Signal Chat Disaster: Trump Admin Hypocrites Crushed by Their Own Past Words

Summary

Bulwark Takes: Detailed Summary of "Signal Chat Disaster: Trump Admin Hypocrites Crushed by Their Own Past Words"

Episode Details:

• Title: Signal Chat Disaster: Trump Admin Hypocrites Crushed by Their Own Past Words
• Host/Author: The Bulwark
• Release Date: March 24, 2025

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Introduction to the Signal Chat Controversy

In this episode of Bulwark Takes, hosts JVL and Sarah Longwell delve into a pivotal story revealed by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic. Goldberg exposed that high-ranking officials within the Trump administration engaged in sensitive military discussions via Signal, inadvertently including an Atlantic reporter in their private chat. This revelation underscores significant lapses in operational security and highlights the administration's contradictory stance on accountability.

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Breakdown of the Signal Chat Incident

JVL opens the discussion by highlighting the gravity of the breach:

"It is the worst breach of security and comms in maybe the history of the United States government." (01:48)

Sarah Longwell elaborates on the nature of the compromised communications:

"These Republicans have some choice words about people who do not handle our national security secrets with the utmost care and attention." (03:23)

The conversation pivots to past Republican criticisms of Hillary Clinton's email practices, drawing parallels to the current administration's mishandling of classified information.

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Notable Quotes and Speaker Attributions

1. Marco Rubio on Accountability:

   "Nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is." (03:01)

   Rubio emphasizes the necessity of holding all officials accountable, yet the hosts argue that the Trump administration fails to practice what they preach.

2. Pete Hegseth on Security Violations:

   "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." (06:29)

   Hegseth condemns the mishandling of classified information, reinforcing the double standard observed within the administration.

3. John Ratcliffe on Espionage:

   "Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act." (16:13)

   Ratcliffe calls for legal repercussions for those who compromise national security, indirectly criticizing the administration's leniency.

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Analysis of Hypocrisy and Double Standards

The hosts critically examine the hypocrisy within the Trump administration. While Republican officials vocally demand accountability for past security breaches (e.g., Clinton’s emails), the current administration engages in similar or worse practices without facing comparable consequences.

Sarah Longwell points out:

"They are all hypocrites. We should make them choke on their own words around accountability for what happens to people who treat America's secrets cavalierly." (21:24)

This sentiment captures the core argument of the episode: the administration condemns others for security failures while committing similar breaches themselves.

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Media Response and Public Perception

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the media's apparent double standard. When JVL conducted a live check of the Fox News homepage shortly after the story broke, the Signal chat incident was conspicuously absent from trending topics.

JVL remarks:

"I don't see it anywhere, Sarah. Literally nowhere." (09:54)

Sarah Longwell criticizes the media's inaction:

"I cannot believe that the media would have this double standard." (09:54)

However, they predict that Fox News will soon latch onto the story with their typical spin, possibly diverting attention to unrelated topics like immigration.

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Operational Security Failures Highlighted

The episode underscores the severe operational security breaches facilitated by the use of Signal for official communications. Unlike Hillary Clinton’s email server, the Signal chats were visible to all participants with minimal effort, exposing sensitive military operations.

Sarah Longwell emphasizes:

"They just don't even know who's on it. They just don't even know who's on it." (10:56)

JVL adds:

"Every one of these people had access because all they had to do was tap." (05:51)

The lack of secure channels in handling classified information poses significant risks, including the potential for foreign adversaries to exploit these vulnerabilities.

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Consequences and Call to Action

The hosts conclude with a strong call to action, urging listeners to hold the administration accountable for these lapses. They emphasize that such security breaches are not trivial and have real-world implications for national security and the safety of American personnel.

Sarah Longwell urges:

"Hillary Clinton's emails stuck in 2016. This is one of the most outrageous security breaches that our country has seen in half a century and we should not let it go." (21:24)

They advocate for pushing for accountability measures, including potential criminal charges for those responsible, aligning with the administration's supposed stance on the matter.

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Conclusion

"Signal Chat Disaster: Trump Admin Hypocrites Crushed by Their Own Past Words" serves as a critical examination of the Trump administration’s approach to operational security and accountability. By juxtaposing past Republican critiques of security breaches with current governmental actions, Bulwark Takes highlights the glaring inconsistencies and calls for a reassessment of accountability standards within the highest levels of government.

