The Team House - Trump Admin Signal Chat Exposed | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

quick hit today with Marc Polymeropoulos talking about Jefferey Goldberg the EIC of The Atlantic being added to a signal group chat with top Trump admin national security officials.ew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseMarc Polymer ⬇️https://x.com/mpolymer?lang=enhttps://web-cdn.bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4hfd6gooiddj6aelubt7jlrzFind Andy Milburn here: ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023https://amilburn.substack.com/https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operationshttps://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialhttps://open.substack.com/pub/amilburn/p/journal-of-a-plague-year?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=emo6q&utm_medium=iosFind Mick Mulroy here: ⬇️https://fogbow.com/https://www.loboinstitute.org/https://x.com/MickMulroy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_apphttps://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.sociMusic by - Karl Casey @ White Bat AudioBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Eyes On. We got a special Greek Independence Day episode for you. I joined here with Mark Polymeropolis, former obviously senior CIA officer. We're going to go on one topic. It's going to be fast and loose about what went down yesterday with the signal chat from the article in the Atlantic, which pretty much spelled out, what was what? So, Mark, how's it going, man? Have you ever sent, like, you know, secret stuff?

to people on Signal, like while you were working? Just to you. Oh, that's it. Just to you with Jack. I mean, come on. No, well, first of all, I think there's, this is, this is a significant because now the two Greeks have taken over the show. Yep.

No more Marines. You're just Greeks. No more Marines and, you know, and other riffraff around. And so, uh, this is important. It is Greek Independence Day. Um, and we could probably do a whole podcast on how our fellow Greek Americans were kind of snowed so many of them into the MAGA world, but that's for another time. So I will just say that I will note, I was not invited as a, in my view, as I am a prominent Greek American. I was not invited to the

White House yesterday. I saw some of my, I knew a couple of kids that were there. Right. Right. So, so I get, so I, so I, the way I put it out on social media, I guess they lost, you know, my invitation in the mail. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you probably didn't even, you probably didn't give money to like the inauguration or some shit. You know what? mean to get the end. I did not do that. But thanks for having me on, Dee, really an astonishing 24 hours with this explosive report in the Atlantic, which I think, you know, for many of us in the national security world, you know, left us kind of gobsmacked. And that's, by the way, it's on both sides of the aisle. So you're going to see a whole bunch of kind of Republican spin on

this, necessarily saying it didn't happen, but downplaying it. But in private, every single, you know, and national security official that I know is equally as alarmed about what happened. Because in essence, and just to kind of summarize a little bit, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, was somehow added to what was called in a signal chat, the Houthi small group. And PC-means principal committee? The Houthi-P-C-S-Mall group. Now, that, by the way, is the exact name that is used in such small discussions that, of course, usually are held in the situation room. So just the name itself is very revealing that this is

almost certainly true. But in it, individuals, including the vice president, and then representatives from some other national security agencies, Mike Walts, I guess, was the one who organized this, the national security advisor. But there was clearly classified discussions that were being held, including, you know, war plans. And we'll address that in a second. But I think what was stunning for many of us is that, you know, Signal is a encrypted chat. It's pretty good. In fact, I use it to talk to a lot of people. It is considered, though, by the U.S. government to be unclassified. It is absolutely not appropriate to have, whether it's confidential, secret, or top secret information on it, period. End of story. And so I think that's what kind of shocked a lot of people. There is something else in which, you know,

that we can talk all about the irony of this. But as a CIA alumnus, a retired, And I know there's other people who you certainly have here, you know, Mick Mulroy, my good friend. We all received on March 12th an unclassified email, and you can't make this up from this CIA alumni organization, unclassified warning about what, the dangers of signal. The vulnerability of the signal. And then we have our current director using Signal or participating in this chat. Of course, this was generated by the National Security Advisor. Mike Walts. And so there's just a staggering level of hypocrisy here.

