Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 831: Signal Gate

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glorial Studios in Chicago and beyond. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way, we bring critical thinking, skepticism and irreverence to any topic that makes the news,

makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat.. We got to talk a little a long form. We're doing a little long form. We're switching it up. We're doing a long from today and we're going to put a regular show on Thursday. I see. So why did we move things around? Can you tell me what weird dystopian urgency has caused us now to do this? You're rubbing. You're rubbing your eyes. Why are you rubbing your eyes? How on earth? This possibly happened we're gonna talk about this in detail

We have to spend so much time on this because there's a lot to unpack here Yeah, and it is the what we're calling signal gate because everything that's a controversy Tom It makes me crazy. No, you're telling me this cuz you know it makes me crazy. It needs a gate after it because of Watergate, which had no gate. It was not even about water. It wasn't about water, it was about gates. It was about stealing information. I kind of wish everything,

because Watergate was just a hotel. I wish instead of seizing on the weirdness of gate, we would just be like, ah, it's Signal Hotel. Watergate was just a hotel. Like I wish instead of like seizing on the weirdness of gate, like we would just be like, ah, it's Signal Hotel. We'd be like, that makes as much sense. Or Signal Sheridan. Yeah. Oh, it's water signal.

It's Signal Ramada by the airport. Yeah. Signal Hojo. But in any case, this whole thing explodes. What happens initially is there is a signal thread that pops up in a reporter, a reporter for the Atlantic, and signal thread pops up in his signal. So he gets a signal suggestion, like invitation. You've been added to this chat.

Invitation to join a chat. And the chat he got invited to was by Michael Walls, the national security advisor. So, that guy whoof is using Signal. Yep. Which is an, I mean it's a, you know,

it's encrypted end to end, but it's an unsecured app that's not supposed to end, but it's an unsecured app that's not supposed to be used for any kind of top secret information, any kind of information like that. Whenever they do any kind of secret information, they need to use very specific channels. It's very important for them to do that. Well, he gets added to this channel

and he comes to realize, first he thinks it's a hoax. And good on him yeah and I when I first heard this story Tom I thought was a hoax too basically he gets invited to a channel with Pete Hegseth Marco Rubio Tulsi Gabbard JD Vance Stephen Mill they think Stephen Miller just goes by SM on channel on signal so you're not sure. And several of their aides, all on the same channel, and they are discussing an attack on the Houthis.

So the Houthis are seizing shipping lanes and causing issues, and they wanna do a strike on them. So they wanna call in a military strike. And so there's a whole chat about should they or shouldn't they? And there's a back and forth. We're going to go through the whole chat to talk about it. And then they finally send times, weapon types, you know, drone types and fighter jet types to over this signal channel. Unreal. There's other details too, like people were out of the country when they were getting some of these signal chats, et cetera.

And again, this is not on a channel that is like super secret channel. This is on coming over through their phones, through other people's networks, et cetera. So they are getting this signal stuff that's coming to them. And the whole time a reporter That was accidentally invited is eavesdropping on them bungle

Classified information. This is all classified. You should not be telling people times in places and also Maybe names of CIA operatives. Yeah, those types of things Yeah, those types of things are not things you would share on a signal. These people can communicate with signal. That's perfectly fine that they communicate via signal, but they can't share certain things over it. And the real issue is the things that they were sharing.

And so he called the office, took himself out of the chat after it went off and he knew that this sort of thing seemed like it was real. Yeah, like the verification that it was real. He was like, well, I guess I'll know in two hours whether this is real. Yeah, because he sees the actual attack plans materialized. And then, so like he goes like to, like he knew what time this supposed attack was going to happen. He's still dubious. He's talking to his guy Shane, who's like at the editor's desk.

And they're like, this is fake. There's no way. There's probably a state actor trying to fucking trick us, trying to embarrass us, trying to flush something out. He's like, it's very elaborate hoax, but it's probably a hoax. But I guess we'll know in two hours. He waits two hours, he hops on X, he types in Yemen, and he sees that the bombs are dropping. and he's like, holy fucking shit. Yeah. And so he gets confirmation then, and then he sends a message the next day after he takes himself out of the chat. And he knows that Mike Walz, Waltz, is that his name? Waltz? Waltz. Yeah.

Will know that he's taken himself out of the chat. And he, so he sends a message and says, by the way, White House, do you have any comments on this? I just saw all this. And they confirmed the very next day, they said you shouldn't have been involved, but nothing that was secret was sent in those chats, but you shouldn't have been involved and we're investigating how you were included.