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Timestamps Reference:

• 01:02 - Introduction to the Signal chat story
• 01:48 - JVL’s statement on security breach
• 03:01 - Marco Rubio on accountability
• 03:23 - Sarah Longwell on Republican demands for accountability
• 06:29 - Pete Hegseth on security violations
• 09:54 - Observation on media's double standard
• 10:56 - Sarah on unauthorized release of information
• 16:13 - John Ratcliffe on Espionage Act
• 21:24 - Sarah Longwell’s call to action

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode, providing a comprehensive overview for those who have not listened to "Bulwark Takes."

Transcript

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[JVL]

Hey there, everyone. It's me, JVL, here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. And we had kind of a bombshell story today in the Atlantic. Editor Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was just sort of looped in on a Signal chat by a bunch of the highest ranking officials in the US Government as they planned and discussed military operations out in the open.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Mr. President, your reaction to the story in the Atlantic that said that some of your top cabinet officials and aides have been discussing very sensitive material through Signal and included an Atlantic reporter for that.

[JVL]

What is your response to that?

[Sarah Longwell]

I don't know anything about it.

[Marco Rubio]

I'm not a big fan of the Atlantic.

[Unnamed Speaker]

To me, it's a magazine that's going out of business.

[JVL]

It is the worst breach of security and comms in maybe the history of the United States government. And Sarah, you're here with some receipts.

[Sarah Longwell]

So here's the thing. Obviously we already taped one of these. JVL and I hopped on, we read the story, we gave our reactions. Go watch that one if you haven't. But then I just said to my team, guys, I want every. Let's go find all the videos of everybody who was on that chain talking about Hillary Clinton's emails, but her emails. Because this idea that Hillary Clinton had classified or top secret or sensitive information that was not secured properly, it may have cost her the 2016 election. And it became the dominant reason why Republicans said she shouldn't be trusted. And so these Republicans have some choice words about people who, who do not handle our national security secrets with the utmost care and attention. Let's listen to signal chain participant our Secretary of State Marco Rubio circa 2016.

[Marco Rubio]

When I'm president of the United States, neither she nor any of these other people are going to be above the law. Whether it's her or Eric Holder for what he did on Fast and Furious or any of these other folks, they're going to. People are going to be held accountable if they broke the laws of this country. This president obviously is willing to protect his political cronies, but we're going to hold people accountable. Nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton, even though she thinks she is.

[Sarah Longwell]

So this is important because there's a theme to these clips and what the Republicans were saying, which is accountability was the word of the day, the watchword, what we need. If Hillary Clinton cannot be trusted, we must have accountability.

[JVL]

Before we move on to the next one though, Sarah, does it give you a little bit of joy to hear Marco say when I am president? Because I can tell you when you're going to be president, Marco. Fucking day after never.

[Sarah Longwell]

And you know what? He was always this guy. It's just we didn't know. And if there was one upside to, you know, Donald Trump, it is that he revealed a number of people to be the callow individuals that they are. And speaking of callow individuals, I would like to get to this step. Miller tweet One point that doesn't get made enough about Hillary's unsecured server illegally used to conduct state business, obviously created to hide the Clinton's corrupt pay for play. Foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops and intel in real time from the other side of the globe. Interesting point. Stephen Miller. Interesting point. So are you telling me that if the Secretary of Defense is just sitting around at night going, tweeting you up to some people, like you up Tulsi, you up John Ratcliffe, we're going to wage war in Yemen. You telling me the Chinese and the Russians could maybe be up on your phone about that? Seems like maybe they could. Jvl, what do you think?

[JVL]

You know, I would like to add there's a, there's one very crucial difference to this, which is that if you were on the other end of Secretary Clinton's emails, there was no way for you to know what server the emails were being hosted on. Whereas if you were on the signal chat, all you had to do was look at the list of people on the chain and you would have seen Jeffrey Goldberg. It was right there. So literally Every one of these people had access because all they had to do was tap. I. I know. If you haven't used signal, it's very complicated to look at the people on your chain. You have to tap the group to get their names. And so they could all see it and know that they were communicating out in the open with the media, that.

[Sarah Longwell]

Perhaps it wasn't top notch operational security as they decided to wage a war, they decided to drop bombs. Okay. Wasn't even like they weren't planning the softball game for the weekend here. Okay. All right, let's get to Pete Hegseth. Okay. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who should never, ever have been confirmed in the first place. Let's listen to how he thinks. One should be treated if one does not protect top secret information.

[Unnamed Speaker]

She's got two problems here. Two words. Top secret. Before it was servers, it was classified. It was sort of this amorphous idea that maybe it was wrong. Everyone knows what top secret means. I've got. I've had a top secret clearance. It's big red flashing letters, top secret. You know, when you're looking at something that's top secret or dealing with it, in this case, the public will resonate with that. Hey, if you're hiding that on a private server, that's a very real problem. Likely criminal charges.

[Sarah Longwell]

Likely criminal charges. Likely. I want to just. Let's get to this other Pete Heg, Seth1, and then we can talk about Pete. Let's. Let's do this.

[Marco Rubio]

If this were a Republican divulging the secrets of our nation at the very highest level, the very highest level, prison. There would be outrage across the board, but covered up. It's incredible.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Now, the double standard is incredible. Imagine if it was, I don't know, Donald Trump, what the media would be doing to him right now, eviscerating him. Or imagine if it was a member of the military, which we've seen from General Cartwright and General Petraeus. They still go after these guys for a tiny, tiny fraction of what she willfully did and betrayed her country in doing so. Tiny fractions, supposedly for convenience, but actually so she could have a different set of standards and hide her conduct and the conduct of the Clinton Foundation, Benghazi, everything else, so she could stay away from and above the law. And it turns out foreign services want to know what our Secretary of state thinks. And in this instance, they did whatever they could to break that.

[JVL]

Sounds bad.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Secure server in her basement. It tells you everything you need to know.

[Marco Rubio]

Actually, it's actually worse than that. Because some of those emails using that unsecured private server were to and from the President of the United States. Sure. Foreign intelligence services were reading the emails of President Obama. I don't believe we've ever seen anything like that before. Ever. No, of course not.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And potentially in real time. The technology that others can use once they've got into devices is to listen and see in real time who knows what they heard and what they have and the kind of leverage that that gives in negotiations or conversations when you know what our hand is and you can anticipate it or get in front of it or you know, our sources and methods. Because we know aides to Hillary Clinton also removed markings so that they could send classified, sometimes secret, top secret information to her personal email, which our enemies were potentially reading in real time. That has consequences, including lives and, and reputation of this great country.

[Sarah Longwell]

Okay, lot to unpack here.

[JVL]

Sarah, can we start with the question about the media reaction? Because Barry, if you could do this for us, could we have a live look at the fox news.com homepage right now as we're taping six hours after the story broke. Huh? Okay, so we got the trending topics. Trump's first hundred days. Mia Love, Snow White and, and Tiger Woods. Okay, so the next one first on Fox, Trump allies moved to prevent activist judges from overseeing. Okay, so surely it'd be the second story, right? Well, oh, did Snow White's Trump hating star tank the box office. The numbers are in. Okay, then Trump taps to Lena Baba. Then Bill Maher plans to go see. Okay then Europe is urging issue a traveling warning about having to follow biology. The IRS could get Stacey Abrams, George Clooney is surprised kidnapped six year old girl Police crash Bacardi is bikini Cling. What's new? I don't see it anywhere, Sarah. Literally nowhere.

[Sarah Longwell]

I cannot believe that the media would have this double standard.

[JVL]

But, but it's not like they're, they're doing cleanup on it yet, yet they're just not saying anything while they all get their stories straight because I promise you by tomorrow FOX will be all over this like white on rice. And I, I don't want to impugn our fellow journalists reputations over at Fox, but I have a feeling they're going to figure out some way to say that it's not so bad.

[Sarah Longwell]

So this, I do, I do want to just note this. Tulsi Gabriel also on the signal chain. Now she's talking about an unauthorized release of classified information. And to be clear, I guess it wasn't that they were like leaking information. They just were doing it in such a ham fisted, insecure, unsecure way and then included a reporter. They just didn't even know who was on their signal chain. This is the point. They just don't even know who's they.

[JVL]

Could have seen by tapping the list with their finger.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. So would you say this was an unauthorized release of classified information?

[JVL]

I mean, or just an oopsie?

[Sarah Longwell]

Is it just an oopsie?

[JVL]

The. The big. And you and I talked about this in the earlier video. The question is, do we do. Are you willing to believe that this is the only conversation happening within the executive branch, off the books, that this just happens to include the dni, the sec. State, Sec. Def. Stephen Miller, the Chief of staff, the. The. The. All of these other people. And this is the only one of those being taken outside of the channels, which are secure. Well, this is authorized. And which keep records.

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. If you didn't watch this before, we talked about this in our last video, and it's an important one. The reason they're doing this on signal is so that they. It's deleted automatically. Right. So there's no record of it. And so, so Much of the 2016 commentary is about the COVID up, the COVID up of Hillary Clinton. This is why she's doing it this way. So they can cover it all up. Our entire government right now. Like, there's no way they were doing bomb Yemen signal threads. And they're not using signal threads for everything else. Like, if you're literally doing your most sensitive business on signal, you're doing all the rest of it on signal too. Which means because all of it then deletes, which meaning there's no records for our government of the things that they're doing now.

[JVL]

Sarah, question. It's illegal.

[Sarah Longwell]

It's all super illegal.

[JVL]

Okay, sure. But on the other hand, are you willing to give them partial credit for using Signal and not Twitter DMs?

[Sarah Longwell]

Yeah. Or just like a regular text chain.

[JVL]

Terms of service allow Elon to read everybody's DMs. If you send a DM on Twitter, Elon is allowed to read it. And so at least they had the presence of mind to use Signal. I'm Ron Burgundy. No, no. No partial credit.

[Sarah Longwell]

They literally build rooms called skiffs to share this kinds of sensitive information. There is like a war room, an actual situation room, where you go discuss things like this. You don't do it with everybody just on, like a random signal chain. Okay.

[JVL]

Yeah.

[Sarah Longwell]

You just don't. I'm sorry. We got one more from Pete. Pete. Pete Hegsack was everywhere on this issue. And so for him to be like the organizer of the signal chain is the best. It's just the best. Let's watch this one.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Apparently the standard operating procedure inside the Clinton 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. Any security professional, military, government or otherwise would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct and criminally prosecuted for. For being so reckless with this kind of information.

[JVL]

Criminal.

[Unnamed Speaker]

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 clearance like I have, and others who know that even one hiccup causes a problem, let alone a standard procedure like this.

[Sarah Longwell]

That one's my favorite, actually. Just anyone who holds our national security dear. Jvl. And here's what's funny. None of it's funny. But here's. It's not like these guys who are now doing this on signal aren't doing it with full and complete awareness that they're operating outside of all of the things they talked about. Full, incomplete. They can't plead like I didn't realize.

[JVL]

Or like the George Castanza. Oh, was that wrong?

[Sarah Longwell]

Was that, Was that wrong?

[JVL]

Yeah, it's amazing. And you know, I mean, look, I gotta say, I'm a little surprised that giving the SEC def job to a weekend co anchor who likes to party turned out like this. I mean, I would have thought based on his resume that Pete Hegseth would be a super serious guy who could be trusted to make grown up decisions. I mean, who, who, who could have predicted that his tenure would end up like this after what, like four minutes?

[Sarah Longwell]

I'm sorry, I.

[Marco Rubio]

You know what?

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh God, I need to tweet this. I don't think Pete Hexeth has stopped drinking on the job. It's because this is just drunken frat guy behavior.

[JVL]

I actually, I'm sorry, I'm impugning the.

[Sarah Longwell]

I'm impugning the integrity of frat boys there. And I don't mean to because. Because I like frat guys. I don't like Pete Heath.

[JVL]

Did Pete send any, like, beer emojis? This is. No, I don't think in Jeffrey's reporting we've gotten any, you know what emojis did the Secretary of Defense use? I think that was only other Members. So I. I want to stand for him. It was not Pete Hegseth who did. Prayer hand. Prayer hand. Bicep flex. America. America. That was not Pete Heth, which, to be honest, shocks me so. Okay, go ahead.

[Sarah Longwell]

I got one more because this is one of my favorites too. And this is.

[JVL]

There's a reason, Sarah, I'm going to die of schadenfreud right now.

[Sarah Longwell]

This is our CIA director. Our CIA director.

[JVL]

Are they supposed to keep secrets?

[Sarah Longwell]

Do you know what CIA directors know? I mean, not, not ours at the moment, but most do you know what they know? They know how to get information that other people handle indelicately. And so here let's listen to our current CIA director, John Ratcliffe, talking about what should happen to someone who mishandles classified information. What do you think should happen?

[Marco Rubio]

John, Mishandling classified information is still a violation of the Espionage Act. It started with Hillary Clinton. It has continued without accountability. People haven't paid a price for that. And that's one of the reasons Bill Barr and John Durham and folks need to really focus on that, because there does need to be accountability there.

