Bulwark Takes - The Text Chain That Should END Trump’s Presidency

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

This is bad — Trump officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat, openly discussing sensitive war plans against Yemen—including operational details. Sarah Longwell and JVL take on this shocking security breach, calling out the incompetence, recklessness, and sheer absurdity of the Trump administration’s inner circle.

Hey everyone, it's JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, to talk about a blockbuster article in The Atlantic Today by Jeffrey Goldberg about how the Trump administration's security team included him on a signal message group in which they openly discussed American war planning for attacks on the Houthis in Yemen. It's one of the most astonishing security breaches I've ever seen in the history of America. But her emails! And it's, I mean, I guess, Sarah, before, we're going to go deep into this, but just off the bat, what are your reactions? And am I overselling how mind-bogglingly incompetent, like criminally incompetent this is? Here's what I'm going to say. We are going to go deep on this. We're going to talk about it. We're

going to pull out all the different parts of the things that this journalist, the editor of the Atlantic Magazine, was able to glean from being inadvertently added to a signal chain of all of the highest people, the command of the highest people of the American government, just casually chatting about this on a signal chain. Here's the thing. JBL is going to be outraged. There is nothing about this that is funny, but I am probably going to laugh some. And I'm going to laugh some because the level of idiocy on here is so complete that the level of danger, how dangerous, none of that, I just want to be clear, none of that's in dispute. But also, these people are unbelievable clowns, and I'm going to laugh at them a little bit that's how i'm gonna start okay jbl set the stage what did we just read because i just read the whole thing it's death of stalin

right this is when people are like oh it's veep not house of cards that's not quite true because veep is funny but it's not sinister death of stalin is funny but sinister and that's that's i think what this is okay because bombs bombing people is at the center of this conversation. Right. Right. And also placing American intelligence and military personnel in danger is part of this as well. Yes. So here's what happens. Jeff Goldberg gets a DM on signal from somebody identified as Michael Waltz. Michael Waltz is Donald Trump's national security advisor. Previously also kind of a normal Republican.

Sure. Like by old standards, right? He was a neoconish, thought he'd be good on Ukraine till we saw he was going to flip on everything. But anyway, yes, Mike Waltz. So Mike Waltz invites Jeffrey Goldberg to join this signal group. And Jeff thinks that this can't possibly be real. He assumes that this is like Project Veritas style sting operation trying to make journalists look silly or that it's maybe even a foreign trap, you know, some foreign intelligence service.

But, you know, Jeff's like, I'm a journalist. I'm going to play along and like, I'm a journalist. I'm going to play along and see what I say. Yeah. But hold on. Just to be clear, Signal is like, for people who don't use it, which I'm not sure how common this is, it's more, it's like a WhatsApp. It's like encrypted. Encrypted messaging. Encrypted messaging. So a lot of people use it in government and politics, and you can set it to delete automatically for over an hour or over days or whatever. And so if you make a chain, it often, it goes away is kind of the... Right. But it is a commercially available product.

That's right. Like this is not... Anybody can download it on their phone. Not military grade, right? This is, you know... Anyway, we'll talk about security risks at the end of this. A number of names which appear to coincide with high profile people appear in this group, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Pete Hexeth, Stephen Miller, Tulsi Gabbard, some others. And they begin a discussion about going after and conducting a strike in Yemen against the Houthis to open up the shipping lanes. Now, there follows a brief policy discussion in which J.D. Vance, interestingly, deviates from the president and thinks that the president hasn't really been informed. The president hasn't gotten all the relevant

information. And what J.D. Vance is fixated on is that only 3% of American shipping goes through these lanes, but 40% of European shipping does. And why should we could delay but uh but you know like really we're the only people who can do this and then there's a discussion about well we got to make sure the european europeans remunerate us for this so it's literally like shakedown like well wait is is it is the word remunerate isn't it remunerate oh great thanks Cut that out, Sebastian. No, leave it in. The point is they want to get paid. Show that pay that man his money is what the national security team is worried about in all this. And they talk about how they loathe, all caps, the Europeans. Yes. And it's amazing. I mean, you know, you see what people are saying inside. But here's... Freeloaders.