And it's like, when somebody, a signal is no different than any other chat service. When somebody leaves, everybody gets notified. And that should have been a giant oh shit moment. But from what the Atlantic reporter, who's the editor of the Atlantic, from what he said, nobody noticed that he was added and nobody seemed to notice when he left. When he left, somebody you'd think Mike Waltz would have picked up the phone and been like,

hey, we gotta talk. Nothing, fucking crickets. It is such an elaborately stupid thing to do. Like it is almost a sort of like Byzantine-ly stupid thing to do. Like there's so many steps to get wrong, right? Like you said, like, are they allowed to use signal? They are, but they're not allowed to talk about anything even remotely sensitive using

something like signal. And if they're going to talk about shit that's classified, they are supposed to go into one of these skiffs. And we talked about skiffs before. If you are a, if you're like the fucking defense secretary, they actually install skiffs in their homes. So these guys have these top secret super rooms, these, you know, installed in their fucking houses. The reason that they're speculating that they use signal is it was the weekend and they wanted to take an action in the next 72 hours

and nobody, and people might not have been around their house, they're out and about, they're doing weekend stuff, Cecil. So instead of following the established protocol, and, you know, like doing the top secret stuff top secretly, instead, they're just like, let's just pop over to this commercially available app on your fucking iPhone, man. Well, and this goes into a whole other bit of speculation.

And one of the pieces of speculation that I saw was that perhaps they're using this because Signal will delete your messages after a certain amount of time. And these were set to delete after I think two weeks or four weeks, I don't remember. But there was a setting and I saw today on the headline that a judge intervened and said, those cannot get deleted. It was just, there was a headline as I was driving here

on the front page of the Times. Because like the setting for signal on this chat did have a wipe feature. Yeah, and that's the thing is, if you wanna get around some of this stuff, you do it this way. You do it this particular way to make sure that there is no trace of you having these conversations.

And these conversations, we're gonna get to it later, but there's also attacks on Europe, the ideas of they're shitting on Europe in these things, they don't want that stuff to get out there, They don't want anybody to see that sort of thing They want to see people texting emojis with a fist and American flag and fight dude How cringe is that guys like 50 years old city's texting emojis to others? Like leaders of state people in the cabinet are texting emojis to each other. It's embarrassing. It is that part.

I just got, we just got to talk about that for like. Like that's so fucking unbelievably juvenile that these like grown ass men and women are talking about killing other people. And I get that like sometimes as a nation state, you have to make decisions that end other people's lives. Like I get that. I'm not a fucking, you know, wide-eyed naif about that stuff. But there's just like, there's just no seriousness. When you're just tossing like flexy fists and fire emojis,

and you're like, hey, hashtag fuck them all up or what? Like, this is crazy. This is crazy. In my workplace, I text a lot for my work. So we communicate across every channel. Text is very, very common. There's no fucking way I would send an emoji to someone I work with. There's no way. It feels wrong. It feels inappropriate. It's still a professional communication. I would never emoji some, like my boss, like, professional communication. I would never emoji some like my boss, like, emoji face. Like I'm not like I'm a grownup. We're having serious conversations. I was not surprised,

but disgusted. I was disappointed. I'm like, I'm like a dad. I'm not mad, but I'm disappointed. You know, the other thing that that we have to realize is that they have been changing the language around this. The very first day it was released, nobody had seen the actual text. They had a, we had a play-by-play from the Atlantic reporter,

but there was some things in it that he left out. He said he left out. I didn't talk about certain weapon systems, I didn't talk about who certain people were, I didn't talk about other things, et cetera. He left some things out in the first story. Because he was trying to preserve national security. Trying to preserve things.

Well, one of very few people trying to do that. And so they bring Ratcliffe, who is the CIA director, and Tulsi Gabbard, who's the director of national intelligence, to sit down in front of Congress. This was in front of, I think it was the first day was in front of the Senate. And then the second day was in front of Congress. But the first day I think was in front of the Senate.

And the Democrats are just grilling these people. And they kept on saying there was no classified information. And one of the one of the Congress people was like, well, then just release the text right now. If there's no classified information, then just release it. Because there's no reason. And she's like, well then just release the text right now. If there's no classified information, then just release the text. Yeah, then just release it. There's nothing in there.

Because there's no reason, and she's like, well, it's being investigated. He's like, I don't care if it's being investigated. It doesn't matter. Right. Like if you're saying there's nothing in it that's incriminating, release them now. And she said there was no classified information.

Well, they're trying to change the language to say, this isn't classified, but this is where pilots are leaving from, where pilots are going to, what time they will be there, when they will be releasing drones, what type of drones they'll be releasing, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of information in here. Hegseth I saw today said something like,

it's not a battle plan. And you're like, yeah, it's not a battle plan, but it is definitely the framework for a battle. And it's definitely got a lot of really sensitive information that if someone were to intercept, they would know where to put some of these missiles that they currently have that could take down some of these fighters and drones. And they have them. We know they have them.

This was brought out in the hearings. They showed them images of these missile. They're like, you know, it's like a little tank and it just has a bunch of fucking missiles on it. It just shoots missiles on it. And it's like, they have those things. And that could take down our pilots. You could get servicemen killed.

