--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Hey, Molly Ball. Hey, Ryan Knudsen. Have you ever accidentally been added to a group chat?
--:-- Molly Ball: I have from time to time received texts that were not intended for me that I could tell I was not supposed to know about.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Hmm. But nothing that you can say. Have you?
--:-- Molly Ball: I accidentally added the wrong person to a group chat once. I meant to include my friend Bjorn, inviting him to a party that we were having. And I accidentally, as I learned later, added the wrong Bjorn.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I'm impressed you know more than one Bjorn. Yeah. Well, doesn't everybody have two Bjorns in their life?
--:-- Molly Ball: I don't know if I even have one Bjorn in my context, much less multiple Bjorns that would necessitate a disambiguation of the Bjorns.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: If you need a Bjorn in your life, I have two people I can introduce you to. Do you have a spare? Do you have an extra Bjorn?
--:-- Molly Ball: We are, of course, talking about the group chat heard around the world. The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was inadvertently included on a signal conversation between Trump's national security advisor, defense secretary, director of national intelligence, secretary of state, and others discussing an upcoming military strike on the Houthis in Yemen.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Molly, what did you think when you saw the story?
--:-- Molly Ball: Wow. I think everyone in Washington's jaw sort of dropped when we saw the initial report. It was pretty mind-blowing.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: This is obviously embarrassing for the Trump administration, but how big of a deal is it, do you think?
--:-- Molly Ball: That is a matter of debate. One thing we've heard from the administration is, oh, the media is making too much of this. It was a simple mistake. Let's all move on. We've all learned something, etc. But I think a lot of national security experts think this is deeply troubling because it potentially put American troops at risk.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So there is a lot of concern about the potential ramifications of this scandal beyond just the particular instance of this group chat.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Ryan Knudsen. And I'm Molly Ball. It's Friday, March 28th. Today on the Trump 2.0 group chat, we're going inside the fallout from the private signal conversation that the entire world now gets to be a part of.
--:-- Molly Ball: It is from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC.
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--:-- Molly Ball: President Biden and President Trump each had investigations launched against them because they held on to classified documents after leaving the White House. During the 2016 campaign, Trump and Republicans criticized Hillary Clinton for keeping sensitive information on a private email server when she was secretary of state.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So is this situation any different?
--:-- Molly Ball: It is and it isn't. As you say, there have been a lot of scandals involving the handling of classified and sensitive information over the years. This one is different in the specifics. In today's fast-paced world, you know, almost everything that we do in our jobs can be done on our phones, but you're still not supposed to do war planning that way. And so I think that gives this scandal a new wrinkle.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: All right. Well, to help us understand all of the wrinkles of this situation, our colleague Nancy Youssef, who covers national security in the Pentagon, has entered the group chat.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: Hi. Nancy, thanks so much for being here. So great to be with you.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Hey, Nancy. So you cover national security. What was your reaction when you heard that this, that a journalist had accidentally been added to this highly sensitive group chat? I mean, I guess since they used emojis, The emoji I would have used is like head exploding when I first saw it because there were so many elements of it that were surprising.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: I cover the Pentagon primarily. So the idea that details about an op would be on signal was shocking to me, that the decision around the strike would be made on signal, that a reporter would be added, that the times of strikes when F-18s were taken off aircraft carriers would be included on the check. It was all so shocking to me.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And also, because I've covered a lot of these strikes, you rarely get to see sort of the behind the scenes in terms of what they're talking about in those critical minutes and hours before a strike. So to see that conversation and what's happening was interesting to me.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: So in terms of the mission itself, what was the goal of this attack?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So the Houthis are a militant group in Yemen. They control large swaths of Yemen. And after the war in Gaza began, the Houthis had started launching strikes and attacks on commercial and military vessels traveling through the Red Sea. And that is one of the busiest commercial shipping waters in the world.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: And so those strikes really reduced the use of those waters and fundamentally changed commercial shipping. And the Biden administration had conducted strikes on them to try to stop this and get those ships back in those waters. They conducted about 200 such strikes intermittently throughout 2024.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: But the Houthis continued to strike. Then there was a ceasefire in January and the Houthis announced that they would stop the strikes in light of the ceasefire. Then when the ceasefire started to collapse, they announced that they'd resumed strikes they hadn't yet when the U.S. launched this campaign that they have said will be different in targeting Houthis and reopening those waterways.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: The Trump administration in this attack, the U.S. is going after Houthi leadership. The big difference that we see is that they're going after leadership and personnel. And I think that they are trying to do it more offensively rather than doing it sort of over a couple of days that they're going to try to do it over several days.