European freeloaders. Yeah, yeah. They're our allies, but sure, we'll just call them freeloaders. I'm going to read something here from... I'm going to read a couple passages. Let me start with this one. At 11.44 a.m., the account labeled Pete Hegseth posted in Signal a team update. And this is Jeff Goldberg here.

I will not quote from this update or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command's area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this signal conversation, is that the Hegseth Post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.

In response, the Vice President, J.D. Vance, texted, I will say a prayer for victory. At which point two other users subsequently added the prayer emoji this is the part where you can laugh sarah oh i laughed throughout this the the the fact that jd vance is still doing his kayfabe here about like oh you know pray for victory these fucking guys um so at this point jeff goldberg still isn't sure that all this is genuine. You know, he's just watching this and thinking, well, this can't be right. And so he he goes. And so this is two hours before what is supposed to be the go time, according to the signal message. So Jeff

is just sitting in his car at a at a supermarket and scrolling through Twitter, looking to, you know, searching Yemen. And basically, just to be clear, he's he's saying, if this is real, then we're going to see bombs fall. We're going to see bombs dropping. He knows. And so he starts being like, OK, let's is it is it happening? And sure enough, two hours later, like all of a sudden bombs reported.

So here this is the imagine you're Jeffrey Goldberg singing in a car So here, this is the funny part. So imagine you're Jeffrey Goldberg sitting in a car. You've been on the signal chain of the highest national security officials in America. You're accidentally added as a reporter. You think it's a disinformation op. You haven't said anything. anything, but all of a sudden it becomes clear to you that you have been privy this entire time to the machinations of a bomb strike and that they're just tossing it into a signal chain together. And it's Tulsi Gabbard and Mike Walls and Joe Kent and the vice president and Jason

Miller, Jason Miller, Stephen Miller. Thank you. Thank you. I knew a Stephen Miller. All of them, Pete Hagseff, all of them together. And now you're like, oh, my God, this is real. I've been I've been for real listening to this the whole time. OK, go ahead. Read it. I'm just reading reading again. This is Jeff Goldberg. At 148, Michael Waltz had provided the group an update. Again, I won't quote from this text, except to note that he described the operation as an quote, amazing job. I'm going to. Susie Wiles texted. Oh, yeah.

She's on it. Kudos to all, most particularly those in theater and sent com. Really great. God bless. Steve Witkoff responded with five emoji, two hands praying, a flex bicep and two American flags because America. Fuck, yeah, I. So there are so many levels of this the first being but her emails um this is jeff goldberg then goes and talks to a bunch of national security lawyers and is like is is this is this is this cool can you do this and the general consensus is oh my god are you kidding me because uh for one thing, Signal is a very, very strong encryption.

But anybody who has your phone. For normies. And anybody who has your phone can get into it. Your kids can open your Signal account, right? If they come and pull up your phone. Like this is, you know, it is device specific. And another thing is all of this is taking place outside of official record keeping. Yes.

Because it deletes. Right? And it's not being done on government communications platforms. Yes. Which preserve essential communications for presidential records. Yes. Huh? But, okay.

Keep going. No, I mean i mean this is it's so from a security standpoint it is so one of the things that is revelatory about this is that this is clearly the fact that this is happening in this instance means it's happening in all the instances yes okay so like i just the idea that just, the idea that this is like a one-off, whatever, no, this is just a one-off where the journalist accidentally got added. This is how the American government is planning national, major national security incursions, bombings. Probably how Doge stuff is being done. It's probably how NIH stuff is being done.

All of this stuff is being done non-secure channels just creating a new signal chain throwing seven or eight people on it right and then people are writing back with emojis right like how does one interpret that is it a is it clear what we mean by a strong muscle emerge i mean bicep prayer hands american flag american flag speaks for itself i do too i do It's a president. Camacho would have responded that way. Wait, can I. All right. So. So. So, yes. So that the I want I want it to not be lost. That the entire American government is now being run off book, essentially. Yeah. Right. Right. It's being done off book and it's being deleted. And Goldberg goes into this, that the chain you can see and any chain you're on, if you're on signal, you can see when it's set to delete.

