Good morning,
Back in the day, when you had a toy or device that required batteries, remember how you could just access the battery compartment using your fingernail? Now, every piece of battery-operated plastic crap that makes its way into my home has the battery area factory sealed with these tiny screws… which require a tiny screwdriver… which, once you acquire said mini-screwdriver, is too small to produce the force needed to unscrew the tiny screws. It’s like a process designed to make a working parent have a nervous breakdown at the end of a long day. Was this some sort of new safety regulation? Who is responsible? Did a kid eat a battery somewhere and now I’m forced to use a power drill to disassemble a $10 talking Frozen doll? I will get to the bottom of this today.
I digress. “Signalgate” as we’re apparently calling it now, continues into its third day. The White House could have put this story to bed yesterday but, in another sign of the Trump 1-era incompetence that remains in the new admin, they somehow managed to make it worse throughout the day.
First, Pete Hegseth flatly denied that anything sensitive was leaked to Jeff Goldberg, the Atlantic editor who maintains the text chain he got added to included time, place, and targets of the coming strikes. Then Mike Waltz, the nat sec adviser who added Goldberg to the chat in the first place, was deployed to Fox last night for a softball interview with Laura Ingraham. Except Ingraham actually played the part of journalist and pressed Waltz about how exactly Goldberg got onto the text chain.
Waltz, looking like a deer in headlights, said he took “full responsibility” but could not explain the why of the matter, first saying that Elon Musk was looking into it (?), then suggesting Goldberg was added by someone else as part of a conspiracy. When that fell flat with the normally agreeable host, he said the personal number of the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic somehow got “sucked in” to his phone. OK then!
All of this stems from the core Trumpian value of never apologizing. Because these guys all believe the worst thing they can do to cross the boss is to appear weak on TV, they dig themselves into these cartoonish holes whenever they’re caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Just say you screwed up! You had Goldberg’s number because he’s the preeminent nat sec journalist in the country and you’re the nat sec adviser to the president.
If I were White House press secretary, I would have ended this whole mishegoss with one statement:
“The president’s national security team acknowledges it made a bad mistake by accidentally adding a journalist to a discussion of upcoming airstrikes targeting the Houthis in Yemen. But the reason they were forced to have such a conversation in the first place is because Joe Biden rolled over on the Houthi problem, choosing to let a group of third-rate terrorists establish territorial dominion over the most critical shipping lane in the world, thus increasing costs and pollution for companies forced to send their goods around Africa to avoid the possibility of being attacked in the Red Sea, all while adding to the inflation and supply chain disruptions we’re all familiar with now. Had Biden just dealt with the Houthis, we wouldn’t be here in the first place. And, by the way, the reason they’re talking on Signal is because Beijing is listening in on every voice call in the country, because past administrations failed to deal with that problem, too.”
Done, scandal over, onto the next. Now I can focus my attention on Batterygate.
For many in Europe, Vice President JD Vance’s skepticism toward the continent has long been evident. As the junior senator from Ohio, he criticized NATO spending habits, mocked EU technocrats and labeled U.S. support for Ukraine an “unsustainable indulgence.” As a senate candidate, he went further, famously saying he didn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” Now, the leaked Signal chat among senior Trump officials has thrust Vance’s stance on the EU back into the open. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance reportedly said. Read more from Newsweek’s Jesus Mesa.
Also happening:
Election voting changes: President Donald Trump issued an executive order to change some of the processes around voting in the U.S to promote “free, fair, and honest” elections. The order addresses issues in four main areas, including requiring voter ID, but is likely to face legal challenges. Read more.Pennsylvania special election: Democrat James Malone is projected to win a special election for the state Senate in Pennsylvania, in a district that Donald Trump won by 15 points in November. Here’s the latest.
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