The news broken yesterday by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, that he had received top secret war plans and intelligence operations information when he had been included in a text chain in the "chat room" of Signal, a commercial social networking app, adds new mystery to a climate of growing confusion in American politics. The text chain was passing between the top national security officials of the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, along with fourteen others. Goldberg was added to the text chain just in time to see Pete Hegseth announce the imminent bombing of Houthi positions in Yemen by US naval jets.
This is the most serious breach of national security since the leaks by Edward Snowden twelve years ago. If we had a real president, she would insist that the Secretary of Defense resign immediately, and would order an investigation into the culpability of the other security officials on the text chain, to see if other resignations were warranted. The response of the Trump administration and its allies in the GOP has been Orwellian in its divorce from any semblance of rationality. Hegseth's one comment has been to insult Goldberg, who can only be blamed for being a good citizen and reporting the security breach without compromising any state secrets.
The total contempt that Trump officials are showing for their oaths of office and any basic sense of official responsibility is in equal measure bewildering and disgusting. If this transgression can pass without consequence or accountability, what constraints can exist for the behavior of Trump officials at all? In conversations with conservative friends I have had to endure eye rolling and condescension at the suggestion that this administration could come to resemble that of Nazi Germany should certain conditions come to pass. Presumably the disbelief expressed by those friends is rooted in the sense that Trump and his cabinet have some minimal scruples that would preclude them behaving like Nazis. But if someone in a position of responsibility as austere as that of Pete Hegseth feels comfortable spouting absurd nonsense in response to a critically perilous breach of the public trust, one can only conclude that he values nothing above his own power and ambition. Would acting like a Nazi be beyond such a person? Would you want to bet your life on it?