And it was I think at one point it was set to a week, another point four weeks. But like the point is, it was set to delete, meaning that there was going to be no record of these high level officials discussing this operation. weeks. But like the point is, it was set to delete, meaning that there was going to be no record of these high level officials discussing this operation. Okay. And also, so we can assume it's happening across government, but also in there is the, are the things that got shared, which illustrate how these high level officials are thinking about things. So we hit this slightly, but I want to, I want to stomp on it. VP says, oh no, I'm sorry. The, I, the, the user identified as Hegseth, right? So this is Pete Hegseth, responded as JD Vance is, is putting up some, a bit of a, he's the one saying, I'm not sure we

should do this. And he's saying it because he's like, this doesn't impact us very much as Americans. Cause JD Vance is, you know, uh, his, his America, he's bought it because he's like, this doesn't impact us very much as Americans because J.D. Vance is, you know, his his America. He's bought in very much to the total isolationism of America. Right. But then so Hegseth says, VP, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's all caps pathetic. But Mike is correct. We're the only ones on the planet, parentheses, on our side of the ledger who could do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a good as time as any. Given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes, I think we should go.

But POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space. At this point, the previously silent SM joined the conversation. That's Stephen Miller. As I heard it, okay, I just want you to, okay, he says, I feel like now is as good a time as any, okay? And then, okay, it's good to say, and then SM said, as I heard it, the president was clear, green light. But we soon made clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement, e.g. if Europe doesn't remunerate, then what? Meaning so they don't pay us back for going and opening up the shipping lanes. If the U.S. successfully restores freedom of navigation at a great cost, there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return. So these guys are just like kind of freewheeling it up on the signal

chain being like well we need to do this and where is public opinion and it's like oh my god they're not even in a room together they're not even having like a high level meeting in the skiff or the situation room they're still a signal chain let me let me. Let me throw one bright side at you. Right? Silver lining. At least Pete Hegseth still sees us on the opposite side of the ledger from Russia and China. Yeah, on our side. That's true.

No, that was a bright spot. Pete Hegseth still does view America as nominally allied with NATO countries. Yay. Big win. Big win. Those countries. Can you imagine? Wait, tell me this. So I know enough to be dangerous on some of the security stuff, but if you're a foreign adversary, what have you learned from this instance? I mean, maybe nothing you didn't already know. Just get up on their phones. Honestly. Because they're just going to talk about the national security stuff in ways that are.

They're as dumb as we think they are. They're as dumb as we think they are. What you learn if you're the Chinese is that there is no 4D chess going on here. These people are exactly what they look like. And that's all you need to know. That is all you need to know. I have a question for you, Sarah. Do you think there will be any congressional oversight in the wake of this historic security breach? Dude. Do you think the Senate Republicans and the House Republicans

are going to call some hearings? I don't know. I don't know about that. Here's the... I think they're probably not. Wait, here's what's really funny. So anybody who's on Signal has experienced the moment

when you either yourself or somebody else leaves a chain, a Signal chain that you're on because people put you on Signal chains that you don't want to be on. And so you're like, I, unlike them, these people who are operating insanely due to their roles and breaching all kinds of security, Jeffrey Goldberg remains committed to his position as a journalist who will not betray national security secrets. And so he is not reporting on all of the things on the chain that would compromise our national security, right? So he is doing them still a huge favor by not putting operational security things in. But anyway, so after all this happens, he says, okay, now I know this is real, so I'm going to get out of it. So he leaves. But when you leave, it sends a message. It says in the thing like jeffrey goldberg has left the conversation or has left the signal chat and so the fact that it sounds like he had to reach out to them yeah

to to confirm its authenticity none of them suzy wiles or anybody else went uh-oh oh shit we should probably i mean maybe there was another signal thread in which they discussed that. I don't know. They went over to their other thing being like. They set up another DM. Who put Jeff Goldberg? What the fuck was that? Was that Jeff Goldberg?

Wait, do you have a guy in your office named Jeff Goldberg? That wasn't the Jeff Goldberg. This is the part that makes me laugh so hard. It's like, have you ever done this? Every human has had this experience where they accidentally, have you ever done something where you're thinking about somebody because you're so mad at them and then you accidentally send the email to them? Or like, you know, because they're top of mind.