And the other thing you have to point out is someone who's in the CIA, who's the director of the CIA, knows that this stuff shouldn't be sent over signal. Absolutely. The head of the Department of Defense absolutely should know that this shouldn't be sent over signal. The other thing too is that many of these people, everybody else who I mentioned, anybody

else should know that this doesn't belong in signal. But I also want to say that many of these people have military backgrounds. Two or three of these people are Green Berets, right? So these people are special forces. They would have probably been privy to some of this information as a recipient of it while they were in action, right?

Tulsi Gabbard was a Lieutenant Colonel. I don't know what rank Hegseth got to. I didn't look it up today. I don't remember. Fox and Friends, I think this is rank. But that guy was also in the military. Many of these people have either been in the military or worked on these high level things before.

What they're doing now is trying to gaslight you into thinking it's not anything. This is nothing. But this is horrifying that they're using this for this. And if they're using this for this, what else are they using it for? Yeah, man. I don't think that the disappearing nature of this stuff is an accident. Any classified information is not going to be made public, but all that stuff is supposed to go into the national archive.

If they are off having these serious and pertinent and important policy conversations off record, and it is this administration, I am just, there's no benefit of the doubt on that, right? There's no benefit of the doubt whatsoever on that, on that piece. Like these guys knew, like they a hundred percent know, like a whole bunch of the, like the defense from the Republicans is so disingenuous. It's such lying bullshit because they were under Republicans said like, well, you know, we got to learn from these mistakes. You got to live and learn. And everybody sometimes adds the wrong person to the text chain. And you're like, one, you don't get to make that mistake

at that level. There's just some jobs where you don't get to make a mistake and it's okay. If somebody less senior did this same shit. That they've been saying that all week. They would be in jail. They would be like, it's the fact of their seniority, which is the thing that should expose them the most, right?

Like we should be, we should hold them to the highest possible standard. Instead they're lowering the standard. If somebody comes to my house and they say, hey man, you're super dupes important and you have an ultra top ninja security clearance and we installed a goddamn skiff in your guest room or whatever and there's a landline or however it works

and they see, it's not like you don't teach them how to do this stuff. It's not like I don't know that I have a skiff in my house. It's not like I don't know what the purpose of that is. And the other thing is like, it doesn't matter at all how secure signal is. That's actually not even interestingly relevant. Because state actors are constantly working to attack the devices themselves

that these people carry in their pocket. That's a great point. So like, if you are China, who I don't know, manufactures the cell phone most likely that fucking Pete Hegseth has in his goddamn pocket, China wants nothing more than to install something into fucking Pete Hegseth's phone to key log and keystroke monitor and all that stuff, which is why they can't have those conversations on a goddamn cell phone that they bought at fucking Verizon That's not how any of this is supposed to work like the end-to-end encryption is like yeah

All right, but fucking who cares there's your phone itself is an inherently insecure device It can be stolen it can have malware into it like we will you look at this You're like, now I, like, do I think these guys are sophisticated fucking tech actors that are like taking the greatest possible care with their devices? They added the fucking editor of the Atlantic to their, they didn't even add like,

they didn't add like, the Fox and Friends guy. They whoops added them. Yeah, man. Yeah, they didn't even add, you're right, they didn't add like Laura Ingraham. Right. You know. And the other thing that they didn't do,

yeah, because if they had added Laura Ingraham, this never would have come to life. Nobody would know. And maybe they have, right? Like we'll never, literally never know. Maybe LI on that text chain was Laura Ingraham, I don't know. She's not, there's not an LI, I'm kidding.

Do you ever, do you ever ask your like, like when you had like your job, you're at the university, if you ever had like an important meeting. When I was employed? Yeah, yeah, sure, go ahead. You're employed now, you're employed now for the glory hole.

Like if I'm- Glory hole is inherently insecure. There were 18 or 19 people on this small group Huthi call. 18 or 19 people. When I'm hosting a call and it's an important call and I've got more than six or seven people I roll call you make them Roll you do a roll call. Yeah, that's like just so I know who showed up and who didn't they're having this fucking signal Conversation and they don't even like check real quick before talking about fucking super duper classified shit, which it was classified They don't even like check and make sure,

hey, is everybody in attendance? Are there anyone here that's not supposed to be? There's no due diligence, there's no common sense, there's no care, there's no any of that. These guys are at best clowns, but I actually think, like I'm not giving them the clown benefit of the doubt. I think it's nefarious.

I think they wanted to have this in part because JD Vance showed up saying, I don't think the president understands what is involved here. And he wanted to have a conversation that would get deleted. And it wasn't until Stephen Miller piped in and was basically like, Hey, shut that descent, shut down, POTUS has spoken. This is what we're doing. Because before that, there was a fairly substantive conversation that was like, basically JD Vance was like, I don't think the president understands what he's doing here.

I mean, he essentially, I think said that I think I'm paraphrasing, but only gently. Yeah. Yeah. I want to address a couple of things he said. One of the things he said was like, this cell phone itself is insecure. I saw an article today and I read through it, but I didn't read it very closely. It was from, I guess some German reporters

found old passwords for some of these people on the web. So on the web where you would share some of this stuff, they found old passwords and things that these people had. So some of these people on this call may have been compromised. You don't know, their data may have been compromised. And that could mean a lot. It could mean a lot.

