The reaction to Signalgate has been one of sheer disbelief. Those with expertise in national security, military operations, government secrecy, and federal law are stunned by the sheer incompetence displayed by those who "accidentally texted" classified airstrike plans on Yemeni Houthis to the editor of The Atlantic.
Senator Michael Bennet exemplified this reaction.
During testimony, the Colorado senator pressed CIA Director John Ratcliffe about who had added Jeffrey Goldberg to the encrypted Signal group chat. He also questioned Ratcliffe about Trump’s Middle East adviser being part of the chat while in Moscow, implying Kremlin surveillance. To both inquiries, Ratcliffe simply responded, "I don’t know."
In the past, such ignorance from a CIA director would have been a firing offense. How could the nation’s top intelligence official not know? That disbelief fueled Bennet’s outrage: “This sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect—for our intelligence agencies and the personnel who work for them—is entirely unacceptable. It’s an embarrassment. You need to do better!”
But doing better is not the priority of Ratcliffe or the other top national security officials involved, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, and Vice President JD Vance.
Doing better would require adherence to the law, the Constitution, and professional standards—along with accepting responsibility for failure. But excellence is not their goal. Their sole motivation is power. None of them are qualified. All are willing to say and do anything, no matter the consequences. Their only qualification is loyalty to Trump. And the best guarantee of that, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, is being the kind of clown, idiot, or buffoon who might "accidentally text" war plans to a reporter.
Consider the president’s response.
Trump claimed ignorance when asked about the breach. “I don’t know anything about it,” he told a reporter. “I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. It’s a magazine that’s going out of business. It’s not much of a magazine. But I know nothing about it.”
Why wasn’t he informed? A reasonable assumption is that Hegseth and the others were aware of their recklessness and chose not to tell him.
But that assumes carelessness is a flaw.
It isn’t.
Carelessness—and the incompetence of clowns, idiots, and buffoons—is exactly why Trump trusts them. When their failures inevitably escalate, they will cling to him more tightly, knowing he may be the only thing standing between them and legal consequences.
Loyalty to Trump isn’t about admiration or devotion. It’s about survival. Once he becomes the only barrier between them and criminal accountability, he effectively becomes the law. In their eyes, whatever they do in his name is legal, allowing them to act without fear of repercussions. These are precisely the people a corrupt president wants around him.
That is the real national security crisis: loyalty to Trump.
This reality remains widely misunderstood. The prevailing belief still seems to be that failures in national security under Trump are exceptions rather than the norm.
“This is more than ‘loose lips sink ships,’” said a former CIA officer. “This is a criminally negligent breach of classified information and war planning,” involving the vice president, the secretary of defense, and the CIA director—“all putting troops at risk. America is not safe.”
But criminal negligence isn’t the primary threat to national security.
Loyalty to Trump is.
“This is the highest level of f---up imaginable,” former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. “These people cannot keep America safe.”
But their incompetence isn’t the root cause of the danger.
Loyalty to Trump is.
Mistakes happen. People sometimes break the law. But this isn’t ordinary human error or venality. This is a president who deliberately surrounded himself with the worst people—because they are the worst people. Their spectacular failures ensure they will remain bound to him indefinitely.
Trump rejected excellence because excellence threatens his control. He cannot afford to have principled individuals who honor their oath of office, as they might, like others before them, stand in the way of his power.
And so we return to the initial disbelief.
Despite everything we know about Trump, people still find themselves shocked. As Senator Michael Bennet told CIA Director Ratcliffe, “This sloppiness, this incompetence, this disrespect … is entirely unacceptable. It’s an embarrassment. You need to do better!”
But that outrage assumes Trump and his allies deserve the benefit of the doubt—as if they can or will do better.
They won’t.
They never will.
Signalgate is not an aberration. It is the standard. We should expect more of the same. We should expect Trump and his enablers to continue harming and betraying America.
Comments
Post a Comment