Trump Has Bizarre Defense for Advisers Making Group Chat on Signal
Donald Trump still doesn’t seem to know what Signal is, more than 24 hours after his administration was revealed to have discussed sensitive war details about bombing another country on the private app.
“So are you saying you’re okay with the continued use of Signal by administration officials?” asked a reporter at a White House press conference Tuesday afternoon.
“No, that’s not what I said,” Trump said. “I said we’ll look into it, but everybody else seems to be using it. It seems to be the number one used device or app, whatever you want to call it.”
The president then continued to argue that there may be future circumstances under which the administration may be “forced” to use Signal, even though it’s an unofficial channel for information that was easily infiltrated by a journalist who, in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s words, is “deceitful and highly discredited.”
“I don’t think it’s something we’re looking forward to use again, we may be forced to use it. We may be in a situation where you need speed as opposed to gross safety, and we may be forced to use it,” Trump added.
The president did not elaborate on what “gross safety” meant, but it’s unclear how his Cabinet’s reliance on Signal would be more efficient than the traditional and secure channels used by prior administrations.
Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month. Some of that information, shared by Hegseth in the chat, included a detailed operation plan, potential targets, weapons used, attack sequences, and timing of the airstrikes. The existence of the group chat was verified by a spokesperson for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes.
The monumental slip-up was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.
Trump officials repeatedly denied that they had disclosed confidential information in the immediate wake of the scandal. But National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe began to fold during a Senate hearing Tuesday, with Gabbard claiming that she could not answer questions about the chat because of its sensitive nature, while Ratcliffe conceded that the conversation should have been conducted through “classified channels.”