New phone, Houthis?

I know that we’ve begrudgingly come to accept the fact that nothing sticks to “Teflon Don.” But this latest scandal - wherein top White House officials accidentally and recklessly added a journalist into a group chat to discuss war plans on the unsecured Signal app - is different. And that is owed, in part, to the obstinance of this administration itself.

The Trump mentality is that you never admit fault, no matter how egregious or how obvious. This is lesson one of the Roy Cohn School of Management. Trump abides by it and now, by association, so too do his acolytes. And so rather than simply accepting responsibility for this “epic fuckup” (to quote Pete Buttigieg), instead we’ve seen a spate of excuses and obfuscations that have only served the purpose of further amplifying this story.

One such excuse: none of the information discussed within the chat was classified.

Here, they’re relying on a clever little trick, wherein Trump himself is the classification authority, so he can simply declare that the information discussed is declassified, which will retroactively absolve everyone involved. But according to national security expert Ned Price, whom I interviewed about this topic, “When you talk about pending military operations - tactics, techniques and procedures; TTP as they’re called - that is by definition classified information, so it is hard to imagine that the substance they were communicating was not classified at the time.” In other words, they can try retroactive procedural maneuvers to cover their asses, but the information they were discussing was by nature classified.

Another excuse: that Jeffrey Goldberg schemed his way into the group chat.

Jeffrey Goldberg “somehow” got invited. That “somehow” is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting here, considering it was Mike Walz himself who reportedly added Goldberg to the chat. But because one must never accept responsibility, Walz would rather play make believe on national TV, even if it invites endless derision from those of us living on Earth One, than shoulder the blame for his own actions.

Even Don Jr. got in on the action, tweeting:

First of all, it wouldn’t matter if Goldberg was the Democratic nominee for president of the United States; the facts surrounding his involvement are not in dispute and were verified by the White House. So Don Jr. can paint Goldberg as a partisan all he wants, but it’s completely immaterial.

Nonetheless, let’s humor Don Jr. and assume that Goldberg is a rabid partisan Democrat. Hell, let’s throw all caution to the wind and say that Greenberg organizes BLM protests when he’s not leading local Antifa chapter meetings. Wouldn’t that be all the more reason not to have invited him into the group chat? Seems like a damning indictment against the Trump team that not only did they accidentally invite a reporter into their war planning sesh, but they invited a “registered Democrat” whose “wife also worked for Hillary Clinton and has donated nearly $25k to Democrats.” Seems extra bad, doesn’t it, Don?

The excuses seem to continue unabated as the Trump team finds more and more creative ways to try and evade accountability. Like “they’ve made a big deal of this because we’ve had two perfect months.” Or that Signal is “the best technology for the moment.” Each one more nonsensical than the last. The problem for Trump and Republicans is that this scandal is so cut and dry, so simple, so straightforward that their obfuscation attempts aren’t buying them any goodwill, but instead ring so shamelessly false that they only serve to invite more scorn and derision. Even Tomi Lahren called out the lunacy of this strategy:

But they can’t come out and explicitly say they F’ed up, because the Trump mantra is to never say you F’ed up. And so instead, they will keep presenting more excuses - on which they will double, triple and quadruple down - effectively ensuring that this story remains in the zeitgeist. Rather than deal with the fleeting discomfort of one bad news cycle, they are ensuring the perpetual discomfort of endless bad news cycles— owed entirely to their relentless focus on ego.

The reality is that this administration isn’t concerned with upholding our national security, and it never was. The people serving in the Trump White House are there because they are perfectly content to undermine our democracy on Trump’s behalf. For all of Trump’s faults, he did manage to succeed at finding those morally bankrupt enough to do his bidding. We may all be collectively less safe as the result of that, but clearly, that’s a risk Trump is willing to have us take. Because after all, Trump’s presidency isn’t about us; Trump’s presidency is about Trump.