By THE GONZO POLTERGEIST
March 26, 2025
So this is how it goes now: the Secretary of Defense accidentally includes a journalist in a Signal group chat and sends him the goddamn war plans. The entire play-by-play for a U.S. strike on Houthi fighters in Yemen—targets, aircraft, weapon types—delivered like a pizza order to The Atlantic‘s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. All he had to do was sit back and watch the national security apparatus self-immolate in real time.
The group chat, unimaginatively titled “National Security,” included VP JD Vance, NSA Mike Waltz, some loyal Trumpist staffers, and apparently nobody with the sense to keep Goldberg out of it. Goldberg, who once got Trump to call fallen U.S. troops “suckers and losers,” now had the Pentagon’s mid-strike intentions in his inbox. He published it, of course. You would too.
And then came the cleanup. Hegseth—whose main qualifications seem to be “TV guy with abs” and “looks good holding a whiskey tumbler”—told the press, “Nobody was texting war plans.” Meanwhile, the actual war plans were literally in the screenshots. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, on loan from Turning Point USA’s sizzle reel, tried to downplay it as unclassified “routine discussion.” Then Trump called Goldberg a “sleazebag” and declared the whole thing a hoax.
But the drip of incredulity had already turned into a flood.
Pete Buttigieg didn’t bother mincing words. In a recent media appearance, he let it fly: “What the fuck are we even doing here?” Later on MSNBC, he added, “How many other times has something like this happened… I mean, this is the one we know about. But, how many times have they screwed up like this in a way that puts American troups and families in harm’s way?” His demeanor displayed the attitude of the tested veteran, “No. I’ve been in combat. You don’t joke with war plans. You don’t send them to some half-witted cable bro with a bourbon habit.” Secretary Pete is acting like a man who’s had enough of the cosplay patriots running the Pentagon like a backyard barbecue.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D–MA), former Marine and longtime defender of military accountability, didn’t mince words either. “Now the debate among national security professionals is over whether the Secretary was just incompetent or whether he was drunk,” he said. “That’s how low this has gotten, and these are serious debates happening among national security professionals today.” When the people who used to argue about troop deployments are now arguing about blood alcohol content, you know the wheels are off.
The terrifying part? None of this seems to matter. Allies are rattled. The Pentagon is humiliated. The Houthis got tipped off. But inside the Trump White House, they’re brushing it off like someone left a hot dog on the Resolute Desk.
This administration treats power like a joke. The punchline this week is that the war plans got sent to a journalist by mistake. Next week? Who knows. Maybe the nuclear codes get texted to a group chat called “The Real Patriots 💥💪🇺🇸.”
Stay tuned.