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I think we're in day 11 or 12. I've lost count of days on the strike campaign.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: And it sounds like what you're saying is this is an ongoing campaign and we don't know yet whether it will achieve its ultimate objective of unblocking these sea lanes for commercial traffic?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: That's right. One of the main arguments we've heard from the administration is that, as you know, that this has been successful. In terms of like the initial objectives of that day, I think one could argue that they've been successful and that they hit what they wanted to hit.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: But in terms of the broader campaign goals, it is too early to say that. And we haven't heard anything in the last few days that indicates that this campaign over this last 11 or 12 days has gone such that they think they're on track to reaching a point where the Houthis can no longer pose a threat to ships transiting the Red Sea and other nearby waters.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: One of the interesting things about this chat is that you get some insight into the policy debate that's taking place between high-ranking Trump administration officials. And in there, you can see some debate between J.D. Vance and other administration officials about whether or not to proceed with this attack, whether or not the attack conflicts with President Trump's policy agenda when it comes to Europe.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: So the U.S. is not the primary user of those waters in terms of having goods transited to the United States. It's primarily used by Europe. And the president has said that he wants to see Europe take more control over their own security concerns and issues, including commercial shipping that they depend on.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And so J.D. Vance, who has been opposed to using U.S. military resources for things that are not primarily U.S. military, U.S. security concern interests, raises objections.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: Should the United States be investing in this kind of risky, expensive strike for something that doesn't pose a major economic threat to the United States? We're the minority in terms of using those shipping waters.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Yeah, I think in the chat, Vance says something like 3% of U.S. trade runs through the Suez Canal, while 40% of European trade does.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: Yeah, I don't know the numbers, but that doesn't sound off to me based on prior reporting.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And then Stephen Miller comes in and says, no, this is what the president's asked for, and this is what we're going to give him.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: And so to hear them sort of debating it literally days, hours before the strike was really interesting to me and speaks to sort of the divisions about how the U.S. military is used.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So, you know, in the past, we have been the leading nation in terms of defending not only U.S. interests, but that of our allies. And there's a real-time debate going on about how much we're willing to continue to do that going forward.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: Yeah, I love how, you know, J.D. Vance in that chat says, I'm willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Those concerns are no longer being kept to himself. That's right. This group chat has been made public. That's right. That's right.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: And by the way, Europe saw that. And I think you saw a lot of reaction to Europe about that because I think they've been concerned about how much the U.S. would come to their defense and to see that debate happening.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I think for those who are concerned that maybe the United States wouldn't be as a reliable partner, this sort of reaffirmed their fears.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: Now, having said that, the U.S. did do the strikes. So you get a sense, though, that this is an ongoing debate in some ways, not one that's been resolved.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So let's talk about Mike Waltz, Trump's national security advisor. He's the one who, according to the screenshots, created the group chat and added the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: So he said he took full responsibility. responsibility. He had the president's backing at a briefing earlier this week, but then subsequently sort of launched an attack on Goldberg and said that he wasn't a credible journalist and and that maybe he wasn't solely strictly responsible for the creating of the chat, that he didn't know Jeffrey Goldberg, didn't have reason to have him in his phone.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I can tell you for 100 percent, I don't know this guy. I know him by his horrible reputation, and he really is a bottom scum of journalists. And I know him in the sense that he hates the president, but I don't text him. He wasn't on my phone and we're going to figure out how this happened.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: So you don't know what... And so it was sort of a yes, but kind of scenario for lack of a better term. If it was a mistake and if it was Waltz who did it, do we have any idea who he might've meant to put on there?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: No, there's a lot of speculation about that. It's sort of a search for every JG in government who might've been involved.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: I mean, it's sort of the parlor game in Washington. The other reason it's hard for me to answer is I'm used to what used to happen, or at least what happens at DOD, which is like these guys at that level, top level, have a communications team that travels with them. So first of all, they have a secure communications setup in their house. But let's say they're out when something is happening. The communications person is with them to give them a secure phone to set up a secure communications channel.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So it's hard for me to know because it's an unconventional way to even start this conversation. Is Signal even allowed on government phones?
