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A senior administration official told POLITICO the White House isn’t sure if Mike Waltz can survive as national security adviser after The Atlantic's bombshell report.

"Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive," the official said. "It was reckless not to check who was on the thread. It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can’t have recklessness as the national security adviser."

A person close to the White House was even more blunt: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot"
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1904331181820199139

And compared with Hegseth, he's the smart guy.

They're all idiots, they all took part in a discussion that should not have been conducted on Signal and none of them tried to close it down.
The implications is that this is "business as usual", that govt is being done via a commercial app not official communication channels. The obvious reason for that is they don't want an official record of their discussions.

I reckon we'll see the US gaslit and that no one will go due to this... Let's see what WG starts reposting.

A senior administration official told POLITICO the White House isn’t sure if Mike Waltz can survive as national security adviser after The Atlantic's bombshell report.

"Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive," the official said. "It was reckless not to check who was on the thread. It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can’t have recklessness as the national security adviser."

A person close to the White House was even more blunt: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot"
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1904331181820199139

And compared with Hegseth, he's the smart guy.

They're all idiots, they all took part in a discussion that should not have been conducted on Signal and none of them tried to close it down.
The implications is that this is "business as usual", that govt is being done via a commercial app not official communication channels. The obvious reason for that is they don't want an official record of their discussions.

I reckon we'll see the US gaslit and that no one will go due to this... Let's see what WG starts reposting.

I doubt the US is unique in this, though.

In part its politicians v officials. Officials want politicians to correspond with each other through official channels, both for legitimate legal reasons and so they can keep tabs on it all. Whereas politicians want the chance to share ideas and plans informally, without their staff looking on, and without leaving indelible hostages to future fortune. Whatsapp and the like have stepped nicely into the gap.

Somewhere there's a Jeff Goldberg on the US Yemen team wondering why he wasn't in on the chat.

The breach is interesting for several reasons apart from the obvious security risk. One is the reaction to the leak, but perhaps most interesting is the light it sheds on decision making in the Trump administration, with Vance disagreeing with Trump over the wisdom of bombing the Houthis.

"The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

Vance hates the free countries of Europe. On this there can be no doubt.

A senior administration official told POLITICO the White House isn’t sure if Mike Waltz can survive as national security adviser after The Atlantic's bombshell report.

"Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive," the official said. "It was reckless not to check who was on the thread. It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can’t have recklessness as the national security adviser."

A person close to the White House was even more blunt: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot"
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1904331181820199139

And compared with Hegseth, he's the smart guy.

They're all idiots, they all took part in a discussion that should not have been conducted on Signal and none of them tried to close it down.
The implications is that this is "business as usual", that govt is being done via a commercial app not official communication channels. The obvious reason for that is they don't want an official record of their discussions.

I reckon we'll see the US gaslit and that no one will go due to this... Let's see what WG starts reposting.

If Trump had cared about the security of the US, none of Gabbard, Waltz, Hegseth or Vance would be in post anyway.

And the Republicans will never vote to impeach, or at least not in sufficient numbers (Murkowski might) so they won't be removed.

BBC's "The Pandemic 5 years on" documentary seems determined to cement that "lockdown was a necessary evil" narrative by focussing on a few sad stories..🧐

Scientific consensus is that the first lockdown WAS a necessary evil. Probably the later ones too, before the pandemic rollout to the most vulnerable.

I know it’s become fashionable to claim the opposite now, and one shouldn’t ignore the downsides of lockdown, it was a crisis with very few levers to be pulled.

More and more I've come to realise that people die from diseases, fat and old ones even more than usual. The degree to which we sacrificed as a nation to add a few months of life expectancy to the old and the obese was way too high.

The Boris Johnson government will undoubtedly go down in history as the worst in the post war era.

Initial lockdown was more about avoiding the complete collapse of healthcare provision. People dying of other things because the hospitals were full. We have a spectacular ability to use hindsight over the covid period.

IIRC we got to the point that a few patients were moved into a couple of the Nightingale "hospitals"

Happily we live in a more caring society than @MaxPB imagines, which comes across as a 21st version of putting a black cross on front doors and locking people in to die.
We never tried the experiment of just letting it burn through.

I really don’t get the levels of revisionism that some on here are indulging in.