So, you know, there's, there's so many things to think about. Then there's, of course, the content of it itself on the policy side, which is really interesting. And, you know, we can kind of address these things kind of piecemeal. But bottom line on this is that this seems to be a very serious breach of national security information. Signal is not secure for this type of content. And, you know, let's see what happens. Again, in one of the another incredible ironies, today and tomorrow, the entire national security establishment, including Tulsi Gabbard, the DNI, John Radcliffe,

the CIA director, Cash Patel, the FBI director, are all testifying today in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and an open hearing that starts at 10 a.m. Oh, my God. Tomorrow in front of the House permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. I mean, talk about incredible timing. And these are important briefings because it's a worldwide threat assessment, but I would imagine it's going to be dominated by this issue. Yeah.

I mean, you saw Pete Higgs says. response when he got off of his airplane, which he was obviously aware because Goldberg, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic who was put into this group chat and the Atlantic asked for comment early in the morning before the story went out,

so they were well aware of this story. And Hexas just went into some kind of like, kind of like a rant denying everything and stuff like that, even after the NSC fucking, you know, confirmed it. Well, right. I mean, that's the thing. So, you know, no one's story is straight.

I think a lot of people, you know, and we can, you know, we can kind of dive into the players in this. I think a lot of people had faith that Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, would be responsible national security official. He's on this chat. That's unfortunate. Mike Walts, who's a former Green Beret. I think it's disappointing.

that he certainly didn't understand the gravity of the security breach here. I mean, he initiated the chat. But Pete Heggsets, you know, plainside kind of diatribe against Jeffrey Goldberg, was just ludicrous. Yeah. And I think that does bring into question both his suitability and his qualifications as Secretary of Defense. And the White House this morning is, again, is on full-on denial mode. I mean, I guess what they're going to say is, number one, somehow that signal was a for this, which is, of course, not accurate. The biggest comment they'll have is that, well,

someone inadvertently invited a journalist into the chat. And then they're going to deny that these war plans were discussed. And I will just say that, you know, for Jeffrey Goldberg, so it seemed to me he acted responsible. The Atlantic did not report what was actually the content of it. But there's a lot of swirl going around in Washington that this had to do with, you know, precise targets, number of aircraft used, literally timing of. the sorters, the intelligence that was going to be used on the ground to help guide some of the strikes. And so, presumably, the Atlantic has this stuff. And, you know, so, so, you know, the White House denials, you know, are kind of interesting because at some point, you know, someone's not telling

the truth. And it certainly seems to be that the White House is spinning now. There's also some reports that Mike Walts's Jeopardy, my job might be in jeopardy. I saw that. Yeah. I think that's probably because for two reasons. One is that disembarrassed the administration. Trump doesn't like this. But what's really interesting, and maybe we can, you know, I think we can establish the fact that this was an extraordinary security breach. Let me also say, D, that, you know, myself or any others in the national security world, if we had done this, put this type of information on signal, we would not only be fired, we'd probably be prosecuted. So let's just be flat out. Yeah. The double secret is enormous. But the content of the actual messages, and then we can dive into that for a second.

I know this is a quick emergency pod. It's fascinating because it shows policy differences. You have J.D. Vance who is not advocating for the strikes. Then you have Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff, then coming in from kind of left field and saying, hey, this is what the president wants, do it. And end of story. And J.D. Vance kind of comes in. And then there's this kind of discussion between Vance and Pete Hegseth shitting all over the Europeans,

saying how pathetic they are. Now, of course, in Europe, you know, I have a lot of friends in Europe. I certainly have a lot of contact with your former national security officials there. They're focused on that. They're like, holy crap. These fuckers really do hate us. These are internal communications.

And so I think in some ways President Trump is probably pissed as well because this shows some fissures within the administration. And Pete Vance actually saying in one of the chats basically that the president really doesn't get it here. So it's a bit embarrassing for him. So again, there's so many facets of this. There's the security breach. There's the incompetence of inviting a reporter.

