Petey Leaks

The first mistake was giving classified information to Pete Hegseth

If only someone could have foreseen that being a host on Fox & Friends doesn’t make one qualified to be the Secretary of Defense.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was sitting in his car in a Safeway parking lot when he received a message about an upcoming military strike in Yemen. The message was part of a group chat in Signal, a messaging app, sent from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic, “I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.”

The world found out on March 15 at 2 p.m. Eastern time that the United States had bombed Houthi targets in Yemen, but Goldberg knew at 11:44 a.m. The message included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

Note that Goldberg didn’t expose this intel fiasco until yesterday, ten days after the strike. My question is: Did any of the group chat participants notice Goldberg was in the chat before yesterday?

After the National Security Council confirmed the legitimacy of the chat, Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard claimed there was no classified information in the chat. The White House also claimed no classified information or war plans were shared. Then, Pete Hegseth made the same claim, saying, “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”

Except, that wasn’t all he had to say about “that,” as he also said Goldberg is “a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.” Keep in mind that this guy who used to work for Fox News now works for Donald Trump, the king of discredited lies and conspiracy theories.

While interviewing Goldberg on CNN Monday night, Caitlin Collins said to Goldberg, “I want to start by getting your reaction to what we heard from Secretary Hegseth there, saying that ‘Nobody was texting war plans.’ Given you were privy to this group chat, is that how you saw it?”

Goldberg replied, “No, that’s a lie. He was texting war plans. He was texting attack plans. When targets were going to be targeted; how they were going to be targeted; who was at the targets; when the next sequence of attacks was happening.”

The only way the Trump administration can cover their ass on this is to lie.

In a quickly-called Senate hearing this morning, Gabbard refused to even admit she was part of the chat, saying she didn’t want to get into “specifics.” Senator Mark Warner asked, “Why aren’t you gonna get into the specifics? Is this—is it because it’s all classified?

Gabbard said she couldn’t get into specifics about the chat she claimed didn’t contain classified intel, and said she couldn’t “because this is currently under review by the National Security Council.”

That prompted Warner to ask, “Because it’s all classified? If it’s not classified, share the texts now.”

Gabbard, Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe lacked the basic due diligence to check the group chat participants before spouting off about war plans. These people chosen by Trump are amateurs when it comes to their jobs and securing classified intelligence.

If only someone had pointed to these people's lack of qualifications for their jobs. Oh, wait. We did.

Other members of the chat were National Security Advisor Mike Walz Veep JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, National Counterterrorism Center Director Nominee Joe Kent, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller, and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff. Not one of these idiots noticed Goldberg’s name in the chat and asked, “Who’s that guy?”

Gabbard said there was a difference between the “inadvertent release” and “malicious leaks” of classified information before restating that there was no classified material in the chat, trying to have it both ways.

Unless the administration came out before the strike and said, “We’re going to start dropping bombs on Houthi rebels in Yemen at 2 p.m. on March 15, the information in the chat was classified.

This leak wasn’t malicious or inadvertent. It was inept. You would think if all the participants of this classified chat were competent, at least one of them would have spotted that one of the participants was a journalist, a journalist who did a better job of retaining the classified information better than the Secretary of Defense, Director of National Security, the FBI Director and the CIA Director.

Warner said Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Walz didn’t “conduct hygiene 101” in making sure the classified chat was secure.

Warner said, “If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired” and “This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that this is not a one-off or a first-time error.”

If you don’t remember this happening in the Biden administration, it’s because it never did. Biden hired competent and qualified people, not the Gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

Later, he called for the resignations of Hegseth and Walz, but I think everyone in that chat should resign, including the vice president (sic). Didn’t they all want Hillary Clinton “locked up” for risking the exposure of classified information?

The Trump administration talks a lot of shit about our national security, as though they take it seriously. If they really took it seriously, they wouldn’t hire jackasses like Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Walz, Kash Patel, and John Ratcliffe. Hell, if Republicans took our nation seriously, they wouldn’t have nominated that racist idiot Donald Trump.

Mark Warner said, “When the stakes are this high, incompetence is not an option.”

Creative note: I had something else planned for today, but this story threw that out the window last night. I had more than one reader message me, “Can’t wait to see your Hegseth cartoon.” Fortunately, those messages weren’t classified.

Music note: I listened to everything on this cafe’s sound system. Unfortunately, it included a lot of John Mayer. I hate John Mayer.

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