--:-- Nancy Youssef: I know there was an alert that went out recently from the Pentagon about Signal being a potential target of hackers. So I went around the Pentagon the other day just asking people for their government phones and asking them if they could download Signal.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And they could. They could actually get the app on the government phone. But no one had the gall and I didn't have the gall to push it to like try to start a Signal chat to find out if you could actually send messages on a government phone.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: What I saw is on Signal you can actually download the app on a government phone But there are all sorts of regulations about then using that to send communications about anything other than something innocuous like let meet at this time or that time. Where do you want to get lunch later?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Yeah. And I should note, like we've the most similar scenario that I've seen along these lines is in Afghanistan. They use WhatsApp all the time to communicate with the Afghans because they didn't, the Afghans didn't have secured comms.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: That's the closest that I've seen where military sort of planning has gone over an unsecured system.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk more with Nancy about the potential repercussions of the Signal League.
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--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So the administration is sort of saying two things in its defense here. One is that these were not war plans. We heard Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth say that in an interview this week. Nobody was texting war plans, and that's all I have to say about that.
--:-- Molly Ball: And two, that it was not classified. Here's Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, talking about that during a Senate hearing. The conversation was candid and sensitive. But as the president and national security adviser stated, no classified information was shared. There were no sources, methods, locations, or war plans that were shared.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: So to me, this is an argument about semantics. In the Pentagon, war plans refers to like the macro war planning, the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Attack plans are that sort of individual unit plans assigned to do a specific task. And one could argue that attack plans are more sensitive than war plans. They have more details. They have names of units. They're much more detail-oriented.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So technically, they're not war plans. But I think to a layman, they are war plans in that they provide details about an upcoming military operation. Now, they don't have the specific name of the person they were targeting or the specific building or the specific unit, but there's a framework there of what the military is getting ready to do on a military campaign.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: But that is a sensitive time and has always been treated as classified, and I have yet to find someone in the building who considers that unclassified information. I can just say that the Pentagon sees that as sensitive classified information.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: This regulation is saying that operations are always top secret and can be declassified after the operation is over. They often don't even tell us about these operations until that last fighter jet is back after the mission is over. That's been the standard practice before.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: I'm so sorry. This is a source calling that I have to take. Oh, she hung up. I guess that's what happens when you are a busy reporter. Yeah. Sorry.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Oh, wait. Nancy's back. The guy who never calls me out of the blue, and I think it was a butt call. So I was like, ah, he added you to the group chat by mistake. Not quite as good as getting added to the group chat, but... I know. All right. I know you're busy, Nancy, so I'll just ask you one more question before we let you go. What's the follow-up been like for Pete Hegseth, who was the one who texted what appears to be the most sensitive information, which is the details about the actual pending attack on the Houthis?
--:-- Nancy Youssef: So on Wednesday, there was a hearing on the House side with Tulsi Gabbard, the ODNI director, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, and they both basically said, well, we thought it was okay because Pete Hegseth said it was okay. He says it's unclassified, so we took him at his word.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And so there was a lot of suggestion on Wednesday that the responsibility of assessing whether to share that information sat with Pete Hegseth. It is the biggest sort of pointing at him that we've seen so far this week and suggests that they are looking at him, at least on that portion of it.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: I think it's because that was among some of the most sensitive information released on that text thread.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Thanks, Nancy, so much for your time. Appreciate it.
--:-- Nancy Youssef: Thank you so much. Thank you, Nancy. Bye, guys.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: All right. Nancy has now left the group chat, and it is just you and me, Molly, at least I think. So how have other members of the chat been explaining themselves?
--:-- Molly Ball: There were these hearings this week on Capitol Hill where we heard from two other members of the chat, Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. What did they say?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: It was very interesting because, as you say, there were two days of hearings, and in between the first and second day, The Atlantic released the transcripts of the full text message exchange that showed just how detailed and sensitive the information being shared in this group chat was.
--:-- Molly Ball: And so, you know, on the first day, the administration officials had said, oh, you know, I don't remember exactly what was in there. I couldn't tell you. It's not in front of me, et cetera. But then they came back and they were sort of confronted with it. And particularly you know the Democrats on the committee were really pushing them to acknowledge that they were trying to cover something up and to account for the discrepancies in the administration explanations for all of this.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: And what we saw was Tulsi Gabbard the director of national intelligence saying well the things that I shared were not classified. And if you have concerns about these attack plans, you're going to have to ask the person who shared them, which was Pete Hegseth.
--:-- Molly Ball: And the CIA director, John Radcliffe, also saying a version of this. So it was interesting in that it really put the focus on Hegseth, who has been traveling in Asia this whole time and won't be back for a while and has made only very limited public statements, both in person and on his social media account, defending his conduct here.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: As it said atop of that, everybody's seen it now. Team update is to provide updates in real time. General updates in real time. Keep everybody informed. That's what I did. That's my job. But it really became clear that the other officials in the group chat felt like if anyone was responsible for sharing this sensitive information, it was Hegseth.