And then there's the content of the exchanges, which do show some of the inner kind of workings of the Trump administration, you know, perhaps some of the, of the fissures there. And so it's a this is a scandal for the ages. I mean, you know, not to get too hyperbolic, but I've never seen something like this. And again, the notion, people use signal all over Washington. National security officials use signal. and probably at times they do so on policy issues that they shouldn't. They do not put in strike plans. Right.

That's why I was just going to. They don't run a small group. Again, this is a meeting that should be held in the situation room. And the other part, too, Dee, it's important to note there's a massive communications infrastructure that all of these officials have at their disposal that follow them around both shab at their house and mobile. Like, there's no reason to do this other than laziness. Right.

even Mick, who is deputy assistant secretary, uh, said, he's like, there is a, there's a, you know, a protocol to this.

We get secure, like communications from laptops to phones even, right? So you can have these kind of conversations without putting it on a commercial app that, yeah, it might be encrypted, but like, my question is like,

if your phone's compromised, they can't see what you're typing and signal. If your phone compromised, the whole, the whole thing is compromised. I mean, again, Signal is not approved for this. Right. And let me just say once again, the CIA Alumni Association on March 12th and an unclassified letter that we all got. And I say, I can say this because unclassified, basically gave us guidance that signal was, it was not secure, was vulnerable. And there's here's some

things you can do to kind of tighten stuff up. And one of the things that is still, we still don't know, Dee, is, you know, signals usually used on your phone. Sure. And so are these are these the personal phones of these U.S. government officials? Again, a massive violation. The final piece on this is Steve Whitkoff, that, you know, the Middle East slash, you know, Russia, Ukraine envoy was actually traveling in Russia. And apparently he joined the chat on his, on his phone. Again, Russia being a denied area, along with Beijing, a place where you would never do this. And again, any ordinary national security official would be fired and perhaps prosecuted if they had done it. So, you know, the double standard. is enormous. And I would say, look, this was a mistake. Got it. But it's worth pointing out, and I'm sorry, you know, maybe some listeners won't like this, but the incredible hypocrisy, and you could do, maybe this is a good project for you, D., alongside whenever this, this pod comes out,

you could do a compilation of Hegsef, Tulsi Gabbard, John Ratcliffe, and certainly Mike Waltz, and how they eviscerated Hillary Clinton for the whole issue with her server. Yeah. And Marco Rubio as well, on and on and on. And frankly, this issue and the Hillary server issue was a real one. That's not good at what she did. This is far worse. Because, again, we have to see if, you know, if as Jeffrey Goldberg claims, and again,

I can't imagine this is not true because this is putting the Atlantic, which is an incredibly successful, unlike what President Trump said in the interview he did, incredibly successful, profitable magazine in Washington, which has an enormous readership of over, you know, a million subscribers, they wouldn't put their reputation on the line on this. And so, you know, the truth is eventually going to come out. I mean, you know, it's, they're, they're kind of, the administration is hanging on a, on the precipice right here. So there's some word that, I mean, and this is just speculation that the reason why Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the chat is because Mike Waltz regularly leak some stuff.

Well, I mean, look, I have a signal chat. I have a ton of contacts on there. And every once in a while, I do a request to someone and it's the wrong person. And I go, oh, shit, I didn't mean this. Because I've listed it as Keith or D or something like that. You know, I have more than one friend who's D. Yeah. And afterwards, as I'm having a chat with them, I'm like, holy crap, I'm actually talking to the wrong person.

Yeah. And so it's not in your contact list unless you. you have a reason to have contacted them before. And by the way, it's not, you know, and so, yeah, I mean, that, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's something that Mike Waltz probably has some explaining to do. Sure. I mean, listen, I'm sure this is not like, that's just name of the game. That's what the thing.

That's what the done in Washington, by the way. Right. Correct. Yeah. And he's the editor in chief to you. I mean, I'm sure he's definitely leaked them stuff, but what, or at least gotten comment or something. Jeffrey Goldberg's a powerful figure here who has enormous respect.

