With all the panic over Signal-Gate I thought I’d indulge my contrariness and point out the positive. Not that it is very positive to any of the MAGATS involved or trying to deal with the whole problem. What is positive is that it the the most blatant and easily understood of the total ineptitude of Pres. Trump’s Appointees.
For the past few weeks we have been able to follow all of the “ham-handed” actions of the administration in its dealings with all of the court challenges. Unfortunately this has involved a great deal of legal niceties and hard to follow law. Even for a someone like myself who follows SCOTUS. I even had to look up just what was the “State Secrets Privilege” and how and where it applies. An even then I’m not sure about it.
The thing with Signal-Gate is we have a very clear case of FUBAR done by some of the highest officials in the government. An instead of cutting thier losses like any smart politician would do they have doubled down and committed an even greater error. They have committed an “hypocritical act” that is easily identified in an area that has traditionally been a GOP stronghold point. I am speaking of National Security.
We all should remember just how loudly the GOP screamed about “Hillary’s EMails” and how it was an absolute betrayal of “National Security”. I’m not going to go into the right or wrong of it, only that it was about using a none secure system for communication that was possibly sedative, just like now. The only significant difference is that the people using the Signal app were sloppy.
While we all have to deal with ‘sloppiness’ in are daily life there are some jobs where sloppiness is a great big No No. Just as an example, dealing with decontamination of a a hospital room in the “Contagious Diseases Ward” of a hospital. As someone who has held several different security clearances in my life, being sloppy about procedures, even for the lowest, can get you in a lot of trouble and the higher the clearance the worse the trouble gets.
As for a group of some of the highest level officials in the government, any of there conversations can and often are considered “sensitive” as even the slightest thing can sometimes be used by people who want to do harm to the USA. Just look at all the simple innocent things used in all of are Spy Stories”. In any case so fall all of the people involved in the Signal Chain have tried to either not say any thing or have tried to make very weak excuses. My favorite is By the Sec of Defense trying to use a very narrow definition of “War Plans” and I’m sure he is right as what was being discussed was “Operational Plans”. I have not yet bothered to look up what the deference is but I’m sure he was right. The problem facing them is that Joe Public will not understand just as he didn’t understand the fine details of “Hillary’s Emails”.
What the Democrats need to bear down on is both the total ineptitude of the error that let a reporter into the chain, and the total hypocrisy of the defiance to date. I think the best way to start doing this is to 1)key asking how is this different from “Hillary’s Emails”? 2) If nothing classified was discussed let’s see the chain. 3) How is letting a reporter into the chain “Competent”? An finally ask given all the shown incompetence what has happened to the Republican Party?
Inclosing I just want to say “Don’t expect anything to happen fast. MAGAT is very very experienced in both the “slow down” and deflection.