Five Alarm Fire on SignalGate

Sorry to step away from my usual economics beat, but this is important. And to be clear, I am not at all a fan of the war on the Houthis, but that is beside the point.

The Trump administration had a meeting with all its top national security staff, except Trump, planning a war against the Houthis on an unsecured system. They also managed to unknowingly include a senior editor/reporter from Atlantic magazine in the meeting.

This was an incredible breach of any normal security protocols. Whatever the level of classification, there is zero doubt that this material should have been kept secret. They discussed specific targets for attacks, as well as the timing. That information would undoubtedly endanger the missions, and the lives of the crews flying them, if it became known in advance to the Houthis.

If something like this had happened under Biden, there is no doubt that heads would roll. The people responsible for setting up the meeting (Defense Secretary Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz in this case) would surely lose their jobs. In fact, there is a good chance that everyone at the meeting would lose their jobs.

We can be certain that in this case, every Republican in Congress, and probably most Democrats, would be yelling non-stop about what a horrible breach of security Biden had committed. They would rightly condemn the incredible ineptitude.

Also, they would be mercilessly trashing “Sleepy Joe” for not even bothering to show up at a meeting where his administration was planning a war on another country and putting US troops at danger. We could be pretty damn certain there would be articles of impeachment filed, and they quite possibly would even move through an actual impeachment.

It is not surprising that the Republican reaction would be more muted with a Republican president. But this response really is over the top incredible. Their official line is that there is nothing to see here, everything is perfectly normal. The only problem is that a sleazy Democratic reporter somehow was in the meeting and is making a big deal out of it.

This is pure “night is day” “black is white” stuff. Trump and the Republicans are insisting on pushing a story that is 180 degrees at odds with the reality we can all see right in front of our faces. They are making absurd claims that nothing in the meeting was classified and that they weren’t actually “war plans.” (They were very happy that the Atlantic called them “attack plans” when they published the transcript, instead of “war plans.” Imagine the “attack plans” for the D-Day invasion of France had leaked.)

The question right now is whether the administration can get away with this sort of absurd gaslighting on an issue that ordinarily would be seen as being of the utmost importance. If they can tell boldfaced lies about this, they can get away with anything.

This is why it matters. If the Trump administration can just walk away saying “nothing to see here” after getting caught holding a war planning session on an unsecured communication system, they can get away with anything. The future is not good.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.