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There are many different ways to explain Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency in 2016, ranging from mere fatigue with Democratic governance to a vast revolt against a bipartisan Establishment pushing globalization. But all accounts would converge on one important detail: He would not have won his incredibly narrow Electoral College victory had notHillary Clinton’s reputation been battered by many months of criticism over her use of personal email to handle sensitive official business. “Hillary’s emails” and the interminable drumbeat over them from both conservative and mainstream media damaged perceptions of her trustworthiness and also generated crucial headlines late in the campaign, obscuring what looked to be a fatal Trump scandal associated with the Access Hollywood tapes.
Given this history, along with the paranoia characteristic of national-security types generally and MAGA people specifically, you’d think secure comms on any discussions remotely related to national security would be a categorical imperative for any Trump administration. But you’d think wrong, given the incredibly sloppy handling of high-level discussions over plans to attack Houthis in Yemen that came to light because Team Trump brought the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, into its group chat on Signal.
Most of the uproar over this bizarre incident has focused on national-security adviser Michael Waltz, who accidentally added Goldberg’s name and phone number to the chat, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who discussed operational details of the attacks outside of secure channels. But the entire group of Cabinet-level officials chatting away in Goldberg’s silent presence are guilty of inadequate security precautions. Many of them, in fact, were very outspoken about the terrible misconduct involved in Clinton’s emails (along with others involving the Obama and Biden administrations) back in the day, as CNN reminded us in delicious detail:
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host; White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller; national security adviser Mike Waltz; and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have all made public comments in the past attacking officials under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden for allegedly being sloppy with sensitive government information.
Much of that criticism has revolved around Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State under President Obama …
[Marco] Rubio, identified by Goldberg in the chat as “MAR,” repeatedly attacked Clinton over the issue in 2015 and 2016 — tweeting about it at least a dozen times.
In an August 2015 Fox News interview, Rubio noted that classified information should only be viewed in a secure room to protect it from unauthorized access or surveillance.
“You most certainly know you shouldn’t be talking about it or passing it on in an email, particularly to a private server like the one she had. What they did is reckless — it’s complete recklessness and incompetence.”
That’s a fair description of what we have in the current case. But Rubio’s far from the only hypocrite here:
In a November 2016 Fox News appearance, Hegseth called Clinton’s use of the email server, “criminal.”
“People have gone to jail for 1/100th of what — even 1/1,000th of what Hillary Clinton did …”
Waltz, who invited the Atlantic journalist to the group chat, similarly tweeted his outrage that the Department of Justice did not pursue charges against Clinton for her private messages.
“Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent Top Secret messages to Hillary Clinton’s private account. And what did DOJ do about it? Not a damn thing,” Waltz tweeted in June 2023.
There are additional quotes sternly condemning insecure comms and leaks to the press from Stephen Miller and Tulsi Gabbard, both apparent participants in the Houthi group chat. Indeed, the air in Washington is full of the soft clucking of chickens coming home to roost. Clinton certainly appreciated the irony:
👀 You have got to be kidding me.https://t.co/IhhvFvw6DG pic.twitter.com/bnNG4dGSpI
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 24, 2025
But Team Trump could at least mitigate the damage by admitting its errors and moving on. Instead, it is shooting the messenger who drew attention to its incompetence, as Axios reports:
Hegseth, who briefly spoke to reporters after landing in Hawaii Monday, lashed out at Goldberg for The Atlantic’s history of publishing negative stories about President Trump.
“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called ‘journalist’ who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,” Hegseth said, attacking Goldberg’s reporting on the Russia investigation and allegations that Trump called fallen veterans “suckers and losers.”
Asked why details of the operation were shared on Signal, an encrypted messaging app available to the public, Hegseth denied that part of Goldberg’s reporting.
“I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that,” the former Fox News host said.
Goldberg later responded to Hegseth on MSNBC, alleging that the texts he withheld included “precise details” of the attack on the Houthis — including the specific time, specific targets and sequencing of the operation.
Perhaps even more to the point, Hegseth’s claims that Goldberg is a fake journalist motivated mainly by animus to Trump makes the idiocy of including him in any sort of Cabinet-level discussion even clearer.
These people screwed up royally, and they should come clean about their collective responsibility for sloppy communications management and stop lashing out at media for reporting it. A retroactive apology to Clinton is probably too much to ask for, but she will have the satisfaction of watching Trump’s high command cut themselves with the same knife they used to strike her down.
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