The Trump administration’s national security lapse in mistakenly revealing US plans to bomb Yemen’s Houthi rebels is still making waves in Washington but there is something in the background that’s even more damaging than the carelessness of the events themselves – it is the tolerance for lying and disinformation in public life and an accompanying failure to hold anyone to account.
The sequence of events involving the Signal chat group is now well-known and remains profoundly embarrassing for all involved – but every one of them is still in place. Incompetence goes unpunished, even as the world knows that the chat group mistakenly included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg. He – along with the others who have security clearance – received war plans about air strikes in Yemen.
The extraordinary carelessness of all this is bad enough. So is the refusal – so far at least – of anyone to resign, to be fired or even to appear especially contrite. The key players have publicly been combative and unrepentant – and that’s the problem. Behind this story is the mindset of those involved, and in some cases that mindset is to say things that do not fit the facts and demonstrate a lack of remorse that makes it difficult to know what to believe and who to trust in future.
A quick recap reveals why shading the truth is so damaging. As the world now knows, Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defence, sent details of the Yemen bombing mission to the Signal group. This group had been set up by US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and mistakenly included Goldberg, who broke the story. There are now reports in German newspaper Der Spiegel that their journalists have found more online personal data, contact information and even the passwords of some members of this top-tier, high-security group. The blunt rudeness shown by Vice President JD Vance towards America’s European allies has also been widely reported.
But it is the Trump administration’s misinformation and refusal to face the facts that may ultimately prove to be the most damaging consequence of this fiasco. If top government officials do not engage properly with the truth, then it is difficult – even for those of us who admire the US – to trust their accounts in the future.
Of course, none of us is perfect. We all sometimes make embarrassing mistakes. I recall a colleague who once wrote an online message critical of her boss. In her anger, she mistakenly sent the email not to a friend but to the manager she was criticising. Oops. It was all hugely embarrassing and she apologised, but making mistakes and owning up to them is how grown-ups in functioning organisations work.
The Trump administration, as we are witnessing, appears to act differently. Instead of apologies and resignations, the result has been – to put it bluntly – denial and aggression. There was the immediate denial that US national security had somehow been jeopardised by the Signal group’s loose talk. Then there was a denial that any of this extraordinary breach was a big deal. This was followed by a systematic attack on the motives and supposed bias of all those – especially Goldberg – who simply pointed out an astonishing failure of common sense from some of those entrusted with the defence and security of 380 million Americans.
Donald Trump Jr., for example, used Elon Musk’s X platform to ask: “Why doesn’t Jeffrey Goldberg disclose to readers in his stories that he is a registered Democrat. His wife also worked for Hillary Clinton and has donated nearly $25k to Democrats.” All of that may be true, but so what? You can be sure Goldberg or any self-respecting editor would have published the story if it had happened to Democratic president Joe Biden too. Besides, surely inviting a supposed political opponent into a secret chat group makes the Trump administration seem even more ridiculous?
Then there was the denial that the security lapse was all that serious. Goldberg published the initial story under the headline “The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans.” He carefully wrote his story to avoid quoting specific details about military operations, the timing of the attacks and the US military hardware involved. But Mr Hegseth shot back that “nobody was texting war plans”. Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that she did not remember specific weapons being mentioned. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the story was a “hoax” from a “Trump hater”. Goldberg then published details showing that these were indeed war plans mentioning specific weapons and timings of the strike.
We can understand the embarrassment and the anger among the Trump team, but it is the failure of anyone to be held accountable and the denial of facts that are the most troubling. This suggests significant problems for the future. Shooting the messenger rather than addressing the message reveals deep flaws at the heart of the Trump administration is a sign of serious trouble ahead.
