Another Trump Official Carelessly Talks War Plans While Hanging Around With Civilians

Failures

from the with-great-power-comes-greater-stupidity dept

This administration is so comfortable with its power and so self-assured in its actions that it can’t even be bothered to engage in basic operational security. This dates all the way back to Trump’s first term, when the president casually (and unofficially) declassified information by posting it to Twitter, routinely refused to attend national security briefings, and said stuff during interviews that had administration officials scrambling to prepare for inevitably awful outcomes of the president allowing any momentary burst of synapses to be converted immediately into words he can’t seem to prevent himself from uttering out loud.

The second Trump term has somehow managed to convert Trump’s conceited sloppiness into a communicable disease. Not once but twice have ostensible “war plans” been shared with civilians — the first time being an accidental e-vite to a Signal chat room extended to a journalist and the second being former Fox News also-ran Pete Hegseth being so self-involved he just had to share war chats with his immediate family and (checks notes] their lawyer.

ICE has done the same thing, as has the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Kristi Noem’s thirst for self-congratulatory photo ops has seen her expose ICE operations that were still underway because she thought she looked kind of badass boarding a vehicle before the sun came up.

This latest blunder — reported first by Andy Mannix for the Minnesota Star-Tribune — also involves Signal. But that’s not an indictment of Signal, which is still the best option for encrypted communications. End-to-end encryption can do a lot of things. But it can’t prevent you from adding someone you didn’t mean to to a group chat or prevent others in the chat from sharing their messages with others. And it definitely can’t protect you from shoulder surfing, because literally no service exists that can do that. That’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to be aware of when discussing sensitive information. And this government is showing, yet again, that it can’t be bothered to take the sort of protective steps even ordinary office workers are expected to.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth considered sending an elite U.S. Army strike force to Portland, Ore., to quell protests that President Donald Trump has characterized as “lawless mayhem,” according to images of messages provided to the Minnesota Star Tribune.

The messages, casually exchanged last weekend in a crowded, public space, show high-level officials in the Trump administration discussing the deployment of the Army’s 82nd Airborne, an infantry division that has been deployed to combat zones in both world wars, Vietnam and Afghanistan. If the administration were to send in the Army division, it would almost certainly be challenged in court under federal laws limiting how the military can be used domestically.

Ask yourself: does this sound like something Pete Hegseth would consider green-lighting? And then ask yourself this: would another Trump official feel comfortable discussing this while in a “crowded, public space?” I think you have your answers. Here’s the person who’s the latest example of this administration’s inability (or unwillingness) [or both!] to treat their positions with the respect they’re supposed to deserve, much less do the sorts of things people would expect these office-holders to do when being entrusted with that amount of power.

Anthony Salisbury, a deputy to White House top policy adviser Stephen Miller, sent the texts over the private messaging app Signal while traveling in Minnesota and in clear view of others. Troubled by seeing sensitive military planning discussed so openly, a source contacted the Star Tribune and allowed a reporter to review images of the texts.

Salibury’s presence and engagement in these text messages was verified by other photos sent by the Star Tribune’s source. And his presence in Minnesota was verified by White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, who presented his carelessness as extreme devotion to his duties as, um, Stephen Miller’s deputy whateverthefuck.

“Despite dealing with grief from the loss of a family member, Tony continued his important work on behalf of the American people,” Jackson said in a written statement. “Nothing in these private conversations, that are shamefully being reported on by morally bankrupt reporters, is new or classified information.”

LOL OK. But no one has reported the military (in the form of hard-drinking Petey H.) considered, however briefly, parachuting the 82nd Airborne into allegedly war-torn Portland, Oregon, USA. And we’ll just allow the moral bankruptcy court to declare the winners and losers in cases like these, which always feature gobsmacked Americans being greeted by administration defensiveness every time Trump & Assoc. fuck something up.

Then there’s this statement about the potential Oregon invasion plans witnessed by Citizen Shoulder Surfer, which is even more nonsensical than the White House’s “moral bankruptcy” speculations:

“The Department of War is a planning organization and does not speculate on potential future operations,” Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement. 

wat.

So, the planning organization does not discuss plans, even plans that may not even be part of the official plans, because it is a planning organization that actually doesn’t plan anything and just rolls into action with all eventualities included in its load out.

Bullshit, as fucking everyone says. Planning involves discussing plans, which necessarily involves speculation because there’s no other way to discuss future plans. Unless the administration is in possession of a time machine (which is contradicted by the evidence that this administration exists), some speculation must occur before formal plans are, well, formalized.

Just because no one but Hegseth and Trump wants to invade a US city with an elite division of the US military doesn’t mean he didn’t think it was a good idea worth discussing with a guy who works for Stephen Miller and who doesn’t have the situational awareness to not participate in this discussion while surrounded by people he doesn’t actually know.

The Trump administration will, of course, shrug this off as nothing more than evidence of the press working to destroy America before Trump can get around to doing that himself. But it’s the other thing: It’s an administration stuffed to brim with under-qualified glory hounds, opportunists, gladhanders, sycophants, conspiracy theorist podcasters, Fox News commentators, and glamour dolls aging their way to irrelevance — all of them failing to do the things that would demonstrate extremely basic levels of professional competence.

Filed Under: anthony salisbury, defense department, martial law, national guard, opsec, opsec failure, oregon, pete hegseth, portland
Companies: signal