Regarding "Trump officials texted war plans to a group chat in a secure app that included a journalist" (March 25): When you hire amateurs, this is what you get: Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz, Tulsi Gabbard and other high-profile Trump administration officials discussed sensitive U.S. military war plans in a group chat on an unclassified commercial open-source messaging