weren’t on notice that this type of information was completely inappropriate to be sent over an app like Signal. Plus, if they had been using officially sanctioned methods of communication, the risk that someone without proper security clearance would have access to the message would be gone. Proper government-sanctioned secure messaging ONLY allows those with proper security clearances to access sensitive information. There would not have been even the slightest opportunity for them to have accidentally added a random journalist to the chat.

Not only that, they likely broke a number of laws in doing so. According to experts interviewed by The Atlantic, information about an active military operation would fit the law’s definition of “national defense information” that should only be discussed with security protocols in place. Whether or not the information was technically classified doesn’t matter because it was clearly sensitive and an app like signal is not approved for communicating ANY highly sensitive information, whether or not it’s top secret. Additionally, the messages in the group chat were set to disappear after a certain amount of time, a security feature that is common in encrypted messaging apps. This runs into issues, however, because there are records laws that require messages, including texts about official acts to be preserved, and intentionally destroying official records is against the law.

On top of that, by transmitting highly sensitive defense information to a person not authorized to receive it, that is Jeffrey Goldberg the Atlantic journalist, even by mistake, the group was potentially in violation of the espionage act which criminalizes the unauthorized dissemination of national defense information. It’s the same act Trump was charged under for storing classified documents in his Mar a Lago bathroom (allegedly). It is a broadly written statute that can apply really to any information shared with someone who was unauthorized to receive it, whether or not that information was technically “confidential.” What matters is whether the information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the benefit of a foreign nation. These messages would easily fall under that definition.

So we have credible evidence, literal receipts, of top level government officials using an unauthorized means of sending highly sensitive information that made it vulnerable to being accessed by really anyone–they could have misplaced their phone, it could have been hacked, Signal is encrypted but it isn’t completely bulletproof–and not only that, they were SO lax with their security that they accidentally added a journalist to the highly sensitive chat and then ALSO didn’t even REALIZE IT for DAYS, likely in violation of rudimentary laws protecting national defense information and in violation of laws criminalizing the unauthorized dissemination of that information to outsiders. In fact a lawsuit has already been filed in DC by the nonprofit American Oversight, which accuses the Trump administration of violating federal records laws. The lawsuit has been assigned to none other than Federal judge James Boasberg, the same one who ordered a return of the planes carrying immigrants from Venezuela to El Salvador and who Trump and others in his administration has been threatening with impeachment. I do NOT envy him.

In a fun quote unearthed by NBC News in the wake of the Signal chat heard round the world, Pete Hegseth while hosting a Fox News show back in 2016, harshly criticized Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server saying “Any security professional, military, government, or otherwise, would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for being so reckless with this kind of information.” INTERESTING.

And yet I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to talk about this today because it feels so run of the mill at this point. Like of COURSE they’re not following typical protocol to protect sensitive information. Of COURSE they’re not following the rules. Of COURSE they care more about convenience and moving fast and breaking things than about official procedures that are put in place for a reason. The point of this entire administration is that the rules do not apply to them. They’re willing to do anything and say anything to gain more power and control, unconcerned with who gets hurt in the process.

And so now that they’ve been caught in the act and it’s fucking embarrassing, they’re doing everything they can to lie, to obfuscate, to downplay what happened, and, most recently, to turn the blame around and place it on the shoulders of the journalist THEY inadvertently added to a highly sensitive national security discussion. Trump dismissed the Atlantic as “going out of business” and has called Jeffrey Goldberg a “sleazebag.” Hegseth called him a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist.” Mike Waltz, the guy who accidentally added him to the chat, called Goldberg a “loser” who likely deliberately tricked someone into giving him access to the chat. Which, like, that someone was you Mike so I’m unclear how you don’t know how this happened.

