\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
With each new communication medium comes new opportunities for politicians to get themselves into trouble. Congress demanded that letters from envoys to the French government be turned over in the XYZ Affair, thwarting President John Adams\u2019s desire to maintain a tenuous peace with France. The leak of the Zimmermann telegram helped push the U.S. into World War I\u2014the opposite of what its German author intended. And the tapes that President Richard Nixon used to record conversations in the Oval Office helped drive him out of it.<\/p>\n
We live in what my colleague Faith Hill has pronounced the Age of the Group Chat, and so naturally enough, that\u2019s where this generation\u2019s politicos are stepping in it\u2014particularly those in the MAGAverse. Yesterday, Paul Ingrassia\u2014President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee to lead a whistleblower-protection office\u2014withdrew from consideration following Politico\u2019s disclosure of texts to a group in which he used a racial slur and wrote, \u201cI do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time.\u201d (Ingrassia\u2019s lawyer didn\u2019t outright deny the messages\u2019 authenticity, but suggested they could have been manipulated; he also said if they were real, they were \u201csatirical.\u201d)<\/p>\n
That came just days after another Politico article about messages in which Young Republican officials cracked wise about \u201cgas chambers\u201d and used the N-word. Meanwhile, Lindsey Halligan, an interim U.S. attorney overseeing politically motivated prosecutions, sent unsolicited texts to a Lawfare reporter in which she discussed grand-jury matters.<\/p>\n
As astonishing as these all are, none of them rises to the level of the Signal chat that top Trump-administration officials used to discuss a bombing of Yemen\u2014casually sharing highly sensitive information, and inadvertently including The Atlantic\u2019s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Reporting since then indicates that this was not the only instance of Defense officials using Signal\u2014which, though encrypted, is not a totally secure platform\u2014to discuss sensitive information; it\u2019s just the only one that included a journalist.<\/p>\n
The basic problem here is a foolishness about what one puts in writing. These leaks show hubris about the reliability of communications systems: In the fateful chat on Signal, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote, \u201cWe are currently clean on OPSEC.\u201d They were not, and that is, as experts told The Atlantic, a serious security risk for the country.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re texting about your admiration for Hitler, the danger is less about national security and more about job security. There\u2019s no good place to call yourself a Nazi, but there are less risky ones. If you\u2019re doing it in person with your edgelord friends, at least you\u2019re not leaving a paper trail. Doing it where someone can easily screenshot your messages and send them to a reporter (two members of the Young Republican chat blamed internal rivalries for the leak) is much dumber. During the first Trump administration, my colleague Adam Serwer wrote about the Stringer Bell rule\u2014don\u2019t take notes on a criminal conspiracy\u2014and these ill-advised chats are a cousin: not illegal, but politically perilous.<\/p>\n
Lots of people in politics, like the rest of us, say or write stupid things, so what is it about the specific combination of MAGA folks and group chats that keeps resulting in fiascos? I think one problem is that group chats aren\u2019t just a neutral medium\u2014they\u2019re a style of conversation that fosters an eagerness to outdo one\u2019s friends. If what you and your friends are into is bigotry, as is evidently the case in these circles, you might try to say the most howlingly offensive thing.<\/p>\n
Also to blame in these cases are immaturity and incompetence. In another text-message-related flap last week, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt who it was that selected Budapest for a planned meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (The summit has since been called off.) \u201cYour mom did,\u201d Leavitt, 28, replied. This is a joke\u2014or it has the shape of a joke, even if it\u2019s not really funny\u2014but the way you communicate with your friends is not especially useful for running the government, which Trump\u2019s inexperienced staffers find themselves in the unlikely position of doing.<\/p>\n
Ingrassia is 30 years old\u2014old enough to know right from wrong, but not seasoned enough to lead the Office of Special Counsel. Many of the people involved in the Signalgate chat are also far less qualified for their roles than typical holders (though Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who inadvertently added Goldberg, was one of the more traditionally qualified of the group). Halligan had never prosecuted a case when she was named to lead a very important U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office. Officials who are less experienced are more prone to sloppy mistakes.<\/p>\n
Then again, how great are the risks? The Young Republicans chat led to a state senator\u2019s resignation and the end of two state chapters of the organization, but such accountability is the exception. Ingrassia was forced to withdraw, but his nomination was already in trouble, and as of now, he continues to hold a job at the White House as liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. (Having a \u201cNazi streak\u201d is not a deal-breaker in this administration. The texts Politico reported are only barely more outrageous than what was already public, including Ingrassia\u2019s connections to the unabashed racist Nick Fuentes.) Or consider Waltz, who took \u201cfull responsibility\u201d for the Signal fiasco. He was ousted as national security adviser, though apparently not over the breach, but rather because the president found him too hawkish. He was then nominated as ambassador to the United Nations and, amazingly, confirmed by the Senate.<\/p>\n
Republican figures are texting as though they have impunity because by many measures, they do. Perversely, these stories may simply reinforce for some of them that everyone is texting the same things they are, and that they won\u2019t face major consequences for doing so. If they get caught, they don\u2019t need to apologize or change careers. They can just tap out a simple \u201clol, oops\u201d and then return to what they were doing.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/p>\n Today\u2019s News<\/strong><\/p>\n Dispatches<\/strong><\/p>\n Explore all of our newsletters here.<\/em><\/p>\n Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Illustration by Ben Kothe \/ The Atlantic. Source: Anna Moneymaker \/ Getty.<\/p>\n Holy Warrior<\/p>\n By Missy Ryan<\/p>\n Doug Wilson has a white beard and a round belly, and is therefore somewhat Santa-like in appearance. He does not seem at all like someone who delivers denunciations of homosexuality and women\u2019s suffrage, and who takes an ambivalent position on the subject of pre\u2013Civil War slavery.<\/p>\n On a recent Sunday morning, Wilson preached from the lectern at a conference center near Washington, D.C. The Idaho pastor\u2019s sermon was mostly an academic examination of Ephesians 3:1\u20136 and its offering of God\u2019s salvation. In this setting, at least, he skipped the hellfire rhetoric for which he\u2019s known, making no reference to his theocratic vision of America\u2019s future or his belief that the apocalypse described in the Book of Revelation already took place\u2014and is enabling a project of global Christian conquest. Throughout the service, I couldn\u2019t help glancing from my spot in the back at a familiar figure seated with his family near the front, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Jamil GS<\/p>\n Remember. D\u2019Angelo\u2019s work was steeped in Black tradition, and never lost sight of the future, Vann R. Newkirk II writes.<\/p>\n Watch. After the Hunt (out now in theaters) seems to reckon with cancel culture, before revealing where its true interest lies, Shirley Li writes.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. With each new communication medium comes new opportunities for politicians to get themselves into trouble. Congress demanded that letters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1671,17620,8744],"class_list":{"0":"post-29884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-atlantic","9":"tag-groupchat","10":"tag-presidency"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n