VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Key questions about the Signal psychodrama

As we learn the full melodrama of the so-called Signal “scandal” of inviting left-wing, Trump-despising, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg onto a supposedly secure conference list involving top Trump security officials, lots of questions need asking and answering.

Most importantly, who had Goldberg’s private number and inserted it, ostensibly by mistake, into the cleared list of participants in the discussions? Why would any top Trump officials or their staffers ever even have Goldberg’s contact information, given his quite public record of: a) fabricating stories with unnamed sources, and b) suffering from a decade of chronic Trump derangement syndrome?

ELON MUSK TAPPED TO HELP LEAD INVESTIGATION INTO SIGNAL CHAT LEAK

Questions for Goldberg: Did he know the mechanisms that had prompted and continued his stealthy presence in the secure discussions? Why did citizen Goldberg not simply come clean as soon as he realized he was mistakenly included in key national security conference communications, to which he did not belong, and thus should be obviously excluded immediately? Why did he instead stealthily listen in for nearly two weeks? Was the idea of informing his hosts of his own improper presence too morally old-fashioned?

Questions for posterity: Did Goldberg’s publicizing these discreet discussions really affect the otherwise completely successful mission to neutralize years of appeased Houthis’ aggression and begin to end their veritable destruction of Red Sea international maritime commerce? How did this blunder rank with prior diplomatic and military screw-ups, like Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s January 1950 Press Club speech de facto excluding South Korea from the American defense umbrella—an omission that may have contributed to the June 1950 North Korean invasion of the South? Was it comparable to Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie’s assurance to Saddam Hussein that, “We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait”— which may have prompted his 1990 invasion of Kuwait?

Was it comparable to President Obama’s March 2012 “hot mic” assurance to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “flexibility” on American-Eastern European missile defense after his last election? Both kept their promises: Obama foolishly dismantled American-sponsored Eastern European plans for missile defense, and Russia postponed its pre-planned invasion of Ukraine until 2014. 

Did it rank with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley secretly contacting his Chinese communist counterpart, Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng, to tell him he would give the People’s Liberation Army leader a heads-up if he determined President Donald Trump was likely to trigger an existential war?

And just look who is weighing in. There was Hillary Clinton, despite her illegal use of a private server to transmit classified State Department information and her subsequent destruction of subpoenaed communication devices.

There was serial fabulist Susan Rice, who in 2012 flat-out lied to the nation on five Sunday news shows, claiming preposterously that the terrorist attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi were “spontaneous” demonstrations incited by anger over an anti-Muslim video. Ditto Rice’s fallacious Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl “honor” narrative and her lie about the removal of Syrian weapons of mass destruction.

And why would Leon Panetta weigh in, when he was one of the supposed 51 intelligence authorities in 2020 who ridiculously claimed Hunter Biden’s FBI-authenticated laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence disinformation effort? That lie was designed to arm Joe Biden before the last 2020 debate, and it may well have affected the election.

In the end, this was a blunder, but also what the Left likes to call a “teachable moment. All future similar conferences should be either held in person or participants must be triple-checked on a secure line. And perhaps most importantly, all Trump high appointees and their staffers should know enough to have nothing to do with those who wake up each morning wishing to destroy them—and go to bed each night lamenting that they have not done enough to advance that destruction.

This column was adapted from Victor Davis Hanson’s post on X.