I mean, you know, he's a Trump critic. There's no doubt about that. Yeah. He's written extensively about, you know, Trump's kind of. disdain for the U.S. military and there's been controversy back and forth, but there's nothing that Goldberg that I've seen that he's done that is actually not accurate. Now, the White House is spinning this. Hegsef did in this morning, the White House press secretary again, they're, you know, they're doubling down. Look, the Donald Trump method, when a scandal hits, is literally

to deny it, it didn't happen, even if it's you right in the face. Right. You know, this is what he learned. This is what they do. And I think they probably think that because Republicans are so scared of them, Republicans on the Hill, that they can weather this. And they might. I mean, that's they definitely will. Yeah. And so, so, you know, should people lose their jobs over this? Absolutely. Will they? Probably not. But there's, there's, there's something to, you know, look, you have a lot of, of current and former military on this chat. And some people, you know, probably are Donald Trump fans, and some are not, and some are neutral. But, but, but, you know, assuming that Jeffrey Goldberg's right. And they, they provided the actual, and this is, this is in advance, two hours before the strikes of

of the time of the F-18 sororities and their targets. That is putting U.S. Navy pilots at risk. Yeah. And I'm sorry, I do have active duty friends in the military and they are appalled at this. And they said, their troops are talking about this too. Like, hold on a second. Like that kind of information, advanced strike planning in terms of specific targets and locations of the platforms used.

You know, thank God this wasn't intercepted by a hostile actor and that wasn't passed to the hooties. Yeah. The Houthis do have air defense. And so you put U.S. forces at risk. You got to explain, you know, you got to explain yourself. That to me is probably the most egregious part of this. Americans could have died because of this.

Yeah. Well, I mean, like, listen, I'm sure that you're not supposed to use signal if I talk even about, like, the broader strategic, like, policy and stuff like that. But that part of the conversation wasn't really that spicy outside of. of like kind of gossipy spicy until heck set drop the you know the plans that we haven't seen of the strike what's going on what's what you know what I mean like yep and let's let's yeah and so again that is that's kind of the holy grail here that was the oh crap moment um because people do use signal for stuff that they probably shouldn't and across administrations but not to this to this level again that that could have gotten Americans killed I want to make one point you know

I love the show. I love coming on. I've been on a million times. I'm sure I'd come on and some people get pissed because they know I'm a Trump critic. They'll get over. I would remind folks who are listening here that and of course I have a, I'm a contributor for MSNBC. But during the Afghan withdrawal, which was a debacle, I went on MSNBC literally every day on Morning Joe and other places. And I slammed the Biden administration mercilessly to the point where I think people were starting to get pissed at me, but I was so outraged at what happened. Because why? Because I call it like I see it. and what I would ask that kind of more conservative, you know, members of your audience, just step back and take a look and say, look, it's okay.

When an administration screws up, they have to take responsibility. They have to take ownership of this. Defending them, you know, to the T is just, you know, is, it goes to a level of kind of, you know, being out there in the middle of nowhere that I can't even believe, you know, there's a friend of mine, he's a very conservative. He writes for the Washington examiner. His name is Tom Rogan, great national security journalist. And I'll just, I'll read you a tweet he put out, which I think is really important. And he said, if your perspective is that the signal chat controversy is just media bias or democratic partisanship, you either don't understand basic military operations or more simply,

you just don't give a shit about carrier air wing one aviators, meaning that even on the conservative side of the house. Tom Rogan is a conservative. He writes for the examiner. He's a friend of mine. I do have friends on the right. Actually, a lot of them. He gets it. You know, and what he's saying is like, yeah, this is not good. Sorry. And no amount of bullshit in spin is going to kind of come around in this. And so there's got to be some accountability. Yeah, well, earlier today on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, um, came out and said that the Biden administration actually approved signal as an app used, which is, which is not true. So like you have not only just the administration doing it from the press, like the briefing

room, you have people on the hill too that are also like, you know, trying to spin this. And it's just like it's unspinnable because the NSC spokesperson confirmed it. You're defending. You're defending the indefensible. What Tom Cotton said, it doesn't even matter. I mean, are we really going to blame Biden for this? I mean, that is pretty extraordinary. And Tom Cotton knows better.

