Signalgate is a five-alarm clusterfuck that just keeps getting worse

and Republicans keep pretending it’s no big deal

I’m no expert, but it’s looking more and more like hiring a bunch of Fox News pinheads and putting them in charge of agencies for which they have absolutely no skills or experience is the worst fucking way in the world to run a government.

because here’s what happens when you do that: a bunch of them start casually texting each other about how they’re going to bomb the shit out of Yemen, like they were planning a neighborhood cookout.

Pete’s in charge of bringing the kegs.

it’s thanks to their own clownish incompetence that we even know about this shit, because Donny’s national security advisor, Mike Waltz, went a little funny in the head and added The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the text chain.

again, I’m no expert, but I’m thinking that divulging classified war plans to a journalist is pretty much the opposite of national security — the very thing that Mike Waltz was hired to protect.

you’d figure that it would take a hot New York second for Donny to send Waltz packing, after a five-alarm fuck-up like that — but no, Donny susancollinsed it straight under the rug, telling us that Waltz gets to keep his job, because he’s learned his lesson.

for fuck’s sake, even Susan Collins didn’t try to susancollins it.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called the incident “inconceivable” and “an extremely troubling and serious matter.”

but Suze is pretty much standing alone. almost every other Republican spent all day yesterday vigorously explaining why the worst national security breach in American history was no biggie.

here’s how Fox News found object Jesse Watters hand-waved it away.

“ever try to start a group text, you’re adding people, and you accidentally add the wrong person? all of a sudden your Aunt Mary knows all your raunchy plans for the bachelor party? well that kinda happened today with the Trump administration. Mike Waltz was putting together a group chat on Signal … well, National Security advisor Mike Waltz accidentally added a reporter to the group text. and not a good reporter. Jeffrey Goldberg, from The Atlantic, one of the biggest hoax artists around. well, heard some things he probably shouldn’t have. it could have been a wee bit of a security breach, but it’s not like he home-brewed a server and then bleached it.”

who among us hasn’t accidentally texted war plans? shit happens, am I right? I mean, it’s not like [insert lie about Hillary Clinton here].

now check out Mike Waltz getting a free pass from Fox News to imply that Jeffrey Goldberg somehow scammed his way onto the group chat.

Laura Ingraham: “the president expressed complete confidence in you today, and his entire cabinet. but how did a Trump-hating editor of The Atlantic end up on your Signal chat?”

Mike Waltz: “you know, Laura, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia hoax, gone to all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president of the United States, and he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then gets sucked into a group.”

Donny says Waltz has ‘learned a lesson’ about his Signalgate blunder. I’m thinking the lesson this guy learned was more like you can vomit out the most ludicrous bullshit imaginable and the Fox News bobbleheads will just gobble it right up — because really? Jeffrey Goldberg somehow engineered his way into having war plans texted to him?

I’ve heard more convincing fairy tales come out of the mouths of children trying to explain that it was actually the dog who broke the vase.

nonetheless, Donny also buys into this insane theory that Goldberg somehow hacked into a Signal chat.

“the person that was on happens to be a sleazebag, so maybe that’s just coincidence, I don’t know … I will say this, that from what I heard, the man that we’re talking about, who’s not somebody that I don’t think most people have ever heard of, he left. he found it very boring and he left early. he got off the line very early. so uh, I can’t speak to it.”

wait, does Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants even understand what a group text is? what the fuck does Donny mean by “he got off the line early”? does he think it’s like a party line, and Goldberg hung up the phone?

who filled Donny’s head with this nonsense? is this how Mike Waltz wriggled out of trouble? is he the ‘somebody’ who told Donny that Goldberg ‘left early’?

Donny is this easy to fool. it’s fucking scary to contemplate how easy it is to pull the wool over the eyes of the sitting president of the United States. no wonder he’s forever getting played by Putin.

here’s the other shit sandwich that Republicans were shoving in our faces yesterday: the leak was no biggie because none of the war plans were classified.

my god, it’s simply staggering how easily this bloviating gasbag lies.

it so happens that just this morning, Goldberg published the actual war plans that were texted to him. tell me if this looks like a plan for a war to you:

now somebody please explain to me how launch times for bombings aren’t classified. did Donny unclassify them with his mind?

I have two rules: don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining, and don’t plan a war and tell me it’s not classified.

nonetheless, Tulsi Gabbard repeated the lie in testimony to Congress yesterday.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) questions DNI Gabbard and CIA Director Ratcliffe and FBI Director Patel about the Signal chat. DNI Gabbard: “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal chat.” Sen. Warner: “If there was no classified material share it with the committee. You can't have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security.”

the thing is, the national security implications here go far beyond a reporter being added to a group chat. there’s a high probability that everything discussed on Signal is being intercepted by Russia and China — because Signal is a janky app that’s easy as fuck to hack.

it’s not like Donny and his Sewer Clowns weren’t warned about this. a month ago, Donny’s own NSA put out an alert that hey you fucking clowns, stop using Signal already.

The National Security Agency sent out an operational security special bulletin to its employees in February 2025 warning them of vulnerabilities in using the encrypted messaging application Signal, according to internal NSA documents obtained by CBS News.

The bulletin warned of Russian professional hacking groups employing phishing scams to gain access to encrypted conversations, bypassing the end-to-end encryption the application uses.

seriously, does the NSA have to draw you nitwits a fucking picture?

now here’s something that should reassure absolutely nobody.

“we’re going to get to the bottom of it. I just talked to Elon on the way here. we’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened.”

oh fucking great, the Ketamine Kid is on the case.

so that’s how this shit-show going to play out. the Sewer Clowns are all going to circle the wagons and pretend this is a problem of technology, and not the inevitable result of some fat-fingered idiot who’s too fucking dumb — or drunk — to notice he’s pressing the wrong buttons on his phone.

and Donny’s going to let every culprit skate, because he’s an out-of-it coot, lost and wandering in an ever-thickening fog of dementia and delusion, who believes whatever bullshit story his Sewer Clowns feed him.

oh, and sorry, Mike, the Space Nazi can’t help you. he’s too busy putting the finishing touches on Forkship One.

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here’s your daily reminder that I can be found on Blue Sky at this link.

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this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.