Yes and look at what unlimited kindness has done for us. £38bn per year for "disability" benefits, 9m people inactive, 1 in 5 people employed by the state, a 6.7m NHS waiting list, lowest ever ranking on the global happiness index.

The country needed and still needs tough love. The government is like a doctor giving out heroin to addicts because they think it's better than the pain of withdrawal.

It’s fair enough to challenge whether every person who is certified as disabled really is, and what support the state offers. On The Last Leg on Friday it was claimed there were 16 million disabled in the U.K. which seems huge, and surely must include some dubious cases.

But that doesn’t mean that there was a better, harsher way that would have left us in a better place now.

You're in denial about the deleterious effects of the lockdowns imo.

The other thing to remember is not to blame the lockdowns for the pandemic. The disease itself is responsible for many of the problems we face, not the attempted official response.

There is a legacy of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and metabolic damage that relates purely to the virus.

The alternative to Lockdowns was not normality. We couldn't wish the pandemic away.

Pete Buttigieg
@PeteButtigieg
·
2h
From an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of fuckup imaginable. These people cannot keep America safe.

And even Fox News acknowledged that Whiskey Pete was lying when he denied it.

Fox’s Brit Hume on Hegseth’s response to war plans texts: ‘Oh for God’s sake’
Fox News political commentator Brit Hume on Monday afternoon pushed back on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s claim that “nobody was texting war plans” after news broke that Hegseth and other Trump administration officials discussed plans for an attack against Houthi rebels in Yemen on a text chain that mistakenly included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic.
“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said outside a plane in Hawaii when asked about editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg’s access to the chat...

Here's the liar accusing journalists of lying.

“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited “so-called journalist”
https://x.com/DODResponse/status/1904311661629964334

That's quite an incredible take, and the one Musky Baby is taking on Twix. Attacking the journalist and the Atlantic.

And their base will lap it up.

It's getting to the stage where the US government and MAGA are becoming traitors to their own country. And before anyone complains, that's the language they're using against their political enemies.

'getting to'? It passed that stage at a gallop on the 6th January 2020.

BBC's "The Pandemic 5 years on" documentary seems determined to cement that "lockdown was a necessary evil" narrative by focussing on a few sad stories..🧐

Scientific consensus is that the first lockdown WAS a necessary evil. Probably the later ones too, before the pandemic rollout to the most vulnerable.

I know it’s become fashionable to claim the opposite now, and one shouldn’t ignore the downsides of lockdown, it was a crisis with very few levers to be pulled.

More and more I've come to realise that people die from diseases, fat and old ones even more than usual. The degree to which we sacrificed as a nation to add a few months of life expectancy to the old and the obese was way too high.

The Boris Johnson government will undoubtedly go down in history as the worst in the post war era.

They couldn't even be bothered to tell the fat slobs to do some exercise.

It wasn't just "fat slobs" that died. Young people with heart conditions too.

And even "fat slobs" deserve to live.

BBC's "The Pandemic 5 years on" documentary seems determined to cement that "lockdown was a necessary evil" narrative by focussing on a few sad stories..🧐

Scientific consensus is that the first lockdown WAS a necessary evil. Probably the later ones too, before the pandemic rollout to the most vulnerable.

I know it’s become fashionable to claim the opposite now, and one shouldn’t ignore the downsides of lockdown, it was a crisis with very few levers to be pulled.

More and more I've come to realise that people die from diseases, fat and old ones even more than usual. The degree to which we sacrificed as a nation to add a few months of life expectancy to the old and the obese was way too high.

The Boris Johnson government will undoubtedly go down in history as the worst in the post war era.

Initial lockdown was more about avoiding the complete collapse of healthcare provision. People dying of other things because the hospitals were full. We have a spectacular ability to use hindsight over the covid period.

https://x.com/modadgeop/status/1904236655789199617

You just have to assume that the Trump admin know how they're perceived by the media. They cannot leak anything directly - the media would not run the story the way they want, and would instead spin it in all sorts of ways. They have to find a way to get the media to publish the stories they want published. So, a Trump incompetence story given to a moron like Goldberg makes sense. The Europeans and Egyptians get to see exactly what the Trump admin wants them to see, and because it's an ORANGE MAN BAD story the message remains undiluted and dominates the news cycle.

That's a completely stupid take, you would surely not put classified bombing plans in there as "validation" but something else. No, they just fucked up, there's no psyop here.