The revelation that top Trump aides discussed plans for military strikes in an unsecured text chain — and inadvertently included a journalist in the group — is a case study in how President Donald Trump’s pattern of hiring wildly unqualified Fox News personalities for top administration positions can generate crises. But the Trumpist propaganda network’s current stars are doing their best to run cover for their former colleagues, telling their viewers that “the state-run legacy media mob” is conspiring to attack the administration and the “the bigger takeaway” from the messages is that America is in good hands.
Earlier this month, former Fox weekend morning host turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing” in a Signal group chat, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported Monday
The group’s membership apparently included national security adviser Mike Waltz and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, both former Fox contributors, as well as Vice President JD Vance and several other senior White House officials and Cabinet secretaries. It also included Goldberg, who was apparently included inadvertently by Waltz. Goldberg did not mention any signs of dismay from the group, suggesting that this may not have been the first time such information had been shared in this way.
Sharing such information over Signal rather than relying on the facilities established for handling highly classified information constitutes a massive security breach that may have put American lives at risk and violated federal law, according to experts consulted by Goldberg and other reporters.
“You don’t put classified information on unclassified devices like Signal,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who specialized in intelligence as an Air Force brigadier general, told reporters later that day. “And there’s no doubt, I’m an intelligence guy, Russia and China are monitoring both their phones, right. So putting out classified information like that endangers our forces, and I can’t believe that they were knowingly putting that kind of classified information on unclassified systems, it’s just wrong.”
Trump has hired at least 20 former Fox employees for top administration posts, seemingly prioritizing the fact that he liked their TV hits over traditional qualifications. Now we are seeing the consequences.
“The incident appears to validate the fears of critics who warned that Trump filled the most senior national posts with officials who lacked experience but instead were chosen for effect,” CNN’s Stephen Collinson reported.
Trump denied knowing anything about the debacle when reporters asked him about it that afternoon. “You’re telling me about it for the first time,” he said.
If the president subsequently used his typical information-gathering method of tuning in to Fox, he heard his sycophants explaining that there wasn’t much to the story.
Will Cain, who spent years on the curvy couch with Hegseth as co-hosts of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition, acknowledged on his eponymous show that “it is incredibly concerning that sensitive information would be sent with a journalist included in the thread.” But he argued that “the bigger takeaway from me is it is an insight, a transparent insight, into the thought process and dialog of our national leaders.”
“After years of secrecy and incompetence, if you read the content of these messages, I think you will come away proud that these are the leaders making these decisions in America,” he explained.