It'll Take Awhile To Live This One Down : Learning On The Job

"[The uproar] represents a] co-ordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America's enemies pay and keep Americans safe."

White House statement 

"[The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg is] deceitful, [a] discredited so-called journalist."

"Nobody was texting war plans and that's all I have to say about that."

Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth 

"[It was] the only glitch in two months [of his administration]."

"Michael Waltz has learned a lesson and he's a good man."

"It was one of Michael's people [staffer] on the phone. A staffer had his [Goldberg's] number on there."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump

 

"In the amazing story of the Signal group coordinating Yemen airstrikes, Vice-resident J.D. Vance once again comes out as driven by deep anti-European resentment."

Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt

 

"U.S. Vice-President and Secretary of Defense loathe Europe [as they try to extort money out of it]."

Mike Martin British Parliamentarian

At the White House on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said his critics were inflating the incident. “They’ve made a big deal out of this because we’ve had two perfect months,” he said.  Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Quite obviously that old self-help book "How to make Friends and Influence People" is not a go-to tract in the White House library to which old diplomatic hands can refer new White House personnel and elected officials to, for the efficacy of putting their best foot forward when dealing with friendly nations. The members of the Trump administration appear to share a deep-seated hostility toward just about all the member-democracies of NATO and the G7 nations. Evidently stemming from the burden that Europe and other democratic allies place upon the United States as the most powerful country on the globe, to ensure security for all.

 

In all fairness, it wasn't Europe that imposed this burden on the United States. This is a holdover from World War II when Europe was under attack by Nazi Germany and its Axis members in a brutal conflict that the entry of the United States for the Allied side turned the tide after Imperial Japan, part of the Nazi Axis, had attacked Pearl Harbour in an act of war. The American military involvement in stemming the  tide of fascism and eventually ending the war with the world's only nuclear strikes, resulted in the acknowledgement of its singular status as the world's policeman. A role that the U.S. was pleased to take up, cementing its legacy as world power without equal.

 

That status appears to have grown stale; the U.S. is fed up with being taken for granted, for being the shield that protects other internationally law-abiding nations from harm threatened by those countries of the world for which territorial expansion through force of arms and conflicting ideological roots create chaos and war. Now, under the second Trump administration, the message was sent that all countries formerly dependent on the protection canopy of the U.S. had better shore up their own defences for the burden will no longer be accepted by the United States of America.

 

An America that is prepared to react militarily only when it perceives threats aimed directly toward it.  And since the Houthi rebels in Yemen have complicated international marine traffic, and threatened both the U.S. and Israel (which Washington deems deserving of a place under its canopy), just as its sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a close looming threat with its nuclear and rocketry development, itself earning close scrutiny and threats, the American military has been ordered to disable the Houthi war machinery and by extension the nuclear plans of Iran.

 

Atlantic editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, in 2023. Credit...Justin T. Gellerson for The New York Times

An inadvertent, and quite amateurish online meeting on the Signal platform between Trump associates and Cabinet members saw the erroneous inclusion of The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg who was by inclusion made privy to the strategic military plans. As a journalist his first instinct was to use the data he was exposed to, once the initial shock of receiving it had passed. And as he published the timeline of the almost comedic misadventure, the shock to the public, the news media, and the political opposition was that of outrage at the sheer clumsiness of making sensitive plans available through sheer sloppiness.

 

From the European perspective, however, it was the revelation of senior executive Cabinet members sneering at Europe that drew the most attention. President Trump's inner circle shares his contempt for Europe's leaders, are wholly sympathetic to the president's decision to downgrade relations with embattled Ukraine, while make friendly overtures to Moscow. When the U.S. spurned Europe's fears of Vladimir Putin's outright threats to the stability of eastern Europe through his annexation of a fifth of Ukrainian territory, NATO members reeled in disbelief.

 

As for the documents revealed through an inadequate lapse of intelligent judgement, retired French Army Lt. Gen. Michel Yakovleff with his own history at NATO headquarters, described the U.S. officials involved in the debacle as "a bunch of incompetent, arrogant idiots" with "no clue" about operational security. "When you have that level of incompetence, anything is possible", he stated.

 

European leaders were stung by the revelation through the Signal chat that JD Vance questioned whether the U.S. expending military assets on securing nearby shipping lanes would be just another example of "bailing Europe out again". To which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth replied: "I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's PATHETIC." 

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stands by U.S. President Donald Trump, in the Oval Office at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 21, 2025. Photo by Carlos Barria/REUTERS