When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked Monday about his role in one of the most embarrassing political screwups in United States history, he looked directly into the cameras and went after the real culprit: Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic who was—accidentally, we assume—included in an encrypted group chat earlier this month about plans to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen. “This is the guy that peddles in garbage,” Hegseth said, seething. “This is what he does.” He rattled off a series of scandals from the first Trump administration that he—and his boss—see as media hoaxes, from “Russia, Russia, Russia” to the “fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville to the allegation that Trump disparaged fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”
Never mind that the Trump administration had already acknowledged that Goldberg’s reporting on the Signal app chat was accurate, or that Hegseth ultimately bore responsibility for including a journalist in a discussion of top-secret war plans. In the MAGA-verse, the real culprit is always something or someone else. Whether that strategy will save Hegseth’s hide here is unclear. He has to know that, in most administrations, his screwup would be a fireable offense. But this is clearly not a normal administration. Hegseth is there not because he actually has the skills and experience to be the defense secretary, but because the former Fox News host knows to look handsomely into the camera, flagrantly lie, and enthusiastically flatter and defend Dear Leader.
Signalgate, as the Beltway media is calling it, has all the hallmarks of a screwup from President Trump’s first term; it’s reminiscent of when, in May of 2017, he reportedly shared classified information with Russia’s foreign minister. The big difference this time around is that it wasn’t Trump himself who screwed up—unless you count the fact that he hired these bozos in the first place. But that bring us to one of two reasons why Trump’s second term has thus far been worse than the first. Last time around, he staffed his administration with Republican stalwarts who mostly had the requisite experience, but now he’s surrounded by lackeys and shills, all of whom have been picked for their loyalty (and, in many cases, have repeatedly expressed that loyalty in the right-wing media). And unlike last time, when Trump seemed entirely unprepared to win the presidency, the political right has been preparing for his return to power for four years. The result is chaos and destruction.
The group chat story reads like a modern reimagining of Dr. Strangelove. The participants are planning a bombing campaign against Houthi rebels, who are aligned with Iran; attacking them risks escalating a relatively contained conflict into a regional war. However, that wasn’t the primary concern of those on the chat, which apparently included Vice President JD Vance, national security advisor Michael Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, top White House adviser Stephen Miller, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, among others.
The strikes were intended to secure the Suez Canal, which has been routinely disrupted by Houthi rebels for years—but that would benefit America’s ostensible European allies. “I think we are making a mistake,” Vance wrote, reflecting an administration that despises those longtime allies, seeing them instead as freeloaders who rely on U.S. “3 percent of US trade runs through the [Suez]. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary.” Later, Vance got to the point: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (Turns out, this administration might love missile strikes even more.)
The text thread is a window into the administration’s approach to policy issues, but it mostly makes clear that these are stupid, reckless people pursuing stupid, reckless policies. It’s not so different from the approach we’ve seen from Elon Musk’s DOGE, where a strikeforce of coders with no government experience storm government buildings and start whipping sledgehammers around. Much of the devastation is intended, and potentially permanent. Entire agencies are no more. But in many cases, the recklessness of the cuts has resulted in the apparently unintended disruption of vital services, causing DOGE to scramble to fix their mistake—like bringing back the air traffic control staffers who were fired, or reinstating a USAID contract to provide lifesaving nutrition to starving children.
On the one hand, there is a master plan and that master plan involves the wholesale gutting of the federal government. On the other, in many cases what you see is exactly what happens when you hire loud, stupid, incompetent people for reasons that have nothing to do with professional ability.
To be fair, foreign policy and war planning are difficult and complicated, and things often go awry even when competent people are in charge. Look no further than the United States’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, which happened after years of preparation and nonetheless was a failure so spectacular it may have ultimately led to Trump’s reelection. (At the very least, it marked the start of a polling slide for Joe Biden that he never recovered from.) Striking Houthi rebels in Yemen is a much simpler operation. But the way that this administration handles everything makes failure and disaster more likely. What if the next accidentally leaked chat messages are about direct strikes on Iran?
Which brings us back to Hegseth talking to reporters. He has a simple playbook: Act like Trump. The administration’s failures, like the president’s, are never actually their fault. They are the fault of Democrats, liberals, college students, journalists—really anyone who fits the bill. (The bill, specifically, is whatever Fox News will put on a chyron to excuse the administration’s failures.) Hegseth is good at this because he was reasonably good at being on television. He got his current job for this reason. The problem with being good on television, however, is that it is perhaps the least transferable skill in existence. It certainly hasn’t made Hegseth a remotely competent secretary of defense, just as Trump’s years on The Apprentice didn’t make him a remotely competent president. But this isn’t really a problem for them, is it? They’re doing just fine. It’s merely a problem for America—both its ability to function internally and its standing in the world. And that’s not something these narcissistic nitwits are particularly concerned about.
