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U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 13, 2025.
In wake of the Signal scandal: Denial, deflected blame, and Transatlantic tensions
Meanwhile, top national security officials testified under oath before Congress on Tuesday that “no classified material” or “war plans” were shared in the unsecured Signal group — despite Goldberg’s assertion that, if intercepted by an adversary, the messages could “conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel.”
Congressional Democrats are calling for an investigation, and even their GOP counterparts admonished the chat as a “mistake” and urged the White House to “be honest and own up” to what happened.
Meanwhile, Europe – having been accused of freeloading by JD Vance and Pete Hegseth in the chat – is reckoning with what has become an irreparable rift in the transatlantic relationship. The UK government rejected the freeloading claim, highlighting that the planned airstrikes discussed in the Signal group were carried out with support from British refueling aircraft and that British troops have been fighting the Houthis alongside the US in the Red Sea.
What comes next? Despite the leak, the UK has stated that it will continue sharing intelligence with the US, but Eurasia Group expert Clayton Allen says it could “further incentivize European allies to plan for a future with uncertain US involvement.”
Congressional Republicans are unlikely to break from Trump’s stance and take further action against the officials involved. Meanwhile, Democrats will continue calling for an investigation and may be aided by Goldberg, who has said he may release the messages in the coming days if he can do so without compromising national security.
Allen says it will also fuel “speculation that this administration is learning as it goes and will amplify what has been private criticism of a somewhat ad hoc approach.”
What Trump team's war plans leak revealed
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take on this extraordinary story in The Atlantic. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of this magazine, invited into a Signal chat, the Signal app, by the national security advisor, Michael Waltz, with all of the major national security related principles in the Trump administration, to discuss imminent attacks by the United States on the Houthis in Yemen, the single biggest war fighting that the Trump administration has been involved in the first two months of their term. A lot to think about here, a few points I think worth mentioning.
The first point, it's pretty clear this should not have happened. A discussion of this sort, classified, involving direct war preparation, should not have been happening on Signal, but clearly everyone in the conversation was aware and okay with that. So, I don't think you blame singularly Mike Waltz for the fact that he was the guy that happened to bring the outsider inadvertently in. This collective responsibility, everyone, this is the way the Trump administration is handling these sensitive national security conversations, that is what needs to be looked into and rectified going forward. Mike definitely made a mistake here, and what seems almost certainly to be the case is that he thought he was including the US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, JG, same initials as Jeffrey Goldberg - and The Atlantic editor-in-chief, and he's the only obvious person, Greer, that otherwise wasn't on this broader conversation. So, I would bet my bottom dollar that is the way this happened. And I think all the people that are calling for Mike Waltz to be fired, I certainly wouldn't let him go for that. The issue is the broader lack of operational security around war decisions and fighting.
Now, as to the actual content of the conversations, frankly, I found all of the people involved to be pretty reasonable, especially in the context of how generally unprepared President Trump himself is on matters of national security. So, the fact that Vice President JD Vance was worried about the inconsistency of going to war for something that he doesn't think is a clear and direct US interest, that the US economy would be limited in terms of the impact of it, and this isn't really an American issue in the way that Trump defines American issues and war, that strikes me as not disloyal, but indeed the reality that Vance is aware of the fact that Trump doesn't know a lot of these details. But he doesn't want to bring it to Trump individually. Why not? Because he's going to get his head handed to him if he brings bad news to Trump unless everybody is on board, and of course, everybody isn't on board. There's some reasonable discussion around that, including with the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and then finally Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff and head of policy in the White House, is the one that cuts it off because, why? He's the guy that is saying, "Trump says he wants it, we're going to do it." In other words, you've got to be completely loyal to Trump, that's it. And that's exactly what we've seen from this second administration, what Trump wants, Trump gets.
Now, another interesting point here is that the Europeans are not considered allies by this group across the board. Should be clear from anybody that has seen Vance in Munich, anyone that has seen the recent interview between the US Special Envoy Witkoff and Tucker Carlson, a number of other places where that's happened. But the point is that the entire Trump cabinet is basically saying, "We shouldn't be helping the Europeans, and if we have to help the Europeans, and Lord knows we shouldn't, we have to ensure that they directly pay for American help, American assistance." This is not collective security. This is completely transactional. Also, you got a lot of that about el-Sisi in Egypt, someone that Trump has been very supportive of, and indeed the US provides more support to Egypt than any other country militarily in the world except Israel. So the last few months you would've thought that Egypt would've been an exception there. From what we've seen from the cabinet, apparently not. Certainly a concern in terms of what Egypt is and is not willing to do on the ground in Gaza for Trump. That relationship seems pretty dicey.
Final point here, Jeffrey Goldberg deserves credit. I know that Elon in particular likes to say a lot that the public is now the media, but it turns out that well-trained journalists have standards and those standards are important. I have had my disagreements with what Goldberg has had to say. Some of his positions over the years, support for the Iraq War, for example, lots of other things, but in terms of his professionalism, as soon as he realized that he had been invited into something that was an authentic conversation about actual war plans and fighting, he got out and he told Waltz that he had been mistakenly invited. He made the public aware of what was going on without divulging any of the direct war plans or outing intelligence, active intelligence member that was part of it, all of those things, it was absolutely the right thing to do. He's now getting smeared by Hegseth, the secretary of defense, who was clearly embarrassed by his own mistake and his participation and culpability in all of this. He personally won't take responsibility as we so frequently see with our political leaders and never should have gotten confirmed, in my view and in the view of many Republican senators who weren't willing to go out publicly because of course they were fearful for their own careers. But Jeff Goldberg has done the right thing in terms of his career and I commend him for it.
