Article in Media Matters by Matt Gertz, 3/27/25
Headline: “Fox defense for negligent texting of war plans: Top Trump national security officials are incompetent”
“Fox News personalities’ new argument in support of their former colleagues who discussed pending military strikes on an unsecured text chain is that those former colleagues — now America’s top military, national security, and intelligence officials — are easy to deceive. . .”
“But on Tuesday, they came up with a new excuse — one which amounts to arguing that the nation’s top national security officials are morons.
“When Fox host Laura Ingraham asked Waltz to explain Goldberg’s presence on the Signal chat, Waltz dissembled.
“ ‘I’m not a conspiracy theorist,’ Waltz began, before offering a conspiracy theory in which ‘somehow’ Goldberg ‘gets on somebody’s contact and then gets sucked into the group.’
The national security adviser added that Goldberg may have somehow ‘deliberately’ ensured that his contact information was attached to a Trump official’s contact name, adding that the administration has ‘the best technical minds’ trying to ascertain how such a thing happened. . .”
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Article in Daily Kos by Oliver Willis, 3/26/25
Headline: “Media downplays Trump team’s massive leak fiasco as mere ‘blunder'”
“Many mainstream media outlets are minimizing or trivializing the Trump administration’s leak of highly sensitive war plans, and in doing so, they are echoing President Donald Trump’s spin on the scandal.
“After The Atlantic reported on Monday that top Trump officials had mistakenly included the outlet’s top editor in an unsecured group chat, Trump told reporters that the breach was merely a ‘glitch.’ And Trump’s allies struck the same tone in appearances in right-wing media.
On Tuesday, USA Today described the incident as a ‘relatable fail.’ In the story, reporters Jessica Guynn and Bailey Schulz likened the leak of war plans to ill-timed responses in family group texts.