I mean, geez. Well, you read that in the chat, in the chat that part where that was released, like their whole media strategy was blame Biden and the some other. Yeah, you know, so. The wild thing about where I live in Northern Virginia is that, you know, I see Tom Cotton at high school baseball games. Josh Hawley is a senator. He lives around the corner for me.

So all these people, you know, and they all know better. And so, you know, we live in this weird bubble in D.C. where you look at people and you just, you know, you know, you know they don't believe this, but they just feel like they have to say it because they have to blindly defend the administration. What I would like to see is, and I watch this closely, again, I have friends over at Fox. I want to see some Fox News, you know, Britt Hume did. Yeah, I saw that. I want to see some of the Fox News commentators and some of the staff and the journalists there. Just come out and tell the truth. Hey, this was wrong. Just like I did on MSNBC, the Afghan withdrawal,

I was merciless against the Biden. And I know, by the way, that the White House watches. that every morning. And I was like, look, I have to stay credible. So, you know, it would be nice if people could actually tell the truth right here. This is a gargantuan fuck up. You know, there should be accountability. And then you move on, by the way. And here's the, here's the amazing thing. The strikes in the hooties, I totally support. Right. I think it's actually really good that we're taking it to the Houthis. But that's not the issue here. And so I think they're, you know, well, we'll see in the, kind of the days of weeks ahead. The one thing, D, is that you never know, because some other kind of National District of law is going to happen tomorrow.

And maybe this kind of goes. There's going to be some scandal. Like Elon's going to do something or something's going to happen and it's going to be, it's going to fade away. It might carry on for today because of tomorrow because of the hearings going on and that's going to become what this is about the hearings for sure. But yeah, I can't see it lasting more than a few days because there's only,

there's something else on the horizon coming. Well, I mean, and again, there's, you know, there's, there are things that actually, I mean, the American people should care about this, military veterans and active duty should care about this, people in the national security world. But you know what? There's also, you know, the kind of the Trump administration's whole process on Doge and now this kind of assault on Social Security. I mean, that's what Americans are really going to care about. Yeah. So, you know, who knows. But, but again, good emergency pod. We needed to do this. Yeah, this is great. I was fired up. And again, I would just, I would just kind of, you know, urge listeners to keep an open mind because, you know, when something bad happens, you got to call it. out and you call it out on both sides. And that's what that's what I try to do. I certainly know that's what

you in the team house always try to do as well. Well, I was talking to somebody, yes, a couple people yes. And I'm like, listen, me and my half criminal friends in Brooklyn have better OPSEC than these guys do. That's right. It's like, what do we, what are you guys even thinking? Like maybe having the policy discussion about the strategy. That's one thing for sure, fine. But once like Pete Hex says dropping like a PDF of like, here's the whole plan of what we're going to do. name, targets, everything in a signal chat. I mean, it's like, dude, they must have given you a briefing when you're on your first day, right? Like, they must have given you.

And so signal, again, brought that unclassified message from the CIA Alumni Association, located at CIA headquarters, instructing retirees, that signal is not secure. I mean, that's on March 12th. And I believe in February, the NSA, National Security Agency did the same thing, put out an unclassified, statement as well you can't make this up you know it's it's unbelievable dead and just the title of the whole the title of the the piece in the Atlantic was was hilarious and also scary like the trump administration sent me the war plan for pretty wild that's insane all right mark mark polymropolis check them out all his links will be in the description you can follow him on twitter blue sky

everywhere else msmbc contributor um new podcast is cooking and I know it is. Can't talk about it, but stay tuned. Stay tuned for that. And if you want to support the show, patreon.com slash the team house. Thanks, Mark. This is awesome. Take care, brother.