THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR AND SIGNALGATEMarch 28, 2025

What happens when an American President reviles competence?

One week ago, Donald Trump called out Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman for reporting that Elon Musk would receive a Pentagon briefing on potential war with China. 

Trump went schoolyard bully. He called Haberman, Maggot. He said she should give him her Pulitzer Prize. And: “The Fake News is the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE…And Elon is NOT BEING BRIEFED ON ANYTHING CHINA BY THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR!!!” Two U.S. officials confirmed the nature of the meeting. A different meeting was held.

The Department of War?

The Department of War was established in 1789. The Department of Defense replaced it in 1947. The reference displayed ignorance or confusion. These go well with the administration’s incompetence.

Take Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense. An Army Reserve major and Fox talk-show host, he hardly qualified for the post except for blind loyalty to Trump. In February, Hegseth publicly told NATO officials that membership for Ukraine was unrealistic, and Ukraine could not expect to win back all its captured territory from Russia. 

Shortly after, Trump announced that he and Russian president Vladimir Putin would soon begin negotiations. Putin knew that the U.S. would not support Ukraine. He would hold the upper hand.

Incompetence again came to the fore when Hegseth and other high-ranking officials chatted about an imminent attack on Yemen’s Houthis. They used Signal, a commercial messaging app offering encryption but not endorsed by DoD.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz mistakenly invited Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, to the chat. Goldberg saw privileged information hours before the successful attack. He kept quiet. Had such information gotten out, Houthi intelligence would have had time to instruct its leaders to change their locations and fire on Amerian planes and drones.

Shunning responsibility, Hegseth called Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes.” Then the Signal texts were published on theatlantic.com and in the Times. 

Trump termed Goldberg a “sleazebag” and the Atlantic “a failed magazine.” I’ve long read the Atlantic and Goldberg. They represent journalism’s finest.

Congress summoned several chat participants. They stonewalled: The information was “sensitive,” not classified. Other officials denied that the Houthis could have used the information. Yet the chat included such details as the launch times of F/A-18 aircraft and MQ-9 strike drones. 

Should Trump fire Hegseth and/or National Security Advisor Mike Waltz? These people shouldn’t be where they are in the first place. Senate Republicans lacked the courage to hold their feet to the fire during confirmation hearings. America require a big competence upgrade.

Perhaps the biggest display of incompetence? Trump said he hadn’t heard anything about Goldberg being on the chat roughly two hours after the story broke. No one on his staff informed him? Really?

If all involved had admitted a mistake, “Signalgate” might have blown over quickly. Instead, Trump called it a “witch hunt.” But dodging the truth—and doing it badly—represents a severe form of incompetence.

Senator Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said his panel would check into what had happened. Here’s hoping. 

“Signalgate” has made a lot of noise. But in a Washington which defines competence as loyalty, I fear that the committee will remain silent.

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