The Journal. - Trump 2.0: Group Chat Fallout

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

A journalist was added to a text thread with high-level Trump administration officials revealing plans for the timing and weapons to be used in a military strike against Houthi militants. Administration officials disputed that any classified information about the military operation had been shared. WSJ’s Nancy Youssef joins the chat with Ryan Knutson and Molly Ball to discuss the fallout of the group chat pinged ‘round the world.  Further Reading: -An Annotated Analysis of Signal Group Chat With Top Trump Officials  -Hegseth Comes Under Scrutiny for Texting Strike Details as Fallout Grows  -Democrats Are Taking Their Anger Out on Chuck Schumer  Further Listening: -Trump’s Attack on Big Law  -Trump’s College Crackdown  -Trump 2.0: A Showdown with the Judiciary  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Molly Ball. Hey, Ryan Knudsen. Have you ever accidentally been added to a group chat? I cannot discuss that information. It is highly sensitive. You're not going to say I have I have from time to time received texts that were not intended for me that I could tell I was not supposed to know about. Hmm.

But nothing that you can say. Have you? I accidentally added the wrong person to a group chat once. I meant to include my friend Bjorn inviting him to a party that we were having. And I accidentally, as I learned later, added the wrong Bjorn. I'm impressed you know more than one Bjorn. Yeah. Well, doesn't everybody have two bjorns in their life?

I don't. I don't know if I even have one bjorn in my context, much less multiple bjorns that would necessitate a disambiguation of the bjorns. If you need a bjorn in your life, I have two people I can introduce you to. You have a spare? You have an extra bjorn? We are, of course, talking about the group chat

heard around the world. The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was inadvertently included on a signal conversation between Trump's national security advisor, defense secretary, director of national intelligence, secretary of state, and others discussing an upcoming military strike on the Houthis in Yemen. Molly, what did you think when you saw the story? Wow. I think everyone in Washington's jaw sort of dropped when we saw the initial report. It was pretty mind-blowing. This is obviously embarrassing for the Trump administration, but how big of a deal is it,

do you think? That is a matter of debate. One thing we've heard from the administration is, oh, the media is making too much of this. It was a simple mistake. Let's all move on. We've all learned something, et cetera. But I think a lot of national security experts think this is deeply troubling because it potentially put American troops at risk. So there is a lot of concern about the potential ramifications of this scandal beyond just the particular instance of this group chat. From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Ryan Knudson. And I'm Molly Ball.

It's Friday, March 28th. Today on the Trump 2.0 group chat, we're going inside the fallout from the private signal conversation that the entire world now gets to be a part of. Okay, flights on air Canada. How about Prague? Ooh, Paris. Those gardens. Gardens. Amsterdam. Tulip Festival. I see your festival and raise you a carnival in Venice. Or Bermuda has carnaval.

Ooh, colorful. You want colorful. Thailand. Lantern Festival. Boom. Book it. How did we get to Thailand from Prague? Oh right, Prague. Oh boy. Choose from Prague? Oh, right! Prague! Oh, boy. Choose from a world of destinations. If you can. Air Canada. Nice travels. Alright, Molly, so this isn't the first time

that handling of classified information has been the subject of political scandal. President Biden and President Trump each had investigations launched against them because they held on to classified documents after leaving the White House. During the 2016 campaign, Trump and Republicans criticized Hillary Clinton for keeping sensitive information on a private email server when she was Secretary of State. So is this situation any different? It is and it isn't. As you say, there have been a lot of scandals involving the handling of classified and sensitive information over the years.

This one is different in the specifics. In today's fast-paced world, you know, almost everything that we do in our jobs can be done on our phones, but you're still not supposed to do war planning that way. And so I think that gives this scandal a new wrinkle. All right, well, to help us understand all of the wrinkles of this situation, our colleague Nancy Youssef, who covers national security in the Pentagon, has entered the group chat.

Hi. Nancy, thanks so much for being here. So great to be with you. Hey, Nancy. So you cover national security. What was your reaction when you heard that this, that a journalist had accidentally been added to this highly sensitive group chat? I mean, I guess since they used emojis, the emoji I would have used is like head exploding

when I first saw it because there were so many elements of it that were surprising. I cover the Pentagon primarily, so the idea that details about an op would be on signal was shocking to me. That the decision around the strike would be made on signal. That a reporter would be added. That the times of strikes when F-18s were taken off aircraft carriers would be included on the check. It was all so shocking to me.

And also, because I've covered a lot of these strikes, you rarely get to see sort of the behind the scenes in terms of what they're talking about in those critical minutes and hours before a strike. So to see that conversation and what's happening was interesting to me. So it was all really surprising. In terms of the mission itself, what was the goal of this attack? So the Houthis are a militant group in Yemen.

