Right now, it's less than 24 hours since Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic published a story describing his accidental inclusion in a Trump administration national security group chat on Signal that eventually provided details on an upcoming mission to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen. Maybe the narratives from the GOP and the administration will become more elaborate in the next few days or weeks, but for now, Republicans barely seem to be trying. The first response from our co-presidents was: This was in The Atlantic? Only losers work there!
President Trump: "I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic, to me it's a magazine that's going out of business. I think it's not much of a magazine...you're telling me about it for the first time." pic.twitter.com/Jd1wG1WzVJ
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 24, 2025
Best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of The Atlantic magazine, because no one ever goes there https://t.co/10A01hObHO
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2025
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is going with Goldberg is a lying liar LIE-beral and no actual war plans were discussed:
Hegseth said:
You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again, to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the "fine people on both sides" hoax, or "suckers and losers" hoax. So this is a guy that peddles in garbage. This is what he does.And also:
Nobody was texting war plans, and that's all I have to say about that. Alright, I appreciate it. That's it.Karoline Leavitt, Trump's press secretary, went with the same messages (her tweet is here):
They assume they can get away with dishonestly saying that no war plans were discussed because while Goldberg made clear in his story that war plans absolutely were discussed, he was careful not to publish those details, because he's taking more care to protect America's national security that the people in this chat. They know he won't publish the details. So they're brazening it out.
If the parties were reversed, minority Republicans in the House and Senate would angrily insist upon hearings in multiple Senate and House committees, and abashed Democrats in the majority would agree that hearings need to be held. The pressure would be so great that there would already be at least one resignation, and probably several. Donald Trump would be accusing the chat group of treason, as would many other Republicans, and Trump and other Republicans would be suggesting the death penalty as an appropriate punishment.
Some of that would be a tad excessive in our current circumstances. However:
Literally every Democrat in Washington should be doing this:
The current head of the Democratic National Committee is calling for Hegseth's resignation, as is one of his predecessors:
Harrison, to his credit, wants Democrats in Congress to do more than just make demands:
And Senator Tammy Duckworth says Hegseth should go:
But this Politico story suggests that Democrats are -- as usual -- likely to dither:
Jason Bresler, a Democratic strategist, said the episode could play into “a waterfall effect” of news cycle after news cycle that “wears down on voters,” while Mike Nellis, a digital strategist, said Democrats “need to settle on 2-3 stories we’re telling people about how the Trump administration is hurting the American people. One of them absolutely has to be focused on how we’re less safe with these idiots texting war plans to unknown phone numbers.”On the question of whether voters care about anything other than egg prices, Brian Beutler has a good rebuttal to Representative Quigley:
But the issue, for now, doesn’t immediately touch voters’ bank accounts, the key factor that decided the 2024 election. Instead, it involves foreign policy — an issue that doesn’t typically register among midterm voters.
“Let’s see how it plays out and how people understand it,” said Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, who also serves on the Intel committee, “how they learn why it’s important to them that intelligence is kept secret, and why that keeps them safe.”
The lesson of the Clinton emails debacle is that the public can be made to care about many, many things more than they care about the price of eggs. At least for the purposes of determining how much they approve of or like or trust politicians. Pull them into a focus group, where they want to be perceived a certain way, or candid about their material circumstances, and they’ll tell pollsters all about their economic struggles and hopes for a more prosperous future. But then they’ll whip out their phones and get worked up about whatever bullshit gets served to them on whatever sources of information they choose.But isn't Mike Nellis right? Shouldn't Democrats "settle on 2-3 stories we’re telling people about how the Trump administration is hurting the American people," one of which may or may not be this? I'd respond to that by pointing out how Trump operates. We're talking about tariffs, we're talking about DOGE budget and personnel cuts, we're talking about the disappearances of immigrants who were allegedly gang members but clearly aren't, we're talking about crackdowns on universities where anti-Israel protests have taken place, we're talking about Ukraine, we're talking about the president's efforts to strong-arm Greenland and Canada ... and in the middle of all this, Trump tosses another story into the mix by complaining about a six-year-old portrait of himself at the Colorado state capitol that he suddenly decided he doesn't like. He clearly doesn't think it's risky to have too many stories out there. And his whining persuaded Colorado to take the painting down.
Just be bold for once. No one's going to accuse you of being "woke" or engaging in "faculty-lounge politics" if you defend the operational security of America's military planning. But for Democrats, fear isn't a strategy -- it's a reflex. It's the party's default setting.
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UPDATE: Okay, I'm seeing some righteous rage in Senate hearings today.
Senator Schumer? Congressman Jeffries? Watch and learn.
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UPDATE: Hakeem Jeffries has just said that Hegseth should be "fired immediately."