The other thing too is, you're saying they have skiffs in their house. Some of these people were traveling at the time. The planes and the things that they're traveling in and the ways that they're traveling, in the ways that they're traveling, they have that kind of communication wherever they go. They wouldn't leave the country if they couldn't communicate in those special ways.

They have that with them at all times. So this bullshit of how difficult it is for them to get into it is a lie. Because it follows them to other countries. So that's something that you have to consider when you think about that sort of thing. So again, I just feel like you're right. It's like this nefariousness.

And one of the arguments that you're gonna hear about this, and I think this is the biggest one I've seen because there's a lot of tu quoque going on. It's an argument, it's a fallacious argument where I say, well, you did this too. You know, you did something, you accused me of doing something wrong, well, but you did something wrong too. And it's not the same thing, it's a totally different thing,

but you're accusing me of it. Well, the problem is that they're picking something, and this is what they're picking, that I've been seeing all week, Hillary's emails. That's what I've been seeing all week as well. You guys didn't care when it was Hillary's emails, et cetera, et cetera. It's like, well, first off, you did care. You cared a whole bunch. You made her fucking crawl on the carpet for months and months and months and caused like a million of these fucking congressional hearings. So like, first off, you cared and now you don't. So that's inconsistent. But beyond that, Hillary Clinton, even if you believe that she sent classified information,

I've looked into this and many reporters say that there was more of a classification problem behind classified information back then that put things in people's, that made things classified that might not have or should not have been classified. They went through her documents. They found a couple hundred that they said might have been classified at the time and were sent over this private email server she had. Even if you believe that that's the case,

that she was sending classified information, she never sent classified documents to Laura Ingram. Right. The classified documents, all the stuff she was sending was peer to peer, right? To somebody else. So somebody else in that had all those classifications. She never leaked any classified documents to some other person who's outside of that circle.

So even still, that argument's trash. It's just garbage. And then what they're trying to do is deflect, constantly deflect from themselves on how badly they fuck this up and how badly it makes us look in front of the rest of the world. Who's gonna share information with us in the future

if we're sharing it over fucking Signal? Who's gonna line up to do that? In this thing, they call Europe weak. I'm sick of bailing Europe out., and, and, uh, Hegseth responds with all caps. Yes, they are pathetic. Yeah. Right. And he's right in the column, the entirety of Europe, weak and pathetic.

These are our allies, man. Well, they certainly were. They certainly were, man. We are, we are working as hard as we can to ensure that the only allies that we have are horrible, notorious, dictatorial stronghold. You're not wrong, you're not wrong. Like all of the free nations of the world,

we are aggressively making it impossible for them to continue to work with us in good faith. The biggest loves that it seems like Trump has for world leaders include Putin and to a lesser degree, like Kim Jong-un and the president of El Salvador. He admires the strong man in Hungary, Orban, I think his name is. Yeah.

Orban. Orban, thank you. Like, these are some of the worst people on the planet. And at the same time, we're pushing away our European allies. These are relationships that are, you know, a hundred plus years old. We're shitting on Canada. We are distancing ourselves from the civilized Western free world.

We are allying ourselves with the worst people across the globe right now. And at the same, like, I don't know if we get to like claw that back. I don't know that in three years, when Trump is gone, hopefully, thank God, please, like, I don't know that we get to claw that back. I don't know that in three years when Trump is gone, hopefully, thank God, please. Like I don't know that we get to claw that back. I don't know that we get to say, Hey, just kidding. I don't know how I would trust that if I was Canada or Germany. I don't know.

I'd be like, yeah, I don't know, man. Like you guys might elect another fascist asshole. I think we're just going to say, thanks. We'll hope we'll work with you. But like, I, you know, you cheated on me once. Hey, we don't trust each other anymore. That's how it works. And that's, that's, you, you cannot, it takes, it takes decades, if not centuries to build goodwill like that. Yeah. And if you flush it down the toilet, it doesn't rebuild itself within a year, within two years,

within three years. It takes another like great deal of time for that goodwill to continue to build. You'll have to prove yourself for decades before they'll start trusting you again. And they'll, you know, these trade wars and this kind of inflation that we're gonna see because of that sort of thing, that stuff won't go away.

They're not gonna take those tariffs down if we take ours down. They're not gonna do that. They're gonna be like, fuck you, I don't care about you. I already made all my deals we take ours down. They're not going to do that. They're going to be like, fuck you. I don't care about you. I already made all my deals over here in Europe. You're going to go fucking... They'll be happy if we start to become a weaker nation.