They control large swaths of Yemen. And after the war in Gaza began, the Houthis had started launching strikes and attacks on commercial and military vessels traveling through the Red Sea. And that is one of the busiest commercial shipping waters in the world. And so those strikes really reduced the use of those waters and fundamentally changed commercial shipping. And the Biden administration had conducted strikes on them to try to stop

this and get those ships back in those waters. It kind of conducted about 200 such strikes intermittently throughout 2024. But the Houthis continued to strike. Then there was the ceasefire in January and the Houthis announced that they would stop the strikes in light of the ceasefire. Then when the ceasefire started to collapse, they announced that they've resumed strikes. They hadn't yet, when the US launched this campaign, that they have said we'll be different in targeting Houthis and reopening those waterways. The Trump administration in this attack,

the US is going after Houthi leadership. The big difference that we see is that they're going after leadership and personnel, and I think that they are trying to do it more offensively. Rather than doing it sort of over a couple days, that they're gonna try to do it over several days. I think we're in day 11 or 12, I've lost count of days on the strike campaign.

And it sounds like what you're saying is this is an ongoing campaign and we don't know yet whether it will achieve its ultimate objective of unblocking these sea lanes for commercial traffic. That's right. One of the main arguments we've heard from the administration is that, as you know, that this has been successful. In terms of like the initial objectives of that day, I think one could argue that they've been successful and that they hit what they wanted to

hit. But in terms of the broader campaign goals, it is too early to say that. And we haven't heard anything in the last few days that indicates that this campaign over this last 11 or 12 days has gone such that they think they're on track to reaching a point where the Houthis can no longer pose a threat to ships transiting the Red Sea and other nearby waters. One of the interesting things about this chat is that you get some insight into the policy debate that's taking place between high-ranking

Trump administration officials. And in there, you can see some debate between JD Vance and other administration officials about whether or not to proceed with this attack, whether or not the attack conflicts with President Trump's policy agenda when it comes to Europe. Can you explain, Nancy, what this debate is about and what you learned from it? So, the U.S. is not the primary user of those waters in terms of having goods transited to the United States. It's primarily used by Europe. And the president has said that he wants to see Europe take more control over their own security concerns and issues, including commercial shipping that they depend on.

And so JD Vance, who has been opposed to using US military resources for things that are not primarily US military, US security concern interests, raises objections. Should the United States be investing in this kind of risky, expensive strike for something that doesn't pose a major economic threat to the United States. We're the minority in terms of using those shipping waters. Yeah, I think in the chat, Vance says something like 3% of US trade runs through the Suez Canal, while 40% of European trade does. Yeah, I don't know the numbers, but that doesn't sound off to me based on prior reporting. And then Stephen Miller comes in and says, no, this is what the president's asked for and this is what we're going to give them. And so to hear them sort of debating it literally days, hours before the strike was really interesting to me and speaks to sort of the divisions about how the US military is used.

So, you know, in the past, we have been the leading nation in terms of defending not only US interests, but that of our allies. And there's a real time debate going on about how much we're willing to continue to do that going forward. Yeah, I love how, you know, JD Vance in that chat says, I'm willing to support the consensus of the team

and keep these concerns to myself, but there is a strong argument for delaying. Those concerns are no longer being kept to himself. That's right. That this group chat has been made public. That's right. That's right. And by the way, Europe saw that. And I think you saw a lot of reaction to Europe about that because I think they'd been concerned about how much the US would come to their defense and to see that debate happening. I think for those who are concerned that maybe

the United States wouldn't be as a reliable partner, this sort of reaffirmed their fears. Now, having said that, the US did do the strikes. So you get a sense though that this is an ongoing debate in some ways, not one that's been resolved. So let's talk about Mike Waltz, Trump's national security advisor. He's the one who, according to the screenshots, created the group chat and added the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. How has he accounted for what happened? So he said he took full responsibility. He had the president's backing at a briefing earlier this week, but then subsequently sort of launched an attack on

Goldberg and said that he wasn't a credible journalist and that maybe he wasn't solely strictly responsible for the creating of the chat, that he didn't know Jeffrey Goldberg, didn't have reason to have him in his phone. I can tell you for 100%, I don't know this guy. I know him by his horrible reputation and he really is a bottom scum of journalists And I know him in the sense that he hates the president, but I don't text him He wasn't on my phone and we're gonna figure out how this And so it was sort of a yes, but kind of scenario for lack of a better term

