It seemed, for a little while at least, that one of the most egregious and egregiously stupid national security breaches in recent memory would somehow avoid bringing any of its perpetrators down. The inadvertent addition of Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to the Signal group chat whose very existence was already a significant Pentagon no-no would, in any previous administration, have led to the relatively quick resignation of both National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and WARFIGHTER enthusiast Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth, somehow, is still standing, while Waltz finally appears to be taking the fall.
Multiple outlets reported on Thursday that Waltz will soon be ousted — though he doesn’t seem to have been anticipating the decision, appearing on Fox News in the morning. He apparently had been frozen out of West Wing inner circles in the wake of the group chat fiasco, and some including Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles have been very “unimpressed” with Waltz, according to CNN. Not too unimpressed, though — in a post on Truth Social Trump said on Thursday afternoon that Waltz isn’t being banished to Alaska or anything, but will instead be nominated to be the ambassador to the UN. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will, somehow, take over as acting NSA while maintaining his role at State.
Meanwhile, the least qualified Defense Secretary in history remains hunkered down in an increasingly chaotic Pentagon, with leaks pouring through the cracks in the walls every day. It has since been revealed that while forwarding securely-sent messages from a general regarding details of the attack on Houthis in Yemen to the Goldberg-lurked group chat, he was also sending the same information to his wife, lawyer, brother, and others who had no business seeing it. He apparently set up Signal on a computer in his Pentagon office, in blatant violation of long-standing security rules. He remains obsessed with being photographed trying to look tough with troops and overusing words like “lethality” while running the world’s largest bureaucracy.
It could be considered a mild upset that Hegseth wasn’t the first to go in what will surely end up being just as much a revolving door Cabinet as the first time around. With Waltz gone, Hegseth should probably take the top spot in terms of odds for who is next, but upsets are always possible.
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