They'll be excited about it because they're looking in other places for all the things that we were providing. So why would they care? They don't care. If they replace us, they literally replaced us. That's how being replaced works. That's how it works. There's nothing that you can do about it. Let's go through this email, Tom, or this

chain. There's sort of like some stuff that happens that we should probably call out. Let me put it on the big screen for everybody. So, Huthy, PC small group, 19 members, Michael, and it says right at the top. Disappearing message time was set to one week. Michael Waltz added you to the group. And can I, can I point out too on the disappearing thing? Disappearing message time was set to one week. That suggests to me that there's a setting in there I that was intentionally chosen.

I just started using Signal. So I can't I actually use it to contact Marsh for the other show I do. And I do it because he's in Signal groups and he's not on Facebook very often. He posts to Facebook every couple of days, but he's not on Facebook very often. So it was just easier for us to communicate over Signal.

We would have shorter times in which we wouldn't be in contact with each other on Facebook. We could go a whole day and neither of us would see the message. Signal's a lot easier. It's on my phone. It sends me a message. It's on my computer. It pops up. And I don't ask, I don't let Facebook do that.

I don't let Facebook pop up on my computer. So we started communicating via signal. Our conversation from when I first started contacting them after we started the show is still there. I didn't know settings that could change that. Because the default setting is not delete. The default setting is eternity. The default setting is forever. So that's important. So you know right now, I just want to like lay this out again.

Before they even have a conversation, before they've already broken one law. So they've already broken the National Records Archive law by setting up this group. They've broken a law by using this platform, or at least if not broken law, they've certainly broken the incredibly important protocol by even engaging on this platform the way that they're doing. Yeah, and that's important to put out because they can't engage on the platform. And they're trying to blame Biden by saying, well, it was installed in all our computers

and that's why we thought it was okay to use. That's that argument I saw today. Get the fuck out of here. Are you serious? I'm not even kidding. That's an argument I saw today. Biden installed it on my computer. Yeah, I saw that today.

So anyway, the text conversation starts out. They say we're going to be doing this coordination to attack a group of people. So I need, not only do I need all the people in this, I need people who are going to be their point people. So we're going to be adding people who will be point people in this, I need people who are going to be their point people. So we're going to be adding people who will be point people to this conversation. And so they started naming off different people. And a couple of these people, like I suggest, they're green berets. So one of them was like a, I think it's this Brian McCormick guy or Dan Caldwell,

I'm not sure. One of these two, I looked it up today, is a Green Beret, like an ex-Green Beret. So like they would have this kind of information, they would know, and one of these others too, it might even be Waltz is like an ex-Green Beret. Oh really? Yeah, so like that guy too is also. You would think that those guys would understand the importance of not putting other soldiers in danger.

And also real quick, the importance of not compromising mission integrity, because if like, you know, the Houthis are backed by Iran, Iran is a pretty powerful state actor and Iran has allies. If Iran had gotten ahold of this information, they certainly would have passed it over to the Houthis because they're supporting and funding that. And then the targets that we were going after would skedaddle, they'd just leave. They would just not be in the targets that we were going after would skedaddle.

They just leave. They would just not be in the buildings that were blowing up. And then you'd waste the millions of dollars of stuff for some sort of mission. Yeah, and all the collateral damage would be the only damage. And I think that that's worth saying too.

Is that, is it acceptable that there be in these situations a certain amount of casualties or collateral damage when going after like a military target? I think most people commonly would say that there is some sliding scale amount of acceptable collateral damage. That is a commonly held belief. Like whether you believe it or not, That is a commonly held belief. Like whether you believe it or not,

that's a commonly held belief. But if all you have is the collateral damage, then you've just murdered a bunch of people and accomplished nothing. You didn't even get anything out of it. So that's just like morally a thousand times worse. Sure, sure. I wonder too, you know, now that I'm thinking about it,

now that they've done this once and they've done this in a place where they're, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, now that they've done this once, and they've done this in a place where they're, you know, the world can see that they've used this system. I wonder how many people are gonna do their best to try to figure out ways to hack Signal. Yeah. And I wonder how many people are gonna do their best to do phishing attempts on these people

and their staffers as often as they can, they're gonna be constantly inundated with them because if they figure they can get with any of these people, if they find a private email or whatever, and they can get on their private phones somehow, they can really do some, they can get some serious information because that's how they're sharing this information.

I mean, they have opened themselves up. If they don't decide to go back to using skiffs and the ways that they should be handling this information, they've opened themselves up to a bunch of different types of attacks that will be happening in the future. 100%. Tom, we should read this. This is JD Vance to the team because we alluded to it earlier. Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan, but I think we are making

a mistake. 3% of US trade runs through the Suez. 40% of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn't understand this or why it's necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message. But I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There is a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices.

I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself, but there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, et cetera. Yeah. So he, he clearly thinks that the president is wrong at this point. And then, you know, how Seth sort of raises the concern and says, yeah, like, we're not going to be able to do that. We really should consider this.