And so I think the real story in this entire debacle, because you KNOW these high level officials won’t face any actual punishment for their mistake, you KNOW Trump and his cronies will continue to lie about it and rewrite what happened forever, you KNOW no REAL change is going to come about as to how the Trump regime handles national security information, the REAL story in my opinion is that this redirection of the blame from the intelligence officials onto the journalist is a convenient consequence of Trump’s decade-long push to discredit the media. The rampant spread of disinformation, the distrust of mainstream media, honestly on both sides of the aisle, means that when a reporter drops a bombshell like this, or even more heinous revelations that I’m sure will come in the future, Trump and his supporters can turn around and weaponize that distrust in the media that they’ve been cultivating. They can say this guy’s a journalist. You know how journalists are. Willing to say anything to get attention and ad dollars. Don’t trust him, he’s lying, he’s playing up a non-story to try to get clicks. He’s desperate and pathetic. I’m the one you can trust. A great example of this rhetoric can be found in a social media post by White House communications director Steven Cheung who commented on the Signal leak by saying “at every turn anti-Trump forces have tried to weaponize innocuous actions and turn them into faux outrage that Fake News outlets can use to peddle misinformation. Don’t let enemies of America get away with these lies.” Which is truly written the way I imagine some poorly written screenplay would write clearly fascist propaganda like it’s so obviously batshit it boggles the mind the amount of brain rot someone would have to have to actually buy this. AND YET.

This all out propaganda campaign to vilify journalists allows at least the half of the electorate that trusts Trump to be lulled into a false sense that maybe things aren’t so bad, maybe every bad story that comes out about this administration is just being played up for clicks, actually yeah everything is totally normal, I need to just ignore the reports and trust that daddy Trump knows best.

This, in turn, completely undermines the role that the media is meant to play in any robust democracy–that of watchdog. Watergate would never have been uncovered but for the work of journalists. Countless governmental missteps would have gone unnoticed because journalists are the only ones with the time to keep an eye on things while the rest of us toil under capitalism. This is a crucial role, and while I think it’s totally fine and dandy to have open debate and discussion about the articles being printed by our mainstream media, about the way they frame things, about what sorts of biases they may or may not have, that doesn’t mean they aren’t still guided by professional ethics and levels of editing and fact checking that make them an essential source of truth and oversight when it comes to politics and government. And that is really inconvenient when you’re Trump or the people behind him pulling the strings and you want to do things under cover of darkness where no one can sound the alarm that what you’re doing is not normal or is flat out illegal. We would be none the wiser but for the work of journalists. And Trump knows that. So the media will always be the enemy and cracking down on them and forcing loyalty from media owners like Jeff Bezos is what he does to ensure his tactics and actions aren’t called out for what they are. So to me, turning this story onto Jeffrey Goldberg’s shoulders is just the latest in his long history of tactics he’s used to crack down on journalists, and I think we’re just seeing the beginning of it.

Just since the start of his second administration only 2 months ago, he has already removed the Associated Press from the white house press pool, mad at them for refusing to change their official style guide to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. He has admitted known Russian state-owned media into the oval office for his discussion with Zelensky that went south. And he has admitted known fringe right wing content creators as “press” into official events. Time and again he has shown his disdain for anyone in the press who doesn’t bend to his wishes and has showered praise on those who create media favorable to him, whether or not it’s accurate, no matter who’s behind it, no matter how real or made up their credentials.

And just today, a hearing, titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable” organized by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene as part of the DOGE subcommittee gave Republicans a chance to grill the chief executives from PBS and NPR in an attempt to prove that they are using federal dollars to spread radical left, communist propaganda and groom children with LGBTQ programming. Namely, she was really mad about a clip from a drag queen story hour that was posted on YouTube and never aired on PBS nor was it in any way associated with either network. But of course the truth, in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s world, is subjective and open to interpretation. There were, of course, no actual revelations at this hearing other than the chief executive of NPR acknowledging that they should have more thoroughly covered the Hunter Biden laptop story during a time when she wasn’t even in charge.

