Look, can you blame the guy for being excited about his job? The New York Times on Sunday reported that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent the March 15 Yemen bombing details to a second group chat on Signal, this time dealing out specific details to his wife, his brother, his personal lawyer, and others. In its traditional brand of understatement, the Times noted that it is “not clear why” those people “would need to know about upcoming military strikes.”
Though the original Signalgate involved a group created by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and the accidental inclusion of the editor of The Atlantic, this second chat seemed pretty free of accident. Hegseth created the group himself, and in spite of warnings from more experienced aides to, you know, not text details of bombing runs to a bunch of people and to keep discussions like that to a government-issued phone rather than a personal device, well, here we are.
Also included in the group were a variety of aides and underlings, including two — Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick — who were recently accused of leaking Pentagon information (they deny this happened) and fired. Meanwhile, a former top spokesman for the Pentagon described Hegseth’s reign as “total chaos.” Combat veteran and Senator Tammy Duckworth: “Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity.”
Both Trump administrations have seemed from the outside like just wildly miserable places to work. Flinging F/A-18 takeoff timing around the group chats may seem “stupid,” or “illegal,” or “incredibly dangerous,” but at least the guy seems super excited to tell people about his job.
GET SPLINTER RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
The Truth Hurts