Also he uses the words OPSEC, which is operational security. Ironic. And he's like, I can, I will do all I can to 100% and force 100% upset. Unbelievable. All that you can there, Petey. Everything you can. The whole time there's a fucking reporter in the chain. Everything you can except for taking a fucking roll call

and being like, hey man, wouldn't you also notice real quick, Cecil, wouldn't you notice if you had somebody on, if you have only the most important people in the room, small group, that's what people in the room, small group is what they're calling the small group. What do you notice somebody being like real quiet? Here's JD Vance saying, if you think we should go with, let's go.

I just hate bailing Europe out again. And here's where, uh, where JD fan were. He's like, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's pathetic. All caps. Way to just, way to just, like this is our Department of Defense guy. I know.

He's the guy who needs to be, if anybody out there needs to make sure that, like our allies, and I'm using air quotes here, trust us. It needs to be this guy because he's gonna be the one who, if something bad happens to the United States, you know, where's our coalition of the willing, you know, if they're pathetic, what's going to happen? How are we loading pathetic Europeans? How are we going to get them on our side? Well, we're not. And I think, I think too, like if you're the department of defense,

like aren't we inherently weaker when we stand alone than when we stand with friends? defense, like, aren't we inherently weaker when we stand alone than when we stand with friends? We even if it's not a military op thing, intelligence sharing among allies is intensely valuable and powerful. And if I were anyone in Europe right now, the amount of intelligence I would share with the unintelligent is low, man. Yeah. Well, we got on this, on this slide, there's a bunch of different, uh, they talk about all the different things that are going to be happening.

This is how Seth telling people exactly when and here's the thing that I don't understand. Why did he even share this? Why couldn't he just say in here, okay, we're a go. I don't know, man. That's a good question. I don't know why all. That's a good question. I don't know why. Why all these other people need to know? Because of all the things that you could share, you don't have to tell them all these details because you're the details guy. And what I

wonder is here's what here's my here's Cecil's theory. Speculate my friend. Cecil's theory is back you love I mean speculate The Fox and Friends guy is swinging dick. Oh, he just feels important. He just wants to feel important to show people Here's what I can show you I could do. Oh, I got this I got this and I'm gonna I'm gonna use these these terms and things to show you I'm the one who ordered all this stuff and here's what I did. Do you think I'm wrong? No, I think you're the rightest right that it was ever right. Holy shit. Yeah. Because he's a piece of shit. He didn't have to share this. He didn't have to share it. No. The conference was nothing. He did though. He sure as fuck did. And it's all information about when flights are leaving, when they'll

arrive, drones are going to come in. It's all. You're exactly right. Yeah. He could have just said, hey, operations ago. Yeah. Operations ago. And that would have been nothing. Yep. Here's the thing. There would have been a story about these people talking about this over signal and it would have been, it would have been a little bit of a black eye. People would have been like, oh, come on, whatever. And it probably would have blown under the radar. He shared this because of his hubris.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is what makes it the worst thing. Now we may get corrected and people will say other things that are, you know, well, there was this other thing and that's important too. And I'm not gonna dispute that because I don't know all what should

and shouldn't be classified. But I will say without this, it feels a lot more like a nothing burger if it doesn't have this in it. If it doesn't have that very specific stuff that's happening in it. I think this is the difference between, hey, this was always illegal because of the national records issue. This was always, uh, obviously no, no way to handle communications

within the government adding a reporter. It was always, but those were always going to be, they're more theoretical or principle based, but the specific action items of, hey, at 12 15, this kind of jet is going to drop a bomb on this specific location. I mean, that's just indefensible. Yeah, that's in there. That's 100% right. Yeah.

Indefensible. You just can't, what do you say about that? Also those emojis, indefensible. Oh just can't what do you say about that? Also those emojis? Oh my god indefensible. I'm sorry. You should be fired for that fire and they should fire you with emojis They should have said you have one thumb down God when I was uh, oh and then there's all there's more hold on. This is from God with cough he sends two prayer hands and a flexing bicep into American God.

Yeah, man. So here's the members that were in there. It's Waltz. There's Hegseth. And then M.A.R. is Marco Rubio and then Ratcliffe. TG is Tulsi Gabbard. Fucking unreal. JD Vance and then the others, there's others in there too. So that was the text thread. I wanna kind of play another piece here. So I wanna put this up on the big screen so we can play it.

This is from CNN and I just wanna play this clip that they put together. If there was anyone other than Hillary Clinton, they would be in jail right now. Nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is. Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the SBI when you have the Clinton emails. On top of the fact that the sitting president of the United States admitted he had documents in his garage, they didn't prosecute,

they didn't go after these folks. So that's the other thing too, is that they keep on bringing up Biden's stuff in the garage and that nobody is mentioning that Trump had like nuke secrets in his fucking bathroom. Like these people, they have a clear history of not paying attention to top secret documents or caring what's in them.

That's why I said at the outset, like this is not an administration that deserves the benefit of the doubt on this stuff because they have already displayed an appalling lack of regard for any of our national security secrets. You know, I remember when Trump was like, hey, let me come over here. You're not, I'm not supposed to show you this.

