Texting snafu is 'Signal' of a sloppy Trump problem

Nearly a month into his first term, in February 2017, President Donald Trump displayed a casual lack of concern for long-established White House security protocols. At his “winter White House” in Mar-a-Lago, dinner guests and waiters got to watch and listen as the new president consulted Japanese officials who happened to be on hand about a worrisome rocket launch by North Korea.

Seasoned Washington security experts called it a dangerous little exhibition. But it was far from the last time Trump in his first term would come under criticism as sloppy with information — with military implications — that should have been closely guarded.

Not four months after the Mar-a-Lago incident, the first-term president revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting, officials confirmed.

The information was reported to have come out of Syria, via Israel, and involved a laptop bomb threat. Later, Israeli media reported that Trump told foreign minister Sergey Lavrov about an undercover Israeli mission to spy on an Islamic State cell developing bombs that could go through airports undetected. What damage might have been done by loose lips was never revealed.

In MAGA Washington, past is prologue. Barely two months into his new term, Trump was spinning as a “glitch” the latest high-level security lapse. In this one, The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief was somehow added to a Signal app text chain discussing supposedly secret plans for a military strike against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Trump on Tuesday indicated an aide to national security adviser Mike Waltz mistakenly added the number of the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the texted conversation. “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said, adding that the reported error “turned out not to be a serious one.”

If Trump seemed unusually sanguine, maybe he was just trying to brush past what should have been a “lesson” of his own. Less than two years ago, he became the first ex-president ever indicted. Now erased by his return to office, the charges involved 40 felony counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left office in 2021.

That’s all over now but the Signal case raises serious operational issues, too. The Atlantic’s Goldberg has written that when he was notified on the text chain, he suspected that what looked like a back-and-forth among top officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Waltz, and Vice President JD Vance planning the Yemen attacks was a hoax. Evidently, it proved authentic.

Parts of the text chain, as quoted by Goldberg, show when and where targets were to be attacked. It also suggested internal dissension that could be embarrassing. Vance argued at one point, “I think we are making a mistake . . . ” He evoked “a strong argument for delaying this a month” and was overruled. Could accidentally spilling backroom information, including echoes of Trump snark about Europe, cost us strategically?

Don’t expect the House under a GOP majority to probe the Signal matter. Speaker Mike Johnson said he expected the White House “will tighten up and make sure [this mistake] doesn’t happen again.”

But while the president may be insulated these days from impeachment or other legal vulnerability, the flap hints at Trump setting a cavalier tone by example. Common sense would tell you that continuing down this road could cost American lives — if Trump and the U.S. don’t stay lucky.

Columnist Dan Janison’s opinions are his own.

By Dan Janison

dan.janison@newsday.comDanJanison

Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.