Open Mic Night at the Apocalypse

If Mike Waltz gets fired, who will bully Greenland?

Jeffrey Goldberg’s story in The Atlantic about being accidentally included in a group discussion over an unsecured channel concerning retaliatory military actions against Yemen’s Houthi rebels has achieved top billing (or close to it) on both legacy and social media.

There can be no doubt about the substance of the reporting and the rank stupidity of the Trump officials who took part. Likewise, there’s enough concern about the vulnerability of the Signal app and the probability that personal phones were used to warrant congressional hearings, but that’s about as far as any legal consequences will go in the Trump 2.0 era.

Politico is saying this morning that national security advisor Mike Waltz might be offered up for sacrifice if and when the President decides action is warranted. No doubt he’s watching Fox News for input on this subject.

People who live in the foreign policy/national security silos undoubtedly realize that this incident is yet another example of the outcome of hiring incompetent people; they’re going to behave incompetently.

Duh. Is this part of the plan?

The chat, set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Brian McCormack from the National Security Council, Central Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe, Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator Steve Witkoff, White House chief of staff Suzy Wiles, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Joe Kent, nominated to run the National Counterterrorism Center.

Politico quoted ‘someone close to the White House’ saying, “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot.”

Since Goldberg elected to keep details of the planning from inclusion in his reporting, the potential for bad actors listening in is what the media is mostly focused on. But there’s other stuff in the transcripts published that certainly merits coverage.

Vice President Vance argued for delaying the response, urging a month-long campaign to educate the public about the importance of such a mission.

CIA Chief John Ratcliff included the name of an agent in the field, and general information possibly related to actual and current intelligence operations. Defense Secretary Hegseth detailed military plans that some participants would have normally been excluded from on a “need to know” basis.

The conversation between the Vice President and Defense Secretary reveals that the negativity coming from the administration about Europe isn’t just performative nonsense.

Via Politico:

• “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance texted. The Red Sea, where the Houthis have been attacking commercial shipping, carries more European goods than it does for the U.S. market.

• “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC,” Hegseth responded, showing that the administration’s rejection of some of America’s closest allies isn’t just for show.

• They did not mention that the U.K. is using its aerial refueling planes to help keep U.S. jets in the air over Yemen. The U.K., France and other NATO allies also have warships in the Red Sea escorting commercial ships and shooting down Houthi drones and missiles.

Negotiator Wikoff, it turns out, participated in the conversation from Moscow, where he met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. You can bet the farm that his little cell phone was compromised. It’s not that the Russians would feel obligated to act on what was said, it’s the contextual conversation that would have value.

It turns out that Michael Waltz and Stephen Miller were at Mar a Lago that day. Their names were included on the guest list for a candlelit secret dinner featuring the president where guests were asked to pay $1 million apiece to snag a seat.

Signal, the civilian app used for this text chat, was set to delete this content after seven days, illegally destroying records covered by the federal record preservation laws.

Jeff Heer at The Nation concludes this incident proves that we have an “administration flying by the seat of its pants, aware of its own policy incoherence but hoping to create a façade of strength through blustery tough-guy talk and the shakedown of allies.”

• Because the president’s America First foreign policy is already betraying its core principles, the Trump administration is trying to save face by attempting Mafia-style protection shakedowns. Waltz tries to assuage Vance’s concerns by writing, “Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”

• Stephen Miller shares this goal, writing that “we [will] soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

***

There is much to be learned from the responses to publication of this story, starting with the administration’s reactions, which started with denouncing The Atlantic and the reporter and ended with the dissemination of “new” facts.

The Secretary of Defense disembarked from a plane trip in Hawaii to snarl:

• "You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called 'journalist' who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,"

The “hoax” that fosters bad blood toward Goldberg is the infamous story that Trump, while visiting the graves of American World War II dead in France, called the dead "suckers and losers.”

Over on State TV aka Fox, the reactions have ranged from Jesse Watters’ “WE’VE ALL TEXTED THE WRONG PERSON BEFORE” to Sean Hannity ranting about “media hysteria.” Generally speaking, the story is being downplayed during “regular” news coverage.

Social media reactions to the story included brutal memes including Big Bird from Sesame Street.

At the Bulwark, Sarah Longwell and J.V. Last put together video clips of Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, and Pete Hegseth talking about the seriousness of handling secret information and the need for accountability for those who mishandle it.

National security advisor Mike Waltz is supposed to visit Greenland next we week, no doubt looking for the “many people” the President says are urging the US to take control of the island and surrounding waters. (Recent polls show 85% of Greenland citizens strongly against being annexed by the U.S.)

I guess the worst case scenario for Waltz is that his return plane won’t appear, or, better yet, his return trip ends in El Salvador.

LATE NEWS: With both Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe repeatedly claiming in a Senate hearing today that "no classified information" was shared in the Signal group chat, Jeffrey Goldberg is now saying he's considering releasing that information he received.

Law firms refuse to represent Trump opponents in the wake of his attacks by Michael Birnbaum at The Washington Post

• The sweeping campaign is targeting the livelihoods of the people best qualified to contest the legality of Trump’s agenda. Lawyers must now contend with the possibility they would face lawsuits, fines and other punishment aimed at them and even their other clients should they contest Trump administration efforts in court.

• “You need the legitimacy of law on your side at some level,” said Scott Cummings, a law professor at the UCLA School of Law who has studied challenges to the legal establishment. “This is the autocratic legal idea of claiming a democratic mandate to attack the rule of law by using law to really erode institutional pillars that are supposed to check executive power.”

• Trump’s actions toward lawyers have been “about disabling effective representation of anyone that Trump doesn’t like, and that is the beginning of the end of the adversarial system,” Cummings said, in which both sides of a legal case have equal access to present their views in front of a judge.

****

Texas lawmakers advance bill that makes it a crime for teachers to assign "Catcher in the Rye" by Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims at Popular Information

• Currently, if someone is charged with providing sexually explicit content to a child, they can argue that the content was provided in pursuit of a scientific, educational, or governmental purpose. SB 412 and HB 267 would remove this affirmative defense. This defense exists because, while some people provide explicit content to children to harm them, books that include sexual content have long been a valuable component of secondary education. Many classic works of literature, including "The Odyssey," "Catcher in the Rye," "Brave New World," and "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," have sexually explicit scenes.

• Under SB 412, which the Texas Senate voted to advance last week and now awaits approval by the House, teachers and librarians would no longer be able to argue that sexually explicit content can serve an educational purpose. Only law enforcement officials and judges would be exempted under the new law. SB 412 also leaves in place an exception if the adult providing the sexually explicit content is married to the child, which is legal in Texas, with a judge’s approval, if the child is at least 16 years old.

***

New Trump demand to colleges: Name protesters — and their nationalities by Laura Meckler at The Washington Post

• Investigations such as this begin with federal civil rights attorneys sending the universities a list of questions and data requests. One of the letters, for instance, began by asking for basic information, such as a list of policies and practices outlining how the school investigates complaints; reports and complaints of alleged antisemitic discrimination; and actions in response to each complaint.

• But the demand for information also included a broad request for the names of students potentially involved in harassment of Jews on campus. This request was not limited to people convicted of crimes or those found to have violated university policies.

• The request asked for a list of all students that the university notified of potential violations of the code of conduct or who were referred for suspension, suspended, expelled and/or referred to law enforcement for harassment of, or violence toward, students and faculty “on the basis of their Jewish ancestry.” The request covered the last academic year and the current one.