If it was a mistake and if it was Walt who did it do we have any idea who he might have meant to put on there? No, there's a lot of speculation about that. It's sort of a search for every JG in government who might have been involved. I mean, it's sort of the parlor game in Washington. The other reason it's hard for me to answer is I'm used to what used to happen, or at least what happens at DOD, which is like these guys at that level, top level, have a communications team that travels with them. So first of all, they have a secure communication set up in their house. But let's say they're out when something is happening. The communications person is with them to give them a secure phone to set up a secure

communications channel. So it's hard for me to know because it's an unconventional way to even start this conversation. Is signal even allowed on government phones? I know there was an alert that went out recently from the Pentagon about signal being a potential target of hackers. So I went around the Pentagon the other day just asking people for their government phones and asking them if they could download Signal and they could. They could actually get the app on the government phone, but no one had the gall, and I didn't have the gall to push it, to try to start a Signal chat to find out if you could actually

send messages on a government phone. What I saw is on Signal, you can actually download the app on a government phone, but there are all sorts of regulations about them using that to send communications about anything other than something innocuous like let's meet at this time or that time. Where do you want to get lunch later? Yeah and I should note like we've the most similar scenario that I've seen along these lines is in Afghanistan they use WhatsApp all the time to communicate with the Afghans because they didn't the Afghans didn't have secured comms.

That's the closest that I've seen where military sort of planning has gone over an unsecured system. All right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll talk more with Nancy about the potential repercussions of the signal leak.... So, the administration is sort of saying two things in its defense here. One is that these were not war plans. We heard Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth say that in an interview this week. Nobody was texting war plans and

that's all I have to say about that. And two, that it was not classified. Here's Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, talking about that during a Senate hearing. The conversation was candid and sensitive, but as the President National Security Advisor stated no classified information was shared. There were no sources, methods, locations or war plans that were shared. Nancy, the Atlantic released the full text thread, so we can see what was actually being discussed here.

What do you make of these two arguments that the administration is putting forward? So to me, this is an argument about semantics. In the Pentagon, war plans refers to like the macro war plan in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Attack plans are that sort of individual unit plans assigned to do a specific task. And one could argue that attack plans are more sensitive than war plans. They have more details, they have names of units, they're much more detail oriented. So technically they're not war plans, but I think to a layman they are war plans in

that they provide details about an upcoming military operation. Now they don't have the specific name of the person they were targeting or the specific building or the specific unit. But there's a framework there of what the military is getting ready to do on a military campaign. But that is a sensitive time and has always been treated as classified. And I have yet to find someone in the building who considers that unclassified information. I can just say that the Pentagon sees that as sensitive classified information. This regulation is saying that operations are always top secret and can be declassified

after the operation is over. They often don't even tell us about these operations until that last fighter jet is back after the mission is over. That's been the standard practice before. I'm so sorry. This is a source calling that I have to take. Oh, uh, she hung up. I guess that's what happens when you are a busy reporter.

Yep. Sorry. Oh, wait, uh, Nancy's back. The guy who never calls me out of the blue, and then I think it was a butt call, so I was like, uh, he added you to the group chat by mistake. Not quite as good as getting added to the group chat, but... I know. Alright, I know you're busy, Nancy, so I'll just ask you one more question

before we let you go. What's the follow-up been like for Pete Hegseth, who was the one who texted what appears to be the most sensitive information, which is the details about the actual pending attack on the Houthis? So on Wednesday, there was a hearing on the House side with Tulsi Gabbard, the ODNI director, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, and they both basically said, well, we thought it was okay because Pete Hegseth said it was okay.

He says it's unclassified, so we took him at his word. And so there was a lot of suggestion on Wednesday that the responsibility of assessing whether to share that information sat with Pete Hegseth. It is the biggest sort of pointing at him that we've seen so far this week and suggests that they are looking at him at least on that portion of it. I think it's because that was among some of the most sensitive information released on that text thread. Thanks, Nancy, so much for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Nancy.

Bye, guys. All right. Nancy has now left the group chat and it is just you and me, Molly, at least I think. So how have other members of the chat been explaining themselves? There were these hearings this week on Capitol Hill where we heard from two other members of the chat, Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. What did they say? It was very interesting because as you say, there were two days of hearings and in between the first and second day, the Atlantic released the transcripts of the full text message exchange that showed just how

detailed and sensitive the information being shared in this group chat was. And so, you know, on the first day, the administration officials had said, oh, I, you know, I don't remember exactly what was in there. I couldn't tell you. It's not in front of me, et cetera. But then they came back and they were sort of confronted with it. And particularly, you know, the Democrats on the committee were really pushing them to acknowledge that they were trying to cover something up and to account for the discrepancies

in the administration's explanations for all of this. And what we saw was Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence saying, well, the things that I shared were not classified. And if you have concerns about these attack plans, you're going to have to ask the person who shared them, which was Pete Hegseth and the CIA Director, John Radcliffe, also saying a version of this. So, it was interesting in that it really put the focus on Hegseth, who has been traveling in Asia this whole time and won't be back for a while, and has made only very limited public statements, both in person and on his social media account, defending his conduct here.

