So, Who’s Getting Fired for This?

A group of Trump administration officials accidentally texted Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg about U.S. military operations in Yemen. Goldberg wrote that he was added to a group chat on the messaging app Signal on March 11 by someone whose profile was named “Michael Waltz,” which is the name of Trump’s national security adviser.

From there, Goldberg saw messages from accounts sharing names with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.

The group chat was called “Houthi PC small group,” with “PC” standing for “principals committee” (though Waltz spelled it “principles” in one of his messages). “Principal” is Washington-speak for “top-level official,” and Goldberg writes that principals committees are informal groups established to discuss specific operations, such as the ongoing campaign against the Houthi terrorists in Yemen.

Goldberg initially thought this was a hoax but then was able to all but confirm that it was real when Hegseth texted detailed information about U.S. actions in Yemen two hours before they happened. When they happened, they matched up with the descriptions Hegseth gave. Goldberg removed himself from the chat soon after. A National Security Council spokesman told Goldberg that the conversation on Signal “appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”

Jeffrey Goldberg says Michael Waltz added him to the message chain. What’s much more important to review is why top administration officials are being reckless with sensitive national security information.

After all, this is the same administration that is claiming a “national security” justification to make you pay more in taxes for buying produce from Mexico, which would seem to carry fewer security risks than texting about life-and-death matters on a messaging app. (One wonders whether that “national security” concern about trade is entirely sincere.)

The government has secure communications systems in place to discuss ongoing national security concerns. They are inconvenient and sometimes require the use of a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) to guarantee security. Inconvenience is not an excuse to simply use a commercial product instead.

Signal is a very secure messaging app. But it’s against protocol to discuss the matters that were in this chat on it. Any employee in the Pentagon or intelligence community would almost certainly be fired, and perhaps prosecuted, for using Signal to discuss work matters with other employees, let alone giving access to a journalist, even if by accident.

In the 2024 presidential debate with Joe Biden, Trump said of the then-president, “This guy hasn’t fired anybody. He never fires.” He said Biden should have fired people over the Afghanistan withdrawal and the condition of the southern border in particular, both of which were disasters that happened on Biden’s watch. He was right to raise Biden’s lack of willingness to hold government officials accountable for failure. That’s a fundamental job of the president as the head of the executive branch.

So now Trump has a chance to prove he meant it. Who’s getting fired for this one?

This is simply not an accident one can be making in such a high position of public trust. Unless, of course, there’s one looser set of rules for the “important” people and another stricter set of rules for the lower-level employees. Details are still emerging, but those involved who are not fired should at least be reprimanded, and the administration should ensure that only proper communications channels are used from now on.

Remember when Hillary Clinton was using a private email server in contravention of government communications rules? Michael Waltz probably does. The Republican former House member tweeted in 2023, “Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent top secret emails to Hillary Clinton’s private account and the DOJ didn’t do a DAMN THING about it. No wonder Americans are losing faith in our justice system.”

Trump was elected in part to prove that such double standards would no longer be tolerated. Will he continue to tolerate them?