"Incompetence has entered the chat"

Group texts are the scourge of modern communication technology, sure, but when you find yourself somehow looped in on a juicy conversation you know you're not meant to be privy to, who wouldn't stick around to see how it continues?

That's the situation Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg (likely "JG" in Mike Waltz' phone or Signal app contacts) found himself in two weekends ago when he was inadvertently (we presume) looped into a curious mixture of Trump Cabinet officials, Pentagon brass, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (and later we learned, another unqualified individual - Joe Kent, as the New York Times reports, "Trump’s nominee to run the national counterterrorism center has been acting as a chief of staff to Ms. Gabbard. A confirmation date for Mr. Kent has not been set."

Today a Senate subcomittee got to grill Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe on this, and while Ratcliffe insists the conversation wasn't classified, he and she both answered (and dodged) questions as if the information in the conversation was. "You can't have it both ways," exclaimed Senator Mark Warner (D-Va).

The one consistent response from Trump officials has been to be smug and disimssive in smearing Goldberg - while also not denying he was erroneously looped in. It's always the journalists with that tribe and never the scandal they created, after all.

For his part, Goldberg not only exonerated himself with Jen Psaki, he made the rounds to CNN, and to The Bulwark with Tim Miller, where he claimed an undercover CIA operative was identified (though he's not revealing that agent's name).

But remember ... not classified. *wink*

Meanwhile, a foul-mouthed Pete Buttigieg did a rare social media take on his own before landing on CNN to weigh in further.

Secretary Buttigieg, someone who in a military and political capacity, had to handle classified information, knows the ins and outs of NIPR and SIPR, but the general public of course doesn't. A friend of mine with a two-plus decade career in service gave me a primer on it overnight, insisting "I have a government-issued “secure phone”. It’s an iPhone. What makes it “secure” is the Microsoft Azure platform that holds my email certificates; but that’s still only NIPR - USG SIPR isn’t broadcast in any form via a cellular tunnel. My gov phone is basically software-hardwired to a VPN to the gov non-secure network. It’s ridiculous. To put signal on my gov phone I’d have to establish an Apple ID with my gov email (but the gov server would filter the confirmation, so it wouldn’t/shouldn’t happen) or login to Apple with my personal account on my gov device (I ain’t doing that) - and no, Signal isn’t available on a ‘government device storefront’ so yeah - the whole thing is ridiculous."

The whole Chinese spy balloon stuff seems kind of trivial now, no?