Summary

White House insiders blame National Security Adviser Mike Waltz for a group chat error that exposed military strike discussions to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg.

Waltz mistakenly added Goldberg to a Signal chat about potential strikes in Yemen, involving key officials like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and JD Vance.

Trump has defended Waltz but is reportedly weighing his options.

Some aides urge resignation to avoid forcing Trump to make a decision. Critics call Waltz reckless, but House Speaker Mike Johnson opposes his resignation.

  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    No, every person on that chat (other than the editor from the Atlantic) should lose their clearance and be fired. They were all using an unapproved, off-record system for discussing matters of national security. They are all responsible.

    • el_muerte@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      Beyond that, every member of the chat could see who else was in it and not a single one put in half a second to scan through the other names/initials to verify they knew everyone included.

    • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Jeffrey Goldberg should lose his job too but for unrelated reasons. Good on him for publishing this responsibly but he sucks too. He was arguably the main cheerleader for the 2nd Iraq war.

    • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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      2 days ago

      They should & they won’t. You know who owns the executive branch & gives absolutely 0 shits, right?

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    The crimes each member may have committed exposes them to multi-decade prison sentences.

    They’re urging someone to resign? RESIGN?

    Let’s see the court cases. Each one of those hypocrites.

    • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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      2 days ago

      two words: presidential pardon.

      No one will spend the time, money and effort to prosecute these people when they can just wave the whole thing away with a signature.

        • Flic@mstdn.social
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          2 days ago

          But then I don’t really think I understand US politics. To me it makes no sense why there isn’t an impeachment charge against him every day. He’s providing enough ammo. If he’s going to flood the zone, flood it right back.

          • xyzzy@lemm.ee
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            2 days ago

            What’s hard to understand? Republicans control the House, and Republicans are complicit. Any impeachment charge wouldn’t make it out of committee, and any charge on the floor would be quickly voted down.

            • GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.social
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              2 days ago

              Then make them vote it down? What is so hard to understand about this? Every impeachment charge is time spent on the floor that forces them to delay voting on other damaging policies. If he’s going to continue flooding the zeitgeist with damaging policies and immoral action, then force his colleagues and constituents to sit down and listen to it in detail. Eventually the end goal doesn’t become worth the sacrifice to get there. There’s a reason no one ever sits through a time share seminar even if its for a free 3 day weekend getaway.

              • xyzzy@lemm.ee
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                2 days ago

                Voting on what? Everything is being done through executive actions. This Congress has rendered itself irrelevant. The only thing Congress is actually doing is voting on nominees, and I think Democrats should vote against those, but they’re too busy unanimously voting in favor of them.

          • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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            2 days ago

            Me neither. I would have thought this was exactly the kind of situation impeachment was meant to stop. I am thoroughly confused.

      • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        That’s not the reason to choose not to prosecute. You indict them, prosecute them, sentence them, and then if he wants to pardon them, he is choosing personal loyalty to him over acting against the American people and our national security. Charge them, and use the predictable sociopathic response to beat them incessantly for years.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The people that want these unqualified dipshits in these roles are the same types of people that fell for the fucking lie that Hillary “acid washed” her emails.

      BTW, next time you hear some asshat suffering from TDS (the actual kind, not the stupid thing they talk about and that they lifted from Clinton days anyway since they are lazy and unimaginative and always projecting - these people spent their time ever since the early 90s getting the vapors over lots of imagined nonsense related to the Clintons and so they should know about derangement) brain repeating that dumbfuck lie - ask them what they mean by “acid washing” an email or a server. Just keep asking what they mean by that.

      • D_C@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        Exactly.
        Orange ShitGibbon had boxes and boxes of top secret stuff in his unlocked toilet right next to a fax machine yet nothing happened.
        Not only did nothing happen to him, he also got voted back in again. Ffs.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Oh, so they are going to blame one fucking guy and it’s not donvict and donvict will bear zero consequences.

    Seems like I heard this one before.

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    I use this app. If I saw a new person added to a casual group chat, I’d ask about it. I’m not an idiot who sucks Trump’s dick, though.

  • enkers@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    Shocking. You shitcan the infosec practices and human resources you’ve built up for decades, and then wonder why your new seive doesn’t make a good bucket.

    We’ve got some absolute geniuses running things here.

  • FrChazzz@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    One thing I want to know is: who did Waltz think he was adding? Is there another Goldberg in the administration (or a foreign one?) out there? Or is his name right under Gabbard’s in the contacts list?

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      I think the journalist just went by his initials as did a few other people in the chat, so it could be as dumb as just having someone with the same initials. Which is notably not how government systems work, for exactly the reason that you need to know exactly who you’re communicating with and the system should make mistakes like this unlikely.

      Obfuscating your identity makes sense of you’re trying to talk to leakers or doing something shady and want to allow some deniability should the conversation be compromised. Which begs the question of why so many of them already had their Signal accounts set up that way.

    • moakley@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      My hopeful theory is that some intern with access to his phone did it so their behavior would get exposed.

    • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
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      3 days ago

      I saw speculation about another person in the administration with the same initials. I think they work at the US Trade Representative (?).

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 days ago

    There is no passing the buck for matters of national security. The “party of law and order” should know that. They crucified Hillary for far less.

      • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago
        • There is no buck.
        • If there is, it’s not a big buck. Or a bad buck.
        • If it is, it stops somewhere else.
        • If it didn’t, the buck is actually just a glitch.
        • If it isn’t, this is the devastating effects of the Biden economy.
        • suckers and losers
    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      They consider the sin not to be using unapproved services using an unapproved service, the sin is the guy who got them caught.

  • orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    I always forget how low the bar for “average” is. But for the average person to realize how epically stupid Trump and his goons are takes things like this to happen.

    What gets me more depressed is that nearly 4.1 billion people on earth are below average.

    We are governed by goobers.

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Every damn person on that chat was a giant fucking idiot and it’s responsible for the data spill here with their collective agreement to use a non approved communication tool, taking about and continuing to talk about classified data on a unclassified environment, and then not self reporting they’re were complete morons for violating security that a new hire would have known better than to do.

  • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    At least two senior aides have suggested that Waltz should resign to avoid putting Trump in the “bad position” of having to decide whether to fire him, Politicoreported.

    Yeah, that’s it. How dare he do this to Dear Leader and The Cause.

    How dare he make Leader have to lie away the US government risking national security and avoiding FOI.

    If anyone is flying today maybe ask the NSA people left at the airport why you can’t carry butter if buttery emails make plane sounds. Or maybe let us know if the boot leather tastes a bit buttery, maybe that’s how they polish them.