--:-- Molly Ball: Because outside of him talking in great detail about literally when bombs were going to drop and where, you could say that everyone else was just having sort of an abstract policy debate or doing sort of logistical coordination. It was Hegseth who, of his own accord, without being prompted, came in to share these very detailed battle plans.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Democrats have been expressing a lot of outrage over this, but they don't have the power to open investigations right now, being in the minority. President Trump seems like he's supporting everybody so far. His attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that a criminal investigation was unlikely.
--:-- Molly Ball: Is there any chance that anyone gets held accountable for this?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: It is not just Democrats who have expressed concern about this situation. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have publicly and privately expressed concern. You know, a lot of Republican lawmakers have military backgrounds.
--:-- Molly Ball: Congressman Don Bacon, who's a moderate Republican from Nebraska, who has a military background, has expressed concern, said, you know, when he was in the service, this would have been unacceptable.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: The Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, said the administration needs to admit that this was a mistake and move on. And there is a bipartisan letter. The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, who shepherded Pete Hegseth through his confirmation hearings to become secretary of defense, co-authored a bipartisan letter with his Democratic counterpart, basically demanding an internal investigation of this.
--:-- Molly Ball: And Mike Waltz on Fox said that he was having Elon Musk look into it from a technical perspective, too.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So we'll see where that goes. We'll see where that goes.
--:-- Molly Ball: Some on the right in the Trump administration have been critical of Jeffrey Goldberg, the journalist who was added to this chat. What's your sort of just general take from a journalistic point of view about how Jeffrey Goldberg handled this situation?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I should say that Jeffrey Goldberg is my former boss. I worked at the Atlantic a long time ago and have great respect for him. It's hard to say that he did anything wrong in this case.
--:-- Molly Ball: He was added to this group chat through no initiative of his own. He didn't ask to be put there. It was a surprise to him, as he detailed in his first report for the Atlantic.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: He initially assumed that there was no way this could be a real conversation between national security officials because, of course, they would never do it. On signal, of course they would never do it with a journalist present.
--:-- Molly Ball: And so he describes this process of, you know, initially thinking this is some kind of elaborate, you know, catfishing attempt. And then watching as the messages continue to come into his phone. And then the sort of incredible denouement of seeing the bombs fall.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: So that was sort of when he knew that this was all for real. He excused himself from the group chat and then proceeded to try to, you know, responsibly seek response from the officials in question and decide what was prudent to publish and how.
--:-- Molly Ball: So the initial report included very few of the actual details of these conversations, in part because he wanted to be mindful of the security concerns in question. And it was only when the administration spent 24 hours insisting that he was essentially lying that he said, well, all right, if you're going to say that none of this is sensitive information and you're going to call my integrity into question, we'll put it out there for the public to see and judge for themselves.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: All right, Molly. Last question before I let you go. How is your March Madness bracket?
--:-- Molly Ball: I don't have a bracket, Ryan. How's yours?
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: I took Jess Braven's advice and put the Supreme Court. I picked them to win, but they haven't played any games. So... What? Surprise, surprise.
--:-- Molly Ball: Well, more importantly, this week was baseball opening day. So finally, we have real sports to watch.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Yes, right. You're a baseball fan. I'm a huge baseball fan. Go Rockies. Go Rockies.
--:-- Molly Ball: I have the great misfortune of being a Colorado Rockies fan, but I believe very strongly that you have a moral obligation to root for your hometown team, even if they are perpetually terrible like the Colorado Rockies.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Yes. I mean, I am a Seattle Mariners fan, first and foremost, and it has been a very, very sad 25 years. We're in the same boat there. Every once in a while, they make the playoffs, but you just can't have any hope.
--:-- Molly Ball: Okay, great. Thanks again.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Thanks, Ryan.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Before we go, do you have any questions about what the Trump administration is doing? Email us and let us know. Please send a voice note to thejournal at wsj.com.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Trump 2.0 is part of The Journal, which is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. This episode was produced by Enrique Perez de la Rosa and edited by Katherine Whalen. With help from Matt Kwong and Alessandra Rizzo.
--:-- Molly Ball: Molly Ball is The Wall Street Journal's senior political correspondent. I'm Ryan Knudsen.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: This episode was engineered by Griffin Tanner. Our theme music is by So Wiley and remixed by Peter Leonard. Additional music in this episode by Emma Munger and Griffin Tanner. Fact-checking by Kate Gallagher. Artwork by James Walton.
--:-- Ryan Knudsen: Trump 2.0 will be back with a new episode next Friday morning. See you then. Thank you.
