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Brent G. Doncaster's avatar

Yes, America voted for the chuckle head clown circus, and oh boy are we getting it.

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Dan Holm's avatar

I can't wait for the inevitable circular firing squad that is coming from these morons.

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Christi's avatar

Love that they are all giving The Atlantic a ton of publicity through their “hate.” These folks are proving exactly why a free press matters so much!

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Daniel M Kimmel's avatar

Trump keeps saying The Atlantic is "failing" when the opposite is true (and, even, if so is irrelevant. If Trump needs an example of a business that's tanking he might look at Tesla.

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NanceeM's avatar

He always just recycles the same, tired lines. His collection of lie words is pretty limited.

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Rich Dixon's avatar

I am a believer in Occam's Razor myself. As a veteran, I've been in many a situation where we understood 'stuff' happens. Listening to Walz rationalize, quibble, equivocate when POTUS called on him in the conference room the other day was telling. Walz said everything he could think of to placate POTUS. Frankly was sad and embarrassing to see a fellow veteran & a former SF officer eviscerate his integrity like he did.

The material Hegseth shared in the Signal exchange confirms he was chosen not due to merits. He is such an insecure person that he felt providing the small group PC all those details would show just how relevant he is now. Having worked on those type operations at the strategic level, there is no need for members of the PC to have all that detail. Plus, the Principals are all quibbling about the term 'war plans.' In the lexicon of the military, what they were communicating about were 'operational' strikes. War plans are generally considered the plans major commands have prepared and gained approval on for major contingencies and large scale operations. They're trying to skirt the issue.

The operational strike details would have been classified at a high level, higher than Secret. The irresponsible, careless, imprudent, thoughtless exchange by the members of that small group PC is shocking. If I had shared any of that on an app such as Signal, as a Joint Staff or Combatant Command staff officer or leader I would have been summarily relieved.

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Donna's avatar

Absolutely dead on correct imho. No one "needed to know" all those details. Nevermind who was on the call, the problem begins with a braggadocio Hegseth wanting someone important to know how his great plans were successful! Minute by minute BS totally stupid to anyone. A simple "Mission Accomplished" for those who "need to know" would have sufficed. The platform used is another violation altogether.

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NanceeM's avatar

"Safety in numbers" theory in action.

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Left-Of-Center's avatar

Agreed 💯, Rich!

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Thomas Rusch's avatar

An 11th grade civics class would do a better job of running the country....

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Kirk Victor's avatar

Legacy media kicked butt! What could be more legacy media than The Atlantic? It follows the scoop of the battle between Mr. Musk and Secretary Rubio during a cabinet meeting, as detailed by The New York Times. Another reminder of why I'm proud of all reporters, regardless of where they work, who are not intimidated but going full throttle to inform the public without fear of favor. That Pete Hegseth and Michael Waltz are attacking Jeffrey Goldberg is a page from President Trump's playbook--never admit error, never apologize, just attack. The hypocrisy of Trump and others who excoriated Hillary Clinton for using a home-server as Secretary of State is stunning. Mr. Hegseth said of Clinton's emails: "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." Hegseth also said, "If it was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now."

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‘King Donald's avatar

This crisis is clearly escalating now that the signal texts have been released. Trump’s Administration is incompetent and clearly can’t govern. We have got to the point where state governments need to take extreme measures to protect their citizens from being killed by the Trump Administration.

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Sam's avatar

The coverup is usually worse than the crime

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William m Gaffney's avatar

Richard Nixon. At least his didnt effect national security

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Rocket Master Man's avatar

They lie as easily as they breath.

Did ya see Tulsi yesterday? She looked like she was about to cry.

How about Kash? The dude was bug-eyed about something. Give him a drug test.

And then today.

Oh my, yes, the glorious revelations.

How stupid are these fuckers? They KNEW what Goldberg had seen.

The all but DARED him to release the full messages. And he did.

And they are now not only the stupidest fuckers in the government, but the biggest liars.

But, hey, the price of eggs, right?

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Mike O'Neill's avatar

What I struggle with is what can be done about something like this?

The core issue is that classified information was communicated in an unsecured way that violates policy and regulations.

That administration lies about what happened. And refuses to answer questions in front of Congress. And when I say "lies" - it's not even opinion. Everyone can see the information that was communicated and the rules that should be applied.

The nonsense about whether people like Goldberg, or the Biden administration used Signal, or maybe Elon can figure out how Goldberg hacked into Signal, etc. - it's all stupid, obvious deflection and it doesn't address the core issue: why was classified information shared unsecurely?

Everyone knows what they did was seriously wrong. Everyone also knows that they are blatantly lying about it. But it seems that there is nothing that can be done.

It's seriously depressing.

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Jennifer S's avatar

By extension, wouldn't this also mean he was using his personal phone rather than a government issued phone? Unless he kept the government phone from his time in Congress, but that seems unlikely. Isn't this why government phones are issued in the first place - for security and the like?

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NanceeM's avatar

Starts right at the top. Trump has never surrendered his personal, unsecured phone.

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Richard Ramey's avatar

The only thing about this that surprises me is that Joe Biden hasn't been blamed for this. Or Hillary.

As Donald Trump would say, "Stay tuned."

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Eileen Selogie's avatar

I think they tried that angle in yesterday's hearing. Something like "you know that the *Biden* administration people used Signal."

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Dawn Kucera's avatar

And wow, they had an opportunity to to fix this “bad Biden activity” right?

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Dina Yagodich's avatar

I'm now subscribing to The Atlantic.

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Brannon McAllister's avatar

Exactly right.

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Mary K. Vincent's avatar

Mike Walz: "I'm not a National Security Advisor. I just play one on T.V."

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Mary K. Vincent's avatar

To paraphrase my earlier comment:

Pete Hegseth: "I'm not the Secretary of Defense. I just play one on T.V."

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Todd Bauer's avatar

It really is a shame that it had to happen with Goldberg of all people, given his anti-Trump creds and his... unscrupulous reporting during the Iraq War. It's going to give credulous people a reason to doubt or ignore this absolutely massive blunder. How the fuck do you add JEFFREY GOLDBERG of all people to that thread? It beggars belief.

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Dawn Kucera's avatar

Dont’ blame the “victim.” The trump apologists are trying to make this Goldberg’s fault he was on the call. Since he’s “scum” this is all his fault.

And this is all a distraction. DOD guidelines specifically say, don’t use SIGNAL for official business.

So what if Biden did? Then this was a golden chance to change that bad behavior, not use it as an excuse to continue. And by the way, when has anyone in the trump administration wanted to do anything Biden did?

These people are flailing, in public, surrounded by the biggest security lapse in a long long time.

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Todd Bauer's avatar

I... I'm just... Huh? Did you mean to reply to someone else?

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Dawn Kucera's avatar

Meant to write it as a new entry. Didn’t mean it as a reply to you. Sorry!😊

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Eileen Selogie's avatar

As the saying goes, when you hear hoofbeats, you expect to see horses, not zebras.

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