By now, everyone with an internet connection knows that The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg accidentally found himself in a Signal chat where some of the highest-ranking members of the Trump administration—National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Vice President JD Vance, among others—were hashing out details of a pending military strike on the Houthis. It was a national security blunder of breathtaking proportions.
But rather than acknowledge the obvious and assure the public that they would do better next time, the Trump administration decided to deny, deflect, and dig the hole deeper.
The Art of the (Bad) Cover-Up
Hegseth, in particular, has been adamant that nothing sensitive was shared in the chat. His defense? The messages contained:
“No names.”
“No targets.”
“No locations.”
“No units.”
“No routes.”
“No sources.”
“No methods.”
“No classified information.”
That’s quite the laundry list of things not included, and yet the leaked messages reportedly contained discussions of what the U.S. would be hitting, how it would be hitting them, and when the strikes would take place. In other words, the core operational details of a military strike. It’s almost as if Hegseth wants us to believe that war plans are only "classified" if they come stamped with a big red “TOP SECRET” label and a warning from Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible.
Unfortunately for Hegseth, national security doesn’t work that way. Certain types of information—particularly information related to military operations—are born classified. The moment he relayed CENTCOM’s strike sequencing and targeting plans over an unclassified commercial messaging app, the damage was already done. The fact that Goldberg himself had front-row seats to the chat only adds insult to injury.
A Predictable (and Avoidable) Mess
It would have been one thing if the administration had simply admitted they made a mistake. After all, the military operation itself was successful, and no American lives were lost. A little humility—acknowledging the error, promising to tighten security protocols—would have gone a long way toward putting the issue to rest.
But this is the Trump administration we’re talking about, and admitting mistakes is not in the playbook. Instead, officials doubled down, insisted nothing improper happened, and made matters worse when Goldberg published the full messages, making clear that—shockingly—something improper did happen. Their response was, in a word, Clintonian—splitting hairs over definitions rather than grappling with the substance of the issue.
The irony here is that Hegseth, who so often rails against bureaucratic incompetence and lack of accountability, just gave the American people a textbook case of both. He and his colleagues demonstrated exactly why sensitive discussions should happen on secured government channels and not in a group chat that—whoops!—accidentally includes a journalist.
Some Fights Aren’t Worth Fighting
There’s an old saying in crisis communications: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. This was not a scandal worth going to the mat over. No troops were lost, the operation succeeded, and even the administration’s fiercest critics would have struggled to make this into a major political firestorm if the White House had simply said, Yes, we screwed up. No, it won’t happen again.
Instead, Trump’s team chose to escalate and obfuscate, ensuring that the story would stretch on for days, with each new revelation making their denials look more ridiculous.