Or like you send a text to the wrong person and you're like, oh, that wasn't for you. And usually it's benign. But like, can you imagine their conversations when they or or or they didn't notice yeah and they just thought oh jeff goldberg must be so-and-so's deputy who i don't care about right isn't jeff goldberg tulsi's deputy man isn't that guy named goldberg they all look alike right i mean you can imagine something like that who do you think they meant to put on there i don't know i kept being like how do you accidentally add jeffrey goldberg to your single signal chain about bombing but also we should note they confirmed the authenticity of it like when he went to them this is real this

wasn't an accident so this is the most boring question in the world, but I have to ask it anyway. Can you imagine Fox News right now if this had been the Biden administration? Oh, my gosh. Right. I mean, this would be the only story for weeks. Weeks. Wall to wall dementia biden includes fox news reporter on decision on on signal chat with high level now granted the only thing good about this was that the actual president wasn't on it but

the actual vice president which by the way i mean it is just such a read-in it is really fascinating it is such a read-in to how their decisions are being made. And like, I gotta say the part where the VP is texting, oh, by the way, Marco Rubio is also on this chain. It doesn't look like he weighs in, but MAR, the secretary of state, Marco Antonio Rubio, oh, he just put in the chat, he was designated somebody as like who his person was who was handling this. So he designates. I mean, he's in the chat. Rubio's in the chat.

But the thing about the VP, where is this part where he says, I can't. I don't know where it is, but he basically says, like, I'm in Michigan today, so I can't really think about this, but I disagree with the idea. It was like, you are getting asked to weigh in on the bombings. You're saying you disagree, but also you don't really have time to, like, get into it right now because you're in Michigan. You're doing a political event. You're doing a political event in Michigan. Who is in charge? Who is doing stuff? I mean, this is like if in the bulwark slack, one of us is like, I think we're going to use this Getty image for a piece.

Sarah, what do you think? And you're like, yeah, I'm busy right now. I don't really love the photo, but I don't have time to talk about it. You know, they're talking about blowing people up. I mean, this would be the end of any normal presidential administration. Yes. Because this thread, as you say, is itself an unbelievable scandal, but it's clear indication that this is happening up and down the government and that the entire all of this. And it isn't they're governing like normal that's the thing it isn't like you know look it's it's a fairly normal government but they just happen to be going off the books and their comms

they are assaulting the federal government attempting to dismantle it brick by brick and they're trying to not leave a trail and you know if we had a legislative branch that had not, I mean, fuck abdicating, fuck leaving their posts, they are actively colluding on it. The legislature, you know, they're, they're like, they're into the project. But if, if we had a real legislative branch, this would, this would basically stop government functioning for the foreseeable future while Congress investigated this and a whole bunch of people either fired, resigned or went to jail. Yes, yes. I don't even know what else to say. Did you have anything else there, Sarah?

I'm trying to find the part where when the guy came back. Oh, here it is. Here it is. Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the signal group. This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we're reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain, Hughes wrote. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.

So this is their spin. So their spin is like, well, what's in the chain is just them being thoughtful about it. No, it's not. It's like the opposite of them being thoughtful about it. Like they're having like a high level sort of debate, but not in a room together and like not in deep coordination. And also if one of them left their phones in a taxi cab, like the entire thing could be accessible. Or if their kid took the phone or any, you know, their assistant picked up the phone. I mean, you know, in my head canon, Jeff Goldberg responded to that official statement with

prayer hand, prayer hand, bicep to American flag. And I just this is we're only eight weeks in, Sarah. We're only eight weeks in, Sarah. We're only eight weeks in. And I, you know, I feel like every day is a question of how much worse can it get? This is pretty bad,

but also this is, this is the part of the iceberg that is visible above the waterline. Right. And, uh. Well, and we, we just, we gotta, we gotta, we got visuals

on the below the watermark and it ain't pretty. Yeah. Horrifying. Guys, hit subscribe, hit follow, stay with the channel. We are on this stuff 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because the only way through this and to take back the government and restore it to actual functioning is to flood the zone.

Be on this. Don't get tired. Keep fighting. Good luck, America.