Let me show you this thing. Let me show you this thing. Yeah, yeah. Let me see if I can find this. Because he's just like Hegseth. He wanted to swing dick. He wanted to be like, look how important I am. There's one more that I want to play.

This is, I think a little longer clip of Hegseth talking about, he's talking about the election headquarters on 2016. So here he is. I'm going to play this one too. Apparently the standard operating procedure inside the Clinton's secretary of state office was to send emails that couldn't otherwise be printed to the maid to print them out of a secure area or from a secure area and then hand them off. Any security professional, military, government or otherwise, would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for being so reckless with this kind of information. The fact that she wouldn't be held accountable for this, I think blows the mind of anyone

who's held our nation's secrets dear. Who's had a top secret client like I have and others, who know that even one hiccup causes a problem, let alone a standard procedure like this. So another thing we should definitely talk about is that while a couple of these people were getting this information on their cell phones, they might have been in other countries. One of them probably was in Russia at the time. Cool, cool. So, yeah, so there's a possibility

that they were on, you know, they were getting these things in their phone from, you know, Signal and it would be, you know, they would be in another country at that time. So again, these are, these are, I mean, this is a horrible situation, a genuinely horrible situation. What do you think is going to, nothing's going to happen for this? Oh yeah. So literally nothing will happen. I think that, you know, very clearly, because it's already begun, Trump will aggressively try to turn the tables on the Atlantic. He's already done it. He called it a failing new magazine, about to go bankrupt.

He called Jeff Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic, who got added in this and broke the story. He's called him like a disgusting person. So they're going to aggressively try to paint everybody who points out this incredible breach of our national security as they themselves are the traders. I even saw something before the actual like screenshots hit. I think it was Marjorie Taylor Greene who tweeted out something, you know, like any

disclosure of our national secrets is treason or something similar to that. Basically like keep your fucking mouth shut. You're not allowed to tell anybody what you just learned. And it's like, I don't know, man, cause you guys are all saying it's not classified. It's not classified, yeah. So you can't have it both ways. And I think she might've deleted that tweet

because I think it was like before they had this thing. Cause the knots they're trying to tie themselves in. Rather than just being like, yeah, all right, we got to fire that guy because he's not good. Here's what you have to remember about this. If they're, you know, look at how this has been for the first Trump administration

and for this Trump administration so far. There is never ever any accountability whatsoever. No. There's never, and there's always gaslighting other people and pushing the blame off on someone else. There's never a moment where somebody just walks up and says, I fucked up. That's my fault.

I messed up. Waltz should have immediately resigned. 100%. Hexeth should have immediately resigned and said, I messed up. That's my fault. I'm going to go do Fox and Friends weekend. Made a huge mistake.

I'm so sorry. I put the lives of the troops at risk. These are people who I love and I respect. You know, think of their, think of, I think, to be honest, that that would be such a welcome breath of fresh air of responsibility that this entire scandal would have been wiped away.

Oh, 100%. Completely wiped away. That if those two scandal would have been wiped away. Oh, 100%. Completely wiped away. That if those two guys would have just stepped down and said that, being fine. But as it stands, I mean, it's, Telsie essentially perjured herself. She stood there and said there was no, no classified material. And then the next day they're like, yeah, there is classified material in here. What are you talking about? Like, of course that that's classified.

Of course, troop movements and jet flying where they're going and what time is classified. What are you talking about? Like of course that that's classified of course troop movements and jet flying where they're going And what time is classified? What are you crazy? Yeah, if it's not classified you can put it on a billboard. It's not classified Why is it like go call the Houthis and let them know ahead of time? Yeah, you just fucking put it on fucking right you put it on reddit. Yeah ahead of time Don't the fuck fuck out here of course is. So she essentially perjures herself in this. Ratcliffe looks like nothing's going to happen because of that. And this makes you realize, you know, all the people who thought, one, who thought that we were going to be doing

a lot less war stuff. Yeah. What does this tell you about this administration? You know, all the constant talk I heard from all the Trump supporters in the circles that I see them in when I'm sick of these constant wars. Well, what are we doing? Like if that's the case, what are we doing then? Like we're out there and like they suggest they're even bailing out Europe. Like if that's the case, then have somebody else do that. If that's what you really feel. But what they want to do is what Hegseth wanted to do is just show people that he could do this like the reason why any Of this even happened. I think is because of his hubris and how he wanted to how he wanted to play with a new toy He just I think that's true, man

I don't think there's any other reason why this guy did this and why he included all that stuff in there This was clearly all about how how hubristic this guy is What I also think which is how hubristic this guy is. What I also think, which is horrifying, and I'm just kinda coming to this conclusion right now, is that because nothing will happen, they will learn a lesson from this. And the lesson that they will learn is,

we can get away with whatever we want. They keep learning the same lesson over and over again since January, which is, let's try this and see if they'll stop us. Oh, they won't stop us is let's try this and see if they'll stop us. Oh, they won't stop us. Let's try that and see if they'll stop us. Now this is all right, you fucked up. Let's say we didn't fuck up. Let's just say we didn't fuck up.