Yesterday, Tuesday, Trump declared that the networks are a waste of money and he would love to defund them, this despite the fact that the funding bill he signed into law a couple weeks ago included half a billion dollars for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which disburses funds to public radio stations across the country. The bill ensures public broadcasting will be funded at least through 2027. And this is funding that especially small stations depend on to continue operating. NPR itself receives less than 1% of its funding from the federal government, but it relies heavily on program fees that small and local stations pay to play NPR shows. And, on average, those local radio stations receive about 10% of their funding from the Center for Public Broadcasting, a federally funded entity. Without that funding, small public stations would be hit the most. For example, according to reporting from CNN, Hawaii Public Radio is 94% funded by the community, with only 6% of funding coming from the Center for Public Broadcasting, while KTOO Public Media in Alaska relies on 30% of its budget coming from the Center for Public Broadcasting. These are the local news stations that cover stories that national organizations do not, that are critical for staying connected locally but also for holding local government to account, and local governments often have a far greater impact on your day to day life than what’s happening in Washington, so ensuring robust local journalism is really important, especially now when the feds are leaving all of us high and dry.

NPR has reported that 36% of its budget comes from corporate sponsors, and 30% comes from program fees that local stations pay to air NPR shows. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting supports the system of local radio and TV stations who then in turn support PBS and NPR by paying fees to use their shows. NPR and PBS are both transparent about who they receive funding from. I grew up on PBS shows in the 90s and hearing that the show I was watching was being supported by “the corporation for public broadcasting and viewers like you, thank you” has been seared into my brain. Anytime NPR covers a story related to a corporate sponsor, they disclose that. They have basic journalistic standards in place to ensure the integrity of their news reporting. Something that the news media on the right does not.

Today’s hearing was political theater so Marjorie Taylor Greene could continue pushing right wing extremist propaganda that her constituents seem to love and it keeps her in Trump’s good graces. But it’s another instance, along with somehow turning the blame for a major national security slip up on the journalist doing his job as a government watchdog, of Trump and his advisors spouting anti-journalist propaganda that is the cornerstone of any autocratic regime intent on getting away with doing whatever it wants. Journalists will always be the enemy of politicians trying to get away with things. So while Signalgate, as it’s being dubbed, is concerning from a national security standpoint, I think the response to it from the Trump administration should be even more concerning as it relates to trust in news media and further degradation of the robust networks of journalists we all rely on, myself included, to get our news and to keep this government in check.

So what do we do about it? Support local news. Subscribe to the digital edition of your local newspaper or, better yet, get the physical paper delivered. I did that for a while and it was honestly really nice, I only quit because of the overwhelming amount of physical paper that was piling up around my house because I have ADHD and cannot stay on top of clutter. Become a monthly sustaining member of your local public radio, I just joined as a sustaining member of Minnesota Public Radio for the first time despite the fact that I have been benefitting from their services for literally 20 years. Turning on MPR while I was getting ready for school was a mainstay in my home growing up. As an angsty teen I was too cool for pop music and discovered a whole new world of local and alternative music by listening to The Current, which is MPR’s music station, like truly public radio does such a service to the localities it serves, and you take it for granted but if it went away we would all be worse off for it, relying nearly exclusively on corporate news that would almost certainly overlook local stories, to the detriment of us all. You can even get involved in local news by writing letters to the editor and volunteering to help at fundraising and other events.

At a time when journalists and journalism itself is under attack from forces that wish to be able to operate in the dark away from prying eyes, it’s more important than ever that we very vocally and openly support public radio and local news organizations because they truly are on the brink of extinction.

And if you’d like to support my work, I recommend joining me over on Patreon where I launched the Why, America? Co-Learning Lab at the beginning of this year, a learning community having discussions and making connections, along with a monthly syllabus curated by me. All year we’ll be covering topics under the umbrella theme of “Eat the Rich: Building Solidarity in the New Gilded Age.” March’s topic is how billionaires bought the government. This is all hosted over on Patreon, which is linked down below. If you’re interested, please join us. Patreon dot com slash leeja miller.

Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Marc, Thomas Orf, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, R_H, L’etranger (Lukus), Joshua Cole, Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from last week about the downfall of Chuck Schumer.

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