Hypocrisy of Merit

 So a few words on the scandal de jour in the Trump administration, the so called "Signalgate".  

Long story made short, a group of high level Trump stooges were making war plans on a public use app called Signal and we know this because someone invited a journalist to the discussion. 

Emojis posted after the strikes on Yemen were completed.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, was witness to a discussion that one would assumes should've been confidential on planning for military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. 

In the days that followed, the response has been largely predictable: lies, deflection and blatant hypocrisy.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth immediately said Goldberg was making all this up. 

Despite someone in the White House confirming yep, that chat took place all right.

Goldberg has copies of the texts.

Then Hegseth attacked Goldberg's character as a liar and perpertrator of hoaxes against Donald Trump and that there was no discussion of any "war plans". 

Goldberg releases the entire text chain including Hegseth providing very detailed accounts of which military forces would be used, what missles would be fire and what boats and planes trhey would be fired from and the exact timetable all this shit would go down....  you know, war plans, motherfucker! 

Accusations are made challenging the veracity and viability of The Atlantic. Trump said the usual "it's a failing magazine no one reads anymore" blah blah blah. (For Christ's sake, Donnie, come up with some new material, why don't ya?) 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson dismissed the whole with "all I see here are high level officials doing their jobs".  Avoiding the point that we shouldn't be "seeing" officials sharing confidenrtial and possibly even classified information on a public texting platform.   

Jesse Watters at Fox News said it was nothing more than a "whoopsie".  Watters offered up, "Do you know how you try to set up a text group to make plans for a party and someone accidentally includes someone who didn't want to invite to the party? It was a mistake. Sometimes those happen."

Well, that's true. In this case, the mistake to include Jeffrey Goldberg in the text chat was made by national security adviser Mike Waltz.   

But once THAT mistake was made, it's everything else that follows that is cause for major concern. 

Why were these high level officials with access to sophisticated tools used by the Pentagon using Signal in the first place? 

And it's Pete Hegseth's extraoridinary level of detail on giving information on the attack on Houthi targets in Yemen on that platform is most egregious.  

By the way, one of the participants in the chat was in Russia at the time. I suppose Putin would've had an interest in this conversation. 

While Republicans, MAGA loyalists and the Fox "News" echo chamber go out of their way to  gaslight and spin this debacle, let's not think for a single goddam second that if ANYTHING like this had happened under Biden or Obama, these same people would be blood red with apolectic rage demanding heads to roll and charges filed. 

The current Trump regime has been browbeating everyone with it's roll back of DEI and putting people in place based on "merit".

Merit is not on display with the poor decisions reflected in that chet or the responses to it since then.

Just hypocrisy.