Signal Scandal Defenses Might Cross an Intergalactic Stupidity Threshold
How does that change the political landscape?
Trump officials accidentally adding Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a top-level group chat is perfect comedy. I laugh every time I think of Trump’s High Council of Fuckwits prattling away while the head guy at one of the country’s top magazines sits in the corner thinking “Ummmmm…h-hello?” And it’s funny because there wasn’t a disaster…this time. Next time, people might die in large numbers, but this time, it’s a good ol’-fashioned knee slapper.
Almost as funny has been MAGA world’s toddler-lying-about-taking-a-cookie-while-holding-the-fucking-cookie level response. A normal administration would feign shock even if they were thinking “yep…Hegseth gonna Hegseth”. They’d also be debating precisely who needs to be sacrificed to appease the Scandal Gods. This administration is doing neither; instead, they’re defending themselves using arguments that could only appeal to people who are some combination of credulous, ideologically blinded, and drunk.
Their first play has been to cry “Fake news!” At this point, the Trump administration screaming “fake news” is like Springsteen playing “Born to Run” — you can count on it happening and you’d honestly feel a little empty if it didn’t — but it’s been fun to watch a new generation of bullshit artists put their spin on an old standard. Here, Pete Hegseth riffs on the theme:
Attempting the fake news gambit when a National Security Spokesperson has already affirmed the basics of Goldberg’s account is such a brazen attempt at misdirection that even Fox News’ Brit Hume replied: “Oh for God’s sake.” That’s just how dumb things have gotten: Even Fox News hosts — the very people who summoned the beast that is now rampaging through American politics — can’t help but publicly roll their eyes. At least, they can’t help it if they’ve reached the “I ran out of fucks to give 20 years ago and will walk if you so much as screw up my coffee order” point of their careers, as 81 year-old Brit Hume clearly has.
But Fox News hosts with their careers still in front of them are toeing the party line. Fox’s Will Cain conceded that the messages “appeared to be authentic”, but argued that they were authentically awesome: