John Law (10:35)

Thanks Isaac and welcome everybody. Hope you were able to find some joyful and positive moments during this week that we were off. It's always a little challenging to take this time and focus on things that aren't news related, especially when so much is happening. But also, as Isaac has mentioned before, it's important to take a step back and, and get a little space and perspective on things that are happening and come back hopefully feeling a little bit more refreshed and able to take on all the information that's coming at us. And thank you. For those of you who tuned into our podcast offerings this week in lieu of not having the newsletter, we appreciate your continued support. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, President Donald Trump suggested that he would bomb Iran if the country's leadership did not reach a new deal with the US on its nuclear program. Number two, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, the Federal Reserve's key measure for inflation, increased 2.8% year over year in February and 0.4% from the previous month, both slightly higher than economists expectations. Number three, the death toll from Friday's 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar reached 1700, with an additional 3400 injured and over 300 missing as of Sunday. Number four, Israel conducted airstrikes against what it said were Hezbollah targets in southern Beirut, the first strikes on Lebanon's capital since November. The operation followed rocket fire targeting the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shimona on Friday. At number five, the Taliban released US Citizen Fay hall, who had been detained by the group in February. The release followed President Trump's decision to remove multimillion dollar bounties on several senior Taliban members.

News Reporter (12:31)

As we've been reporting, Trump administration officials are defending their participation in a group chat on a cryptid messaging app, Signal, about a highly sensitive operation to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen. Prior to Wednesday's hearing, the Atlantic published screenshots and a fuller text chain that were sent in the group chat. Secretary of Defense Hegseth maintains nobody has been texting war plans and has denied sharing any classified information.

John Law (12:54)

On Monday, March 24, the Atlantic published a partial transcript of communications among Trump administration officials as they discussed impending military operations against the Houthis in Yemen over the Signal messaging app. The outlet's editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had mistakenly been added to the chat and was privy to sensitive discussions about the details of the attack, including types of aircraft, missiles and launch times, as well as the name of a CIA operative. Goldberg's initial article omitted parts of the group's communications on the grounds that it could jeopardize the lives of US Personnel. But he published the entire transcript on Wednesday after several administration members disputed his characterization of their contents. For context, Signal is a free messaging app that offers end to end encryption, a technology intended to prevent unauthorized parties from reading communication between devices as they are transmitted. This feature has been made popular with journalists and their sources, however, the app itself can still be hacked. Goldberg reported that on March 13, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz sent him a request to join a private signal group that included several high level Trump administration figures and their staffers to discuss preparations for potential strikes against the Houthis. The group deliberated over the next two days with an account identified as Vice President J.D. vance expressing reservations about the attack, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth advocated for immediate action. On March 15, Hegseth said that the strikes were to begin shortly and shared information on targets, weapon systems and attack sequencing. Roughly two hours later, the first strikes were carried out. After the story broke, Waltz said that he took 4 full responsibility for the leak, but suggested that Goldberg could have added himself to the group or gained access through a technical error, claims refuted by Goldberg's reporting. Furthermore, Waltz, President Donald Trump and other administration figures have sought to downplay the contents of the chat, arguing that no classified information was shared. Trump also reiterated his support for Waltz and Hegseth, saying on Saturday that he did not plan to fire anyone involved in the leak. Congressional leaders from both parties have called for investigations into the episode and criticized the administration's use of Signal for sensitive deliberations. On Thursday, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, the Republican from Missouri, and Ranking Member Jack Reed, the Democrat from Rhode island, sent a letter to the Pentagon's inspector general asking him to investigate how Goldberg ended up in the chat. However, Attorney General Pam Bondi signaled she was not likely to launch a criminal investigation into the incident, saying that the information shared in the group was not classified. Separately, on Thursday, U.S. district Judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to preserve its communications on Signal from March 11 to March 15. The app allows users to automatically delete messages after a set amount of time. Today, we'll share perspectives about the incident from the right and the left, and then Isaac's Take Foreign.

Isaac Saul (16:07)

We'll be right back after this quick break.

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John Law (17:17)

All right, first, let's start off with some agreement. Commentators on the right and the left agree to varying degrees that the Trump administration is at fault for the leak. Many also say that Goldberg's inclusion in the chat was a significant security lapse. All right, let's take a look at what the right is saying. Many on the right say that the episode reflects poorly on some members of the administration, but note the important insights it provided into their foreign policy. Some argue the story is being blown out of proportion by the left. Others worry about the leak's ramifications for America's global security standing. The Washington examiner editorial board wrote about the Trump administration's Signal Group chat leak and its consequences. The use of Signal, a commercially made end to end encryption application available on most mobile devices to discuss sensitive national security matters, certainly predates the Trump administration. CIA Director John Ratcliffe also testified under oath that Signal was loaded onto his work computer and that he was briefed on the application's permissible use to discuss sensitive matters with administration colleagues, the board said. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has admitted that he built the group in question. Waltz shared information about the outcome of the attacks, including that the first target their top missile guy, we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend's building and now it's collapsed. It is hard to imagine how this could not be classified information if there's a silver lining to the release of the Signal chat, it is that the discussion portrays a thoughtful, collaborative and candid group of advisors doing their best to provide counsel to Trump. This is not an echo chamber of yes men. There is disagreement, it is expressed professionally. The disagreement is acknowledged and responded to and the group moves on, the board wrote. But no one outside the administration should have ever seen it. Trump was lucky that his team's sloppiness did not get anyone killed. In Town Hall, Ben Shapiro explored security breaches and the infamous Signal chat. First, this was an obvious mistake. It was not a purposeful leak of intelligence information to our enemies, and Hegseth has claimed that it did not include names, targets, locations, unit routes, sources, methods or other classified information. This would mean that no criminal activity occurred, shapiro said. Second, procedure based scandals have gone the way of the dodo. Bert When James Comey refused to prosecute Hillary Clinton in 2016 on the basis that she had not intended to disseminate classified information and that her negligent handling of classified information did not constitute law breaking. He essentially wiped out all similar potential scandals in the future. This scandal is procedural in nature. It doesn't match up to the ire unleashed by some of the Trump administration's loudest critics. One cannot help but guffaw while listening to Susan Rice, who who presided over the Russian invasion of Crimea as Obama's national security advisor and then served in the Biden administration as he presided over the collapse of Afghanistan. Label the Signal chat the biggest national security debacle that any professional can remember, shapiro wrote. In the end, this is what Americans will care is the Trump administration steadfastly pursuing American security? In National Review, Noah Rothman said the Signal leak's fallout is serious. The text thread burns intelligence provided to the US by our Israeli counterparts, which hostile counterintelligence analysts can trace back to its sources to limit or prevent future disclosures. In the worst case, the leak exposes the human sources on the ground inside Yemen who provided information that was eventually captured by Israeli and US Intelligence networks, rothman wrote. Even more troubling is the potential that this leak will convince American allies to throttled U.S. access to their intelligence products in the legitimate fear that such candor would imperil their own sources, methods and assets. It is still best practice to avoid the temptation to catastrophize the conversation. That this leak exposed provided the public with some reassurance that a pretty conventional interagency process still governs US military action abroad. And it shows that the elements in this administration who would dismantle America's alliance structure aren't in the driver's seat, at least for now. But the fallout from this leak continues to settle over the geopolitical landscape, and it is slowly poisoning America's relations with its allies and undermining US security in measurable ways. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying. Which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is alarmed by the administration's handling of the incident, criticizing its refusal to accept accountability. Some call on Congress to lead a bipartisan investigation into the leak. Others say the leak revealed little about the administration that we didn't already know. In the Washington Post, Philip Bump wrote about what the lack of consequences for the Signal scandal means. It remains possible that political pressure or a latent sense of self respect might lead to the resignation of one of those culpable for the most egregious elements of the incident, the creation of a secret conversation on a third party transitory messaging app. Vice President J.D. vance's suggestion that Trump wasn't fully briefed on the matter or Hegseth's boisterous delineation of where and when the strikes were to take place, bumps said. But it still seems very unlikely. Trump and by extension his party have proved increasingly likely to rise to the defense of anyone seen as under fire from any perceived opponent without accountability. The damage here would not simply be that the US Government will continue to be led by people who don't know or don't care why communications about military operations occur over secure channels. It is also that there will be no public signal that the actions of these officials were bad, bump wrote. It is bad that senior officials, including the vice president, were in a disappearing chat that included an unauthorized participant. It is bad that this conversation included a heads up about forthcoming military action alongside a discussion about whether the commander in chief even wanted to go ahead with it. Just because the media and Democrats are noting that these things are bad does not mean that they are not bad. In msnbc, Simone D. Sanders Townsend argued only Congress can get to the bottom of the signal scandal. This is no ordinary offense. The conduct here raises questions about the handling of America's secrets, the safety of our troops and the accuracy of our public records. And the Trump administration has already shown that it cannot be trusted to police this matter itself. While a Republican call for the Defense Department's inspector general to investigate is insufficient, only Congress can do this job, sanders Townsend said. It's clear this administration is hoping the colossal failure blows over and Americans move on. We as a nation cannot allow that to happen. Now is not the time for lawmakers to sit idly by. At stake is whether our allies continue to trust us with their most sensitive intelligence, whether an enemy spots a covert operation before it's complete, whether a soldier makes it home to see their child grow up, sanders Townsend wrote. It must be Congress that leads an investigation because the uncomfortable truth is the administration cannot be trusted to investigate itself. Only Congress can actively pursue a full scale investigation to answer the questions raised by this scandal. It is up to the public to demand real accountability from their representatives. In the New Yorker, David Remnick described the greatest scandal of Signalgate. The comedy of Goldberg's reports resides, at least in part in the discovery that the vice president and the heads of leading defense and intelligence bureaucracies deploy emojis with the same frequency as middle schoolers, remnick said. More seriously, but not astonishingly, when prominent members of the administration were confronted with their potentially lethal carelessness, they did as their president would have them do. They attacked the character and the integrity of the reporter who proved far more concerned about national security than the national security advisor and then refused to give straight answers to Congress about their cock up and the sensitivity of the communications. This is an administration that does not have to slip on a signal banana peel to reveal its deepest held prejudices and its painful incapacities. You get the sense that we would learn very little if we were Privy to a 24 hour a day livestream of its every private utterance, Remnick wrote. It would be unwise to dismiss the importance of secrets in this or any other administration. But the point is that Trump and his ideological and political planners have made no secret of their intentions. While Richard Nixon tended to save his darkest confidences and prejudices for private messages with such aides as Henry Kissinger and H.R. haldeman, Trump gives voice to his ID almost daily at the microphone or on social media. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take.

Isaac Saul (26:34)

All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying. Which brings us to my take. So every administration has a denial tree. You know, the, the way in which they handle damaging stories like this, and I think how their defenses change over time as more information comes to light is important in this case. I think we should all take note of the Trump administration's denial tree. First, the administration attacked Goldberg, calling him a lying, sleazy journalist and implying that his reporting was not to be trusted. Then the administration claimed that no war plans or classified info were sent via signal, that they had no idea how Goldberg infiltrated the chat, implying that he did something nefarious. Then they conceded Goldberg's story was largely true, but insisted no classified information was shared. Then, once Goldberg released the chats, they effectively admitted that battle plans were sent, but tried to distinguish them from war plans or classified information and continued to insist that they were investigating how Goldberg was added to the chat, despite the chat log showing clearly that Mike Waltz added him. Then they criticized Goldberg for releasing the full text of the chats, which proved they were not being honest in their initial downplaying of the material shared in the chat. Then they invoked Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Then they were reduced to arguing that Goldberg oversold what he had because the signal chat didn't actually blow the COVID of a CIA agent. In moments like this, when an administration is flooding the zone with mismanaged talking points, denials and whataboutism, I find that people who have consistently criticized both sides are best at seeing things clearly through the mud. Justin Amash, the former Republican representative from Michigan posted on X that he could, quote, confidently say this information was classified at the time it was revealed to the journalist. If this had been presented to members of Congress, we could not have walked out of the skiff with it. It's bizarre to pretend otherwise. End quote. Glenn Greenwald, the muck racking journalist and frequent critic of the left, asked if Goldberg had published all of this before the Yemen bombing began, would the Trump White House have said, no problem, it's not classified. Sagar and Jetty, the host of the Breaking Points podcast, argued that at this point Waltz thinks MAGA and Trump are so stupid they will believe his implication that Jeffrey Goldberg deliberately went into his phone to put his phone number in it under a different contact, end quote. It can also be helpful to look abroad. Israeli officials, for instance, were incensed about the irresponsibility of the chat because it included sensitive intelligence Israel provided to the US From a human intelligence source in Yemen. There is just no good way to spin this. Yes, the chat showed some interesting and thoughtful deliberation, at least from Vice President Vance about the decision to carry out the strikes. But it also read a bit like a teenage group chat full of emojis and false bravado as the United States killed dozens of people, including civilians. And most importantly, no one in a group of top military and intelligence officials noticed the journalist present or took responsibility for him being there in the first place. The most disappointing part about the entire episode is that there has been no accountability. This administration has made meritocracy a central point of its entire ethos. President Trump repeatedly and rightly criticized President Biden on the campaign trail for not firing anyone for major mistakes in his administration like the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. New members of the administration like Tulsi Gabbard have pledged up and down that they would introduce a new era of radical transparency. Then, the moment they have their first public relations crisis, that all goes up in flames. Gabbard, for instance, looked and sounded like every other politician while refusing to answer questions about the chat before Congress. And then she was dishonest about what was in the chats. So much for radical transparency. Trump has opted not to fire Waltz because he doesn't want to give a scout to the Atlantic. Hegseth, whose mantle of meritocracy was always something I was skeptical of, has completely dodged any ownership of how bad this looks. Will the administration pay for this politically? It seems unlikely. If you watch a few minutes of Fox News coverage of the story, you get the sense that much of Trump's base won't have to grapple with the seriousness of what happened. Despite my enthusiasm about what we're building here at Tangle, the unfortunate reality is that for the most part, our two political tribes are still living in totally different information ecosystems. Incredibly, Republicans in the Senate are still pointing to Hillary Clinton to defend themselves. It has now been 20 years since Clinton was elected to office and 10 years since her email scandal broke. Perhaps most frightening, I saw several prominent right wing influencers insisting the entire episode was intentional, that the Trump administration wanted the leak to happen. For some yet to be seen benefit, the real truth is much simpler and perhaps more sinister. This group likely created a chat on signal precisely to avoid transparency laws, despite warnings from our government about the vulnerability of such apps. Then they inadvertently added a journalist without anyone noticing his presence, before sharing sensitive and classified information about an impending war plan, all of which put soldiers and sources at risk. They responded to the entire episode not by punishing anyone or owning the mistake, but instead by trying to smear a journalist for doing his job and then insisting to Americans they were not seeing what they were very obviously seeing. Is this a Watergate level scandal? Of course not. But it shouldn't require history defining misconduct to have some fire in your belly about what happened. Collectively, we should all insist on living in reality, on accountability, and on being told the truth. That's true regardless of what past or future administrations have done. And it's a standard we should apply unblinkingly to to the one in power now. We'll be right back after this quick break.

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Isaac Saul (33:37)

All right, that is it for my take. We are going to skip today's reader question because the long intro at the top took up a good deal of space. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod and we'll be back tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace.

John Law (33:52)

Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the Radar section for today, folks. Last week, the biotechnology research company 23andMe, which offers users a profile of their genetic heritage based on a saliva sample, filed for bankruptcy and announced that it would seek a sale. The news has raised concerns about whether customers personal data will be sold off as part of the sale, as the company's databases contain genetic information about millions of users. While the bankruptcy filing won't change the company's data protection measures, many privacy experts have urged users to delete their information from 23andMe due to uncertainty about how the data could be used by whichever entity eventually buys the company. NBC News has this story and there's a link in today's episode Description alright, next up is our numbers section. The approximate number of accounts on encrypted platforms registered to cell phone numbers for US government workers and elected officials is 1,100, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. The approximate number of hours between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth communicating via Signal that the United States was preparing to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen and the start of the strikes is two, according to the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. The number of government officials in the signal group chat is 18. The percentage of US adults who say the conduct by Trump administration officials in the Signal group where they discussed military plans is a Serious problem is 74%, according to a March 2025 YouGov poll. The percentage of Democrats, Independents and Republicans, respectively, who think the official's conduct is a Serious problem is 89%, 72% and 60%. The percentage of U.S. adults who say the media is making too big a deal out of the story is 22% the percentage of US adults who say the media is treating the story appropriately is 17% and the percentage of US adults who say the media is not making a big enough deal out of the story is 37%. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. An increasing number of Nepali Sherpas are leaving for safer employment opportunities abroad after three Sherpas died in 2023 while working to help climbers through the most treacherous sections of Mount Everest. However, drones may prove to be a useful tool to help reduce the chances of fatal accidents and ease the burden on Sherpas. This season, specialized drones will be tested to transport loads of up to 35 pounds, removing waste and moving ladders for climbing rats in hopes of making Sherpas work faster, safer, safer and more efficient. The New York Times has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, Please go to readtangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace.

Isaac Saul (36:57)

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by Duke Thomas. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback Daily Saul and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was made by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. The music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go check out our website@readtangle.com that's readjangle.com.

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