Internet Mercilessly Mocks Trump Advisers for Top Secret Group Chat
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.
The monumental slipup 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.
It was, however, incredible fodder for the administration’s critics, who didn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity to mock the stunning level of incompetence.
“This has very Trump 1.0 fuck up vibes, honestly kinda fun,” posted Unpopular Front newsletter writer John Ganz.
“New phone, Houthis,” chirped National Review columnist Christian Schneider on X.
The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein noted it was “very annoying they messaged ‘Jeff Goldberg’ and not, for instance, ‘Jeff Stein.’”
At least one former government official couldn’t help but highlight the enormous hypocrisy of Republican attempts to sidestep the national security scandal.
“You have got to be kidding me,” posted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was excoriated for using a private email server to receive official government communications during her time serving the Obama administration.
The “Houthi PC small group” included 18 members who appeared to represent senior officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Another account labeled as Vice President JD Vance actively criticized Trump’s plans—in what would be the first known instance of Vance refuting the MAGA agenda—arguing that the planned bombing was not imminently needed.
“Vice President texting the group, ‘chat are we cooked’,” posted independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.
“Looks like I’m changing my initials to DJT on Signal now. Hoping for some scoops!” posted NBC News’s Amanda Terkel.
Trump, however, was apparently not invited to the Signal exchange.
“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic, to me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business, I think it’s not much of a magazine,” Trump said during a press conference Monday, noting that a reporter’s question regarding the group chat was the first he had heard of it. “But I know nothing about it, you’re saying that they had what?”