[Unnamed Speaker]

There needs to be accountability.

[JVL]

Jbl, I want again, just in case anybody didn't watch our first video, I want to read to you so that you understand we aren't just clowning on this because of the hypocrisy. I am going to read from. From Jeff Goldberg's piece. At 11:44am the account label Pete Hegseth posted a signal in a team update. This is Jeff Goldberg. I will not quote from this update or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East Central Command's area of responsibility. What I will say in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this signal conversation is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US Would be deploying, and attack sequencing. So this is a. We're talking about real stuff.

[Sarah Longwell]

This could have gotten our people killed.

[JVL]

I mean, I, you know, thank God.

[Sarah Longwell]

You put an editor of a major magazine and like, who understood rules and understood how to not leak this, as opposed to, I don't know, accidentally, just like adding Putin to a signal chain or. I mean, you do already have a Russian surrogate on there because Tulsi's on there. So I know. How much less secure could we already get? But like, this is beyond shocking behavior. Like, because here's the thing. It's not just that they're all communicating on signal about things that are this important. It's that they're inadvertently adding people they don't even know who's on it.

[JVL]

Who else is fat fingered into this? Right. And again, all you have to do is look at the number, look at who's in the group. It's not hidden, it's not secret just yet. Tap that part. I, I am sure that we will have to do another one of these videos tomorrow once the Republicans get their story straight. But can I ask you to guess tomorrow morning when the wagons circle?

[Sarah Longwell]

Sure. And they will a.

[JVL]

Will anybody be sacrificed so we'll like Will Waltz? Will Michael Waltz the national security Advis Kaiser? Will he get thrown to the wolves because he was kind of a normie anyway? It was never real maga. Or would that be seen as weakness? And what will the story be? What will the, the line be on this?

[Sarah Longwell]

So I've seen a couple things emerge already that and sometimes like the average person quickly becomes like the ID of whatever like the administration's gonna do because they're like, oh, this is how our people are with us. One is, I've seen people be like, this is just them being transparent. This is what transparency looks like, you idiots.

[JVL]

Invite reporters into their conversation. Hostile reporters in it. What more could you ask for?

[Sarah Longwell]

This is just us being straight up. Okay. So I think that's one of them.

[JVL]

Okay.

[Sarah Longwell]

Potential second one is ten dimensional chess, guys. Ten dimensional chess. I don't exactly know what the ten moves are that they're going to come up with, but. Oh, that like, oh, this is. There was one that was like, this is just. They wanted a reporter to see how mad they are at Europe and so they had him on a signal chain.

[JVL]

Yeah, yeah. This is how they hold the Europeans to be remunerated. Remunerated with. How do you say that again?

[Sarah Longwell]

Remuneration.

[JVL]

Yeah, this is how. Right. We, we included reporters so that the. It would be on the books for the Europeans having to pay us our money. That's possible. Breaking Sarah Fox has changed their homepage while we were recording. We're going to do another live look at it. What are you saying?

[Sarah Longwell]

Oh, it's that Pete Hegseth must resign. Just kidding. Trump border czar unloads on state as report shows it's releasing illegals charged with horrific crimes. Guess what? You know that this is bad because they are definitely pivoting to immigration. Like you know, when things are bad caravan. Got to talk about immigration tomorrow morning.

[JVL]

By 9am by the time Fox and Friends goes to their A block, we're going to have another caravan coming up from down Mexico way.

[Sarah Longwell]

Here's what I want to say in sum, in closing, these people are all hypocrites. We should make them choke on their own words around accountability for what happens to people who treat America's secrets cavalierly and do not take operational security with any meaningful sense of, you know, protecting America's interest. And I don't think people have njbl sometimes you can be a little bit like this. You can be like, will anybody care? Will it matter? LOL. Nothing matters. Make this one stick, guys. Hillary Clinton's emails stuck in 2016. This is one of the most outrageous security breaches that our country has seen in half a century and we should not let it go. Do not move on tomorrow. Make this is this is not a small thing. We might be making fun of them here, but like, every single one of them is on the record taking a position on this. And their position is people who do this should be fired, should be held accountable, maybe should be held criminally liable. So let's go do that.

[JVL]

We'll be back tomorrow with more on the fallout from this hit like hit. Subscribe. Follow the channel. Ride with us. Good luck, America.

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