The Trump administration accidentally added a journalist to a not-so-secret Signal group chat to discuss imminent military plans. As sports business analyst and former ESPN correspondent Darren Rovell posted on X (then Twitter) during the 2016 presidential election, "I feel bad for our country. But this is tremendous content."
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The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to a Signal group chat with several apparent U.S. government officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and more. Goldberg wasn't sure it was a legitimate group chat because not only would it be highly unusual for U.S. government officials to use Signal, but it would also be pretty stupid to include a journalist in that chat.
But, alas, the chat is real, which Goldberg discovered after the chat decided on U.S. airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, and then the airstrikes took place. After the airstrike, the chat was filled with seemingly celebratory emoji, which, as the internet has pointed out, feels weird.
The general lack of care put into orders that have a direct impact on people's lives is not inherently laughable. It's horrifying. The chat named active CIA agents, and if their identities were revealed, it could put their lives and their missions in danger. This particular strike killed 53 people, according to the Houthis, and the leak of these plans could have had disastrous effects on U.S. agents in the region and beyond.
Yet, in response to what former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg called "the highest level of fuckup imaginable," online posters rolled up their sleeves and got to work. They made a callback to the JD Vance big head memes. They brought up Partiful. They created copypasta messages. They tied it in with the current obsession with morning routines. Because on the internet, nothing is sacred — especially not a text from the U.S. National Security Advisor after a deadly airstrike that reads: "👊🇺🇸🔥"
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