Meddler-in-chief Elon Musk has a new assignment: Investigating Signalgate
National security adviser Mike Waltz has taken full responsibility for the Signal snafu — in spite of the best efforts by the White House to pin it on some unnamed underling. (At least they didn't try to blame it on diversity hiring.)
Opinion
'A staffer wasn't responsible,' Waltz told Laura Ingraham in a Fox News interview. 'I take full responsibility. I built the group.'
'The group' refers to the vice president, the secretary of defense, the CIA director and other Trump administration luminaries who were invited to an online chat to discuss an upcoming attack on Yemeni Houthis.
Atlantic magazine's top editor Jeffrey Goldberg also landed on the invite list and went on to write a couple of bombshell articles about what he learned.
Waltz said he doesn't know how Goldberg's number wound up there, though he speculated that it got 'sucked in.'
He didn't divulge any details about how this 'sucking in' process works, though he did find it awfully suspicious that Goldberg would be the one who managed to worm his way into the chat conducted on Signal, an encrypted messaging app.
'I'm not a conspiracy theorist,' Waltz told Ingraham, 'but of all the people out there, somehow this guy .... who has gone to just 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 (list) and then gets sucked into this group.'
It's a mystery all right, but thankfully, the White House is going to get to the bottom of it.
A team has been appointed to investigate how Goldberg managed to enter a chat that may or may not have disclosed classified information, depending on whom you believe.
According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Elon Musk and his DOGE boys will be on the team, along with the National Security Council and the White House Counsel's Office.
'Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat, again to take responsibility and ensure this never happens again,' Leavitt said.
You've got to wonder, how does the richest guy in the world find the time?
Also, will DOGE staffer Big Balls (or is it bigballs?) be on the team?
Meanwhile, what started out as a 'glitch' is now being referred to as a 'hoax' by the White House.
'This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,' Leavitt posted.
That calls for a little clarification. Doesn't a 'hoax' refer to something that is fake, as in counterfeit?
That doesn't appear to be the case here. Goldberg posted screenshots of the messages in his articles — which no one has come forward to refute — and the spokesman for the National Security Council confirmed they were the real deal, according to Goldberg's reporting.
There is one possibility. What if this was not a mistake at all, but an elaborate and clever ruse?
That is, indeed, an actual theory, though it makes about as much sense as the 'sucking in' hypothesis.
As NPR reported, 'some pro-Trump influencers tried to argue the senior officials had deliberately added Goldberg for strategic reasons.'
For instance, Cynical Publius, a self-described 'free thinker' posted this on X:
'... My very first thought was that Goldberg was specifically and deliberately included so that he would leak what he saw to the public. The idea was to let Europe know just how unhappy American leadership is with Europe's unwillingness to pull its weight militarily.'
If we fell for the charade, then we're the fools.
'These are some of the most competent people in the country and you believe they would just screw up like this? Simply not possible,' another Xer posted.
Besides, who can believe anything The Atlantic has to say?
After all, the magazine has already 'conceded' that the Signal chat was not about 'war plans.'
It didn't actually write a correction, but the evidence is all there in the headlines, for any self-respecting conspiracy theorist to see.
Goldberg's initial story carried this headline: 'The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.'
A follow-up piece had this head: 'Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump's Advisers Shared on Signal.'
See the switcheroo The Atlantic pulled? Of course you do!
There's a world of difference between 'war' and 'attack,' right?
That's yet another piece of evidence, though of what I'm not sure.
Fortunately, we have some of the most competent people in the country, including Elon — and possibly Big Balls — to unravel it for us.
All we have to do now is wait.
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