Why Trump voters love him more than ever. edit: And how the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic got on a Signal chat list during the planning for last weekend's attack on the Houthis
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Mike Waltz may end up being the fall guy.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/24/mike-waltz-signal-chat-resign-00246541
How many Scaramuccis would it be if he gets the ax?
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Hegseth denies Goldberg’s account of what happened. After the administration basically confirmed that it really did happen.
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/24/hegseth-trump-atlantic-yemen-houthis-text-war-plan
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@kluurs Yea, she posted "You've got to be kidding me!" on X with a link to Goldberg's Atlantic article.
CNN came up with a video montage of some of the folks who were in the Signal chat group and their past comments about her email server. The comments haven't aged well, to say the least.
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Valuable info for the Europeans.
If Europe wasn’t already on notice, the extraordinary leak of deliberations by JD Vance and other top-level Trump administration officials over a strike against the Houthis in Yemen was another sign that it has a target on its back.
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Ouch.
Several days after top national security officials accidentally included a reporter in a Signal chat about bombing Houthi sites in Yemen, a Pentagon-wide advisory warned against using the messaging app, even for unclassified information.
"A vulnerability has been identified in the Signal messenger application," begins the department-wide email, dated March 18, obtained by NPR.
The memo continues, "Russian professional hacking groups are employing the 'linked devices' features to spy on encrypted conversations." It notes that Google has identified Russian hacking groups who are "targeting Signal Messenger to spy on persons of interest."
Moreover there was a memo in 2023 obtained by NPR warning of using Signal for using any non-public official information.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339801/pentagon-email-signal-vulnerability
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But wait! There’s more!
President Trump's Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials — and inadvertently, one journalist — on the messaging app Signal, a CBS News analysis of open-source flight information and Russian media reporting has revealed.
Russia has repeatedly tried to compromise Signal, a popular commercial messaging platform that many were shocked to learn senior Trump administration officials had used to discuss sensitive military planning.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-envoy-steve-witkoff-signal-text-group-chat-russia-putin/
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Goldberg has released the entire chat. Redacting one person's name even though technically Ratcliffe said that person is not undercover.
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Waltz takes responsibility. And gets some insults in for good measure.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/25/mike-waltz-signal-fox-interview-00249896
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Of course people are wondering why Waltz had Goldberg's number in his phone to begin with.
The editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, has nothing to say about his relationship with national security adviser Mike Waltz, who inadvertently added him to a group chat about the United States' highly sensitive plans to bomb Yemen days ago.
"I'm just not going to comment on my relationship with Mike Waltz," Goldberg told CBS News in an interview Wednesday.
Waltz claimed he has "never met" with Goldberg, wouldn't be able to pick him out of a police lineup and trashed his reputation, calling him "the bottom scum of journalists." But photos surfaced online earlier Wednesday of the two together at an event at the French Embassy in 2021.
"If your eyeballs see us together, then I guess your eyeballs are seeing us together," Goldberg said of the photos.
Waltz has also suggested that Goldberg somehow added himself to the Signal chat that also included Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — or that some other technical mishap that led to the breach. Goldberg called the claims "crazy."
"This is what happened on March 11," Goldberg continued. "I got a message request from Michael Waltz. I accepted the message request. That's what happened." Signal only allows users to add people to chat groups by phone number, QR code or username of the person they wish to add. The Atlantic story published Wednesday included a screenshot that showed Waltz as administrator and "JG" as a member of the group chat, named the "Houthi PC small group."
"If I'm such a nefarious character," Goldberg said, "why am I in Mike Waltz's phone? Why does he have my phone number? Why is he including me in this chat? And what do you expect a reporter to do when you learn interesting information about the way an administration is contemplating military action? What do they really think is going to happen?"
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-goldberg-atlantic-mike-waltz-signal-group-chat-yemen/
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And the clown car rolls on…from Wired…
A Venmo account under the name “Michael Waltz,” carrying a profile photo of the national security adviser and connected to accounts bearing the names of people closely associated with him, was left open to the public until Wednesday afternoon. A WIRED analysis shows that the account revealed the names of hundreds of Waltz’s personal and professional associates, including journalists, military officers, lobbyists, and others—information a foreign intelligence service or other actors could exploit for any number of ends, experts say..
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Military pilots are outraged about The Signal fiasco. NYT report.
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Surprising.
The knives are out for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Politico reports that White House and Pentagon insiders are increasingly questioning Hegseth’s judgment and see him as the culprit in the disastrous news that Trump’s top advisors discussed war plans in an insecure chat, a scandal that continues to shake the administration. This comes as a poll finds that 74 percent of Americans see the leak as a serious problem, including 60 percent of Republicans. And here’s another striking number: Only 42 percent of Republicans say the media is making too big a deal about the scandal, suggesting that MAGA’s effort to blame the fake news for this fiasco is going belly up even with GOP voters.
https://newrepublic.com/article/193361/transcript-trump-text-fiasco-worsens-knives-come-hegseth
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Goldberg is a hoot.
Trump has so far declined to fire any of those involved, with the president dismissing it as a “glitch” and instead attacking Goldberg. Waltz, meanwhile, said that Goldberg’s number was somehow “sucked in” to his phone and added to the Signal group chat.
Goldberg has rejected this explanation. “I don’t know what he’s talking about there,” the journalist told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. Referring to a science fiction movie about humans unknowingly living in a simulated reality, Goldberg said: “This isn’t ‘The Matrix’. Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones.
“You know, very frequently in journalism, the most obvious explanation is the explanation. My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/31/pete-hegseth-republican-voters
