Democrats were aghast Monday after learning that top officials in the Trump administration are using a third-party messaging app to coordinate highly sensitive war plans ― and that they accidentally added a reporter to the group chat.
“Only one word for this: FUBAR,” said Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), a West Point graduate and combat veteran. The term is military slang for “fucked up beyond all recognition.”
Ryan called on House Republicans to “IMMEDIATELY” hold a hearing to figure out how this happened, pledging to do it himself if they don’t.
Sen. Ruben Gallago (D-Ariz.) used slightly cleaner language to describe the massive mistake, but was no less troubled about its import.
“Amateur hour,” said the Marine Corps veteran. “These are the geniuses that are also selling out Ukraine and destroying our alliances all around the world. No wonder Putin is embarrassing them at the negotiation table.”
According to the Atlantic, 18 other senior Trump administration individuals were on the group chat to strategize a bombing campaign in Yemen. Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was on the receiving end of the texts.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Trump’s right-hand man Stephen Miller all actively participated in the conversation, which included a boast from Hegseth about the group being “clean on OPSEC.”
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) called out Gabbard specifically:
Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, went beyond simply expressing outrage and zeroed in on the group’s use of Signal, a self-deleting messaging app, as particularly worrying:
“The Republican majorities in both the House and Senate must immediately launch Congressional oversight investigations into this outrageous incident to understand if the inappropriate use of Signal is a widespread practice within the Trump Administration, whether the Espionage Act was violated, and how this security lapse impacts our relationships with intelligence-sharing partners around the globe,” she said in a statement.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) also called for a congressional hearing, calling the incompetence “so severe that it could have gotten Americans killed.”
“There is no world in which this information should have been shared in non-secure channels,” he added. “Hegseth is in so far over his head that he is a danger to this country and our men and women in uniform.”
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Senate Armed Services Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) was in similar disbelief. In a statement, he called it “one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”
