{"id":7689,"date":"2025-03-26T08:22:42","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T08:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/group-chat-fiasco-raises-serious-questions-about-the-competence-of-trump-admin-officials\/"},"modified":"2025-03-26T08:22:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T08:22:42","slug":"group-chat-fiasco-raises-serious-questions-about-the-competence-of-trump-admin-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/group-chat-fiasco-raises-serious-questions-about-the-competence-of-trump-admin-officials\/","title":{"rendered":"Group chat fiasco raises serious questions about the competence of Trump admin officials"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><em>This is an adapted excerpt from the <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/deadline-white-house\" target=\"_blank\"><em>March 24 <\/em><\/a><em>episode of &ldquo;Deadline: White House.&rdquo;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The fallout continues following a report<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2025\/03\/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans\/682151\/\" target=\"_blank\"> from The Atlantic&rsquo;s Jeffrey Goldberg <\/a>that top officials in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/donald-trump\" target=\"_blank\">Donald Trump<\/a>&rsquo;s administration mistakenly added him to a group chat on a private messaging app in which plans for military strikes in Yemen were discussed. It&rsquo;s a breathtaking breach of national security, and it raises several questions about the judgment and the competence of the people at the very highest levels of this administration.<\/p>\n<p>Will Trump take decisive action? This entire story is inconceivable and unprecedented, and heads should roll. But will they? <\/p>\n<p>Number one, given the recklessness and the carelessness with which officials shared this highly sensitive information, I think we can assume that it&rsquo;s likely not just Goldberg listening in; it&rsquo;s also our nation&rsquo;s adversaries. At this point, is there any reason to believe that foreign powers, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/the-last-word\/watch\/timothy-snyder-trump-making-ethical-and-strategic-mistake-with-putin-235261509769\" target=\"_blank\"> Vladimir Putin <\/a>and the Kremlin or China&rsquo;s<a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/rachel-maddow-show\/maddowblog\/china-expresses-delight-many-trumps-radical-moves-rcna196921\" target=\"_blank\"> Xi Jinping<\/a>don&rsquo;t have access to this kind of information? This behavior runs counter to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ap.org\/news-highlights\/elections\/2024\/trump-campaigns-to-make-america-safe-again-as-democratic-convention-zeroes-in-on-his-felony-record\/\" target=\"_blank\">Trump&rsquo;s pledge <\/a>to &ldquo;make America safe again.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, these are the officials tasked with guarding our nation&rsquo;s most sensitive information. So, if this is how members of the Trump administration treat our country&rsquo;s secrets, how confident can we be that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/opinion\/msnbc-opinion\/elon-musk-doge-privacy-data-breach-rcna191605\" target=\"_blank\">sensitive data from other agencies<\/a> &mdash; such as Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service or Social Security &mdash; won&rsquo;t also be compromised? This likely isn&rsquo;t an isolated problem.&nbsp;The president has stuffed his administration full of loyalists and toadies, as opposed to people who are experienced and competent.<\/p>\n<p>That leaves the final question: Will Trump take decisive action? This entire story is inconceivable and unprecedented, and heads should roll. But will they? This situation is a huge embarrassment and vulnerability for Trump.<\/p>\n<p>If the president is looking for a scapegoat here, we know he has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/rachel-maddow-show\/maddowblog\/trump-goes-many-republicans-targeting-free-press-rcna181706\" target=\"_blank\">showed no hesitancy in going after journalists<\/a>and there&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Acyn\/status\/1849888125495148684\" target=\"_blank\">no love lost between Trump and The Atlantic<\/a>. Given his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/weekends-with-alex-witt\/watch\/is-trump-beginning-his-retribution-campaign-new-york-times-reporter-weighs-in-230275141555\" target=\"_blank\">pattern of retribution<\/a>given the revenge tour that he&rsquo;s on right now, it&rsquo;s easy to imagine his next steps. He&rsquo;s likely going to make this about the media as opposed to the incompetence, the recklessness and the carelessness of his own team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Allison Detzel<\/p>\n<p>contributed<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/top-stories\/latest\/atlantic-national-security-secrets-secure-trump-rcna197980\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an adapted excerpt from the March 24 episode of &ldquo;Deadline: White House.&rdquo; The fallout continues following a report from The Atlantic&rsquo;s Jeffrey Goldberg that top officials in Donald Trump&rsquo;s administration mistakenly added him to a group chat on a private messaging app in which plans for military strikes in Yemen were discussed. It&rsquo;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}