That's it for me. I'll talk to y'all real soon.
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, is seen ahead of a meeting with Sen. Tommy Tuberville in Washington on Dec. 2, 2024.
Trump may swap Hegseth for DeSantis to helm DoD
Hegseth is facing multiple misconduct allegations, including financial mismanagement related to his work with veteran nonprofit groups, sexual assault, sexism, and alcohol abuse. Unsurprisingly, the former Fox News host faces increasingly long odds of being confirmed by the Senate, with as many as six Republican senators considering voting against him. Nonetheless, Hegseth says he’s not backing down.
Perhaps more surprisingly, Trump is reportedly considering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to replace Hegseth. Over the years, Trump and DeSantis have had a … fraught relationship, drifting back and forth as allies, competitors, and even enemies. Trump repeatedly lashed out against his rival – and DeSantis didn’t exactly hold back.
It appears, however, that despite past animosity, Trump has warmed to the idea of DeSantis replacing Hegseth. DeSantis will almost certainly face an easier confirmation process and spare the incoming Republican administration the embarrassment of a confirmation vote defeat in the Senate.
We’ll be watching whether Trump follows through. Meanwhile, the transition team is reportedly also considering Republican Sens. Joni Ernst and Bill Hagerty.
Trump’s Team of … Reprisals?
Trump team … Assemble!
Usually, obsession with team building is reserved for the world of sports, not politics. There are Hollywood movies about NFL draft day, and the trade deadlines in basketball, hockey, and baseball command all-day TV specials. But those seem trivial compared to the global obsession with Trump Team 2.0. Who is on it, and what does it mean for the next four years?
Cabinet-building has long been crucial for both the success of a presidency and for the direction of the United States. From the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump, the team often tells the tale of power.
After narrowly winning the election of 1860, Lincoln knew the United States was lurching toward civil war. He needed a united team to take on the emerging secessionist Confederacy, but he didn’t choose loyalists. Instead, he made a radical choice to bring in his chief opponents like William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Edward Bates. In her bestselling book, Doris Kearns Goodwin called this a “Team of Rivals.”
Initially, it looked like a rookie mistake. Seward tried to sabotage Lincoln, leaking false announcements about a surrender of Fort Sumter, the place where, soon after, the first shots of the Civil War were fired.
But Lincoln asserted his leadership without alienating his team, and Seward soon became one of his closest confidants. Co-opting and including his chief opponents is roundly hailed as one of Lincoln’s finest strategies.
If Lincoln put together a team of rivals, Trump has assembled a team of reprisals. This is a group of ardent MAGA loyalists, not rivals — as Ian Bremmer pointed out in our GZERO video. Their job is to radically transform every part of government, from trade policy to foreign policy. There are three goals: reformation, reduction, and reprisal. And that last point is critical. The foundational promise Trump made to voters was to smash “the enemies within.” And that is exactly what this team is built to do.
Here is a starter menu:
- The Deep State: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been appointed to actively find “efficiencies” and dismantle large swaths of the government. “You’re fired” will be the watchwords.
- The Military: Pete Hegseth, the veteran and Fox News commentator, is headed for the secretary of defense job, where he has long said he would fire all generals who support programs like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
- The Border: Tom Homan, the nominated “border czar,” has warned all illegal aliens to get ready for mass deportation, while South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem will be Trump’s Homeland Security chief working alongside Homan.
- The Department of Education: Trump has promised to close this down completely to stop the so-called “woke agenda.”
- The Environmental Protection Agency: Expect former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to gut EPA regulations. He has already signaled his priorities, with a social media post saying he will “restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.” The EPA might have to change its initials to the DBD, for Drill, Baby, Drill. Still, there are some signs of resistance here. Even the CEO of ExxonMobil pushed back, saying, “I don’t think the challenge or the need to address global emissions is going to go away.”
- Trade: China hawk Sen. Marco Rubio will be the secretary of state, likely overseeing a world of high tariffs that will trigger trade wars alongside the existing wars already raging.
- The Legal System: Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general is taking the most incoming. Gaetz believes he and Trump are victims of Democratic “lawfare,” and he’s ready to hit back. “The hammer of Justice is coming,” declared Elon Musk on X, lest anyone think there will be no reprisals.
To Trump supporters — and that means the majority of voters — this is exactly what they wanted. Expect them to follow through on everything you heard on the campaign trail. As folks used to say, take Trump and his team both seriously and literally.
The president-elect has long claimed he is the victim of multiple attacks from the establishment because he promised to “drain the swamp” and, unlike in 2016, he’s wasting no time assembling a team to fight back. Of the many things to expect from Donald Trump, reprisals are at the top of the list.
How to cover the Trump team fairly?
Covering this transition in a meaningful, insightful way requires genuine balance and adherence to fairness. In the current climate of hyper-polarization, anything but praise for the president-elect can be cast as “woke” bias from the “lamestream” media. On the other hand, anything positive about Trump is often cast as supplicant cozying up to a kleptocracy.
Neither is helpful.
The key is not to focus on the fertilized fears on social media but on the real actions of the Trump team. What will they actually do? Who is benefiting from the radical change?
What will be the impact of their policies on the economy, rights, security, climate, and social coherence?
Each question will have a specific answer, and tracking them with facts and credibility will be key over the next four years. In an environment where distrust and disinformation are weaponized, straight talk and nonpartisan insight will become more valuable than ever.
This is just the beginning of the second Trump era, and it will be significantly more transformative than the first. Trump’s Team of Reprisals is ready to do exactly what they promised on the campaign trail, best summed up in three words: fight, fight fight.