As it said at the top of that, everybody's seen it now, team update is to provide updates in real time. General updates in real time, keep everybody informed. That's what I did. That's my job. But it really became clear that the other officials in the group chat felt like if anyone was responsible for sharing this sensitive information, it was Hegseth because outside of him talking in great detail about literally when bombs were going to drop and where, you could say that everyone else was just having sort of an abstract policy

debate or doing sort of logistical coordination. It was Hegseth who, of his own accord, without being prompted, came in to share these very detailed battle plans. Democrats have been expressing a lot of outrage over this, but they don't have the power to open investigations right now, being in the minority. President Trump seems like he's supporting everybody so far. His attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that a criminal investigation was unlikely. Is there any chance that anyone gets held accountable for this? It is not just Democrats who have expressed concern about this situation. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have publicly and privately expressed concern.

A lot of Republican lawmakers have military backgrounds. Congressman Don Bacon, who's a moderate Republican from Nebraska, who has a military background, has expressed concern, said when he was in the service, this would have been unacceptable. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, said the administration needs to admit that this was a mistake and move on. And there is a bipartisan letter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, who shepherded Pete Hegseth through his confirmation hearings to become Secretary of Defense, co-authored a bipartisan letter with his Democratic counterpart, basically demanding an internal

investigation of this. And Mike Waltz on Fox said that he was having Elon Musk look into it from a technical perspective, too. So we'll see where that goes. We'll see where that goes. We'll see where that goes. Some on the right in the Trump administration have been critical of Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist who was added to this chat.

What's your sort of just general take from a journalistic point of view about how Jeffrey Goldberg handled the situation? I should say that Jeffrey Goldberg is my former boss. I worked at the Atlantic a long time ago and have great respect for him. It's hard to say that he did anything wrong in this case. He was added to this group chat through no initiative of his own. He didn't ask to be put there. It was a surprise to him as he

detailed in his first report for the Atlantic. He initially assumed that there was no way this could be a real conversation between national security officials because of course they would never do it on signal. Of course they would never do it with a journalist present. And so he describes this process of initially thinking this is some kind of elaborate catfishing attempt and then watching as the messages continued to come into his phone and then the sort of incredible denouement of seeing the bombs fall. So that was sort of when he knew that this was all for real. He excused himself from the group chat and then proceeded to try to responsibly seek

response from the officials in question and decide what was prudent to publish and how. So the initial report included very few of the actual details of these conversations in part because he wanted to be mindful of the security concerns in question. And it was only when the administration spent 24 hours insisting that he was essentially lying that he said, well, all right, if you're going to say that none of this is sensitive information and you're going to call my integrity into question, we'll put it out there for the public to see and judge for themselves.

All right, Molly. Last question before I let you go. How is your March Madness bracket? I don't have a bracket, Ryan. How's yours? I took Jess Braven's advice and put the Supreme Court... I picked them to win, but they haven't played any games. So...

What? What a ripoff. Well, more importantly, this week was baseball opening day. So, finally, we have real sports to watch. Right. Yes, right. You're a baseball fan. I'm a huge baseball fan. Go Rockies. Go Rockies.

I have the great misfortune of being a Colorado Rockies fan, but I believe very strongly that you have a moral obligation to root for your hometown team, even if they are perpetually terrible like the Colorado Rockies. Yes. I mean, I am a Seattle Mariners fan first and foremost, and it has been a very, very sad 25 years. We're in the same boat there. Every once in a while, they make the playoffs,

but you just can't have any hope. Okay, great. Thanks again. Thanks, Ryan. Before we go, do you have any questions about what the Trump administration is doing? Email us and let us know. Please send a voice note to thejournal at wsj.com. Before we go, do you have any questions about what the Trump administration is doing? Email us and let us know. Please send a voice note to thejournal at wsj.com.

That's thejournal at wsj.com. Trump 2.0 is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Enrique Perez de la Rosa and edited by Catherine Whalen, with help from Matt Kwong and Alessandra Rizzo. Molly Ball is The Wall Street Journal's senior political correspondent. I'm Ryan Knudson. This episode was engineered by Griffin Tanner. Our theme music is by So Wiley

and remixed by Peter Leonard. Additional music in this episode by Emma Munger and Griffin Tanner. Fact-checking by Kate Gallagher. Artwork by James Walton. Trump 2.0 will be back with a new episode next Friday morning. See you then.