Let's see if we can get away with it. Now this should be a scandal that should bring everybody down. If this doesn't bring anybody down, the lesson that they would take away from this, the inevitable lesson to take away for anybody would be, there is no accountability no matter what we do, boys. Free fucking rain.

Use signal, use telegram. It doesn't matter. Fucking do whatever you want. Put it on Facebook, make a Facebook group. When, yeah, fuck. When Trump was initially asked about this too, he's like, I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the's like, I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the first time.

I don't know anything about it. Nobody briefed him on it. Yeah. It's crazy. Nobody briefed him. Nobody briefed him that there was like an Atlantic article on about it. That's literally says a huge that his entire, his entire administration was cracked wide open and they gave a reporter a bird's eye view of it.

And they, he, nobody, nobody told him nobody, or he's just lying or he's lying look here's the thing if he's not if he's not lying which very possibly is lying right very because i think what trump does very often i was because i when he was asked later he's like uh you'll have to ask the people involved i don't know anything about it and i realized when i heard him say that i was like you know he does that all the time where even though the buck should stop with him, if he doesn't wanna answer a question, if it's part of his administration, if it's a, he'll be like, I don't know, you gotta ask them.

Go talk to somebody else. I don't know anything about that. That's not something I know. And you're like, you should know. It should be fucking embarrassing that you don't know. It should be a problem. It should be actually its own scandal that you don't know what's going on in your house.

But because he uses that so often, everybody's just like, maybe he didn't know. I guess he just doesn't know. I guess he just doesn't know, and that's okay. It is also a sign of fascist dictators that nobody tells the emperor he has no clothes. So if it is in fact the case that this scandal broke and nobody told him, that is yet another really telling and damning sign.

Because if like, you know, like it's, it's, it's been the case for like dictators throughout centuries where it's like, nobody gives the emperor the bad news. Cause if you do, he'll be hung on his desk like that scene from Downfall. I don't know if you've seen that scene a bunch of times. It's used as a meme, but it's Hitler talking about the battle plans. And then they're like, my and sure, our battle fucked up. And they're like, he's like, all right, everybody leave the room, except for these five people. And then he starts screaming.

He's like, he's yelling, he's fucking throwing chips all over the place. And he's fucking screaming at maps. and it's like a whole meme. It's like a whole meme from this movie that they constantly change the subtitles in it though. Oh, right. So like if they trade away like, you know, Luka Donchik to the Lakers, it's the Lakers or it's the Dallas Mavericks all sitting around having their conversation, the head, and they're like, we traded Luka Dantsevich, and he's like, all right, everybody's got to leave,

and then he screams while trading, you know what I mean? So it's one of the, people just use it for their own thing. I wanted to say one final piece on this. You're absolutely right that nothing's gonna happen, and this is not the problem of the president. This is the problem of the Congress, because there's a reason why we have three branches of government

and those three branches of government do checks and balances. And this is what's happening with this whole scandal is that it's all part of the executive branch. Well, what should happen in a functioning government is that Congress should step in and say, we're gonna just do the whole thing. We're gonna go through,

we're gonna call these people out. We're gonna request all these records. We're gonna look through it. We're gonna get a bipartisan committee in both Congress and the Senate. We're gonna do a bunch of these hearings. We're gonna make people come here and testify. And then we're gonna do some things

to make sure that they lose their job or whatever it is. They'll be the one who lays the smack down. They'll be the one who goes out of their way to say, this is what needs to happen. That's not gonna happen because you have a feckless, absolutely cowardly person in Mike Johnson who would never do that. And immediately, as soon as he was asked,

passed it off as nothing. He's like, oh, it's not a big deal. He's like, basically, oh, they'll figure it out. It's not a big deal. Like it should be his number one job to do this sort of thing. That's the thing that they are there for. They make it seem like they're there

to just hand wave away everything. And it's like, no, you're there to hold your side accountable to. And they're not gonna do it That's because you're exactly right. The the legislative branch is not functional right now Yeah, they are not functioning as that check and balance. They're supposed to do that. They have Seated their responsibility and their power and Mike Johnson the the house majority wimp Nice is The house majority wimp is doing everything he can to ensure that there is no accountability.

Yeah. All right. So we'll have a full show on Thursday this week and the full show will be just a bunch of stuff that we would normally cover on a regular show, but we wanted to do a whole episode on this today because it was so important. We want to make sure that we covered it in its entirety. Check us out. If you're a patron, Tom read both the articles from the Atlantic and those were posted on hopefully on Friday. We're recording this and it's not posted yet, but I'm hoping their Friday or Saturday We post those so y'all have all the patrons will have an opportunity to listen to those ahead of time And then we'll cover it will be covering it on Monday

And so you'll get an opportunity to see that and then on Thursday full show regular show just regular stuff And we'll be back then but we're gonna leave you like we always do with the skeptics creed Credulity is not a virtue We're gonna leave you like we always do with the Skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble,

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