U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) points to text messages by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during an annual worldwide threats assessment hearing at the Longworth House Office Building on March 26, in Washington.Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Now the whole world knows that weather was favourable for the American air strike against the Houthis in Yemen, that it was carried out by supersonic F-18 combat jets, that MQ-9 Predator drones were employed in the action, that the target building collapsed, that the Americans knew that “their top missile guy” had a girlfriend, and that the editor-in-chief of one of the news outlets the Trump administration reviles the most was in on the entire thing.
The presence of Jeffrey Goldberg on the open Signal commercial communications platform is one of the great mysteries of an administration that – with trade warfare against its closest ally and an all-out assault on the Social Security administration, which runs the popular domestic entitlement program – is full of mysteries. But even this was a surprise.
Here are some of the principal take-aways from an episode that has taken the breath away from both insiders and outsiders in Donald Trump’s Washington.
Why was Mr. Goldberg invited into a military management meeting that presumably was top secret?
When German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg was asked why and how the First World War began the way it did, he gave the answer that applies here: “Ah, if only one knew.”
If only one knew why a journalist who has been a Trump irritant for years – it was Mr. Goldberg who quoted Mr. Trump as saying that the war dead were “suckers” – was included in this communication. The person who initiated the parley was national-security adviser Michael Waltz, and he said he didn’t know either. Unless he was an information leaker to the Atlantic editor – there’s no evidence of that, at least as yet – he presumably wouldn’t have had Mr. Goldberg’s contacts.
Has anything like this happened before?
Not exactly. Or remotely. But there have been examples of military details falling into unlikely hands. The British knew in advance that George Washington would mount his dramatic crossing of the Delaware on Christmas Night, 1776. A Union corporal, apparently resting in a field before the pivotal Battle of Antietam in 1862, discovered a piece of paper wrapping three cigars. He sent them up the command chain to General George McClellan, who as a result had the Confederate battle plan in hand. “Now I know what to do!” Gen. McClellan said, and then added, in a reference to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, “Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home.”
What are the implications here?
None, in terms of the operation itself. It proceeded as planned, and as Vice-President JD Vance hoped (“I will say a prayer for victory,” he typed). This information was revealed only after the engagement was concluded. In fact, Mr. Goldberg didn’t share the battle plans and the course of the episode until administration officials said that the communications link was no big deal and didn’t include any information of value. Mr. Goldberg then released more information to counter the officials’ claims. But over all, it invites comparisons with the comment sometimes attributed to the French diplomat Talleyrand in reaction to Napoleon’s 1804 order for the murder of the Duke of Enghien: “It is worse than a crime; it is a blunder.”
Apart from the operations specifics, what else did we learn?
One conclusion is not really a new discovery: The Trump team is made up largely out of sycophants determined to please the President. But we did learn that the Vice-President, ordinarily considered chief sycophant, had independent ideas about the operation and that he was willing to express them openly, though in the end he acceded to the consensus of the group.
He’s not the first vice-president with separate ideas. Hubert Humphrey differed with Lyndon B. Johnson on the conduct of the Vietnam War, especially as the 1968 campaign, in which the Minnesotan was the Democratic nominee, reached its climax. As vice-president, Joe Biden had qualms about the raid that Barack Obama approved to kill Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. And of course, then-vice-president Mike Pence refused Mr. Trump’s order to overturn the 2020 election.
What should America’s allies think?
They very likely think the Trump administration is sloppy at best, incompetent at worst. But they should be assured this particular slip-up is not going to happen again. Even so, European leaders will not soon forget Mr. Vance’s description of European countries as “pathetic.” The good news for Canada is that it wasn’t mentioned.
What are the implications down the line?
Political, political, political. The Trump administration, and the President himself, has dismissed the entire episode as no big deal: no one was hurt, the operation wasn’t compromised, these things happen, Mr. Goldberg has “made up a lot of stories and I think he’s basically bad for the country.” He publicly praised Mr. Waltz as “a good man” – though, tellingly, it emerged Wednesday that the President was enraged and described the national-security adviser as, in the characterization of Politico’s source, “so stupid.”
Often in such cases, the figure at the centre of such a contretemps either is publicly shamed (the Ronald Reagan administration made it clear that budget director Dave Stockman had been taken “to the woodshed” after 1981 damaging revelations to The Atlantic); is forced out (the fate of a top health official after his 2020 suggestion that the first Trump administration had bungled its response to the coronavirus pandemic); or resigns (the Trump White House staff secretary accused in 2018 of abusing two former wives).
Two things are certain: The Trump team will rush to put this behind them. The Democrats, who rushed to describe the administration as imprudent and incompetent, will do their best to keep it in the public eye.
Editor’s note: (March 27, 2025): A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Talleyrand as a British diplomat. He was French.