Hot Mess Hegseth Reeling From Latest Blunder, More Heads To Roll

The people in the Trump mis-administration are unteachable. That is an unfortunate verity that we live with. Plus, Trump doesn’t want to discharge anybody, no matter how deserving of discharge they are, because he sees that as a “win” for woke and liberal forces. That’s nonsense. If it’s necessary to batten down the security hatches in the administration, then by firing Pete Hegseth, who has violated protocol grotesquely on two separate occasions (that we know about — there may be others) Trump would gain some respect. But that’s not how he sees it and so like a broken record, here we go with SignalGate II, which included wifey, brother, and lawyer.

The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Mr. Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.

Unlike the chat in which The Atlantic was mistakenly included, the newly revealed one was created by Mr. Hegseth. It included his wife and about a dozen other people from his personal and professional inner circle in January, before his confirmation as defense secretary, and was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” the people familiar with the chat said. He used his private phone, rather than his government one, to access the Signal chat.

The continued inclusion following Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation of his wife, brother and personal lawyer, none of whom had any apparent reason to be briefed on operational details of a military operation as it was getting underway, is sure to raise further questions about his adherence to security protocols.

The chat revealed by The Atlantic in March was created by President Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, so that the most senior national security officials across the executive branch, such as the vice president, the director of national intelligence and Mr. Hegseth, could coordinate among themselves and their deputies ahead of the U.S. attacks.

Mr. Waltz took responsibility for inadvertently adding Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, to the chat. He called it “Houthi PC small group” to reflect the presence of members of the administration’s “principals committee,” who come together to discuss the most sensitive and important national security issues. […]

After The Atlantic disclosed that Mr. Hegseth had used Mr. Waltz’s Signal group to communicate details of the strikes as they were being launched, the Trump administration said he had not shared “war plans” or any classified information, an assertion that was viewed with tremendous skepticism by national security experts.

In the case of Mr. Hegseth’s Signal group, a U.S. official declined to comment on whether Mr. Hegseth shared detailed targeting information but maintained that there was no national security breach.

And once again, it’s deja vu. Sean Parnell, Hegseth spox, will not go on record with a comment about this, anymore than he did the first time.

The chat also included two senior advisers to Mr. Hegseth — Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick — who were accused of leaking unauthorized information last week and were fired.

Mr. Caldwell and Mr. Selnick were among three former top Pentagon officials who proclaimed their innocence in a public statement on Saturday in response to the leak inquiry that led to their dismissals.

On Sunday, another former Defense Department official, John Ullyot, who left the department last week, said in an opinion essay for Politico that the Pentagon “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” and suggested that Mr. Trump should remove him.

“Disarray” is a kind descriptor. Shambles is a more accurate one. Jennifer Hegseth is once again in the spotlight for exactly the same thing. She does not have a security clearance yet Pete Hegseth “brought her into two meetings with foreign military counterparts in February and early March where sensitive information was discussed, a development first reported by The Wall Street Journal.” Additionally, Tim Parlatore, used to be a lawyer for Donald Trump and he’s been Hegseth’s personal lawyer for the last eight years. Parlatore was commissioned as a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps about a week before the Yemen strikes were initiated.

The New York Times reports, “Many of those in Mr. Hegseth’s inner circle during his first months in the Pentagon were combat veterans with deep experience in the military but little firsthand knowledge of how the government operates at the highest levels.” This is supposed to be acceptable in this day and age.

Plus, three of Hegseth’s inner circle were fired and escorted out of the Pentagon last week and there will probably be more firings or resignations to come.

Among those considering leaving are Mr. Kasper, Mr. Hegseth’s chief of staff, who helped lead the leak investigation that resulted in his colleagues’ dismissal but has not been implicated in wrongdoing, according to senior defense officials.

We haven’t lost any pilots yet. That’s the next logical development if this out of control way of conducting Department Of Defense affairs keeps happening. And maybe that’s what it will take. If there’s one thing we have learned from Trump world over the years, no lesson can be grasped early on when the stakes are relatively low. It takes a ricocheting stock market, catastrophic sell offs in the treasury bond market, the abandonment of key allies in the world, all manner of chaos and impending disaster before Trump and coterie can finally begin to get a grip on what they have wrought.

Expect this week to be as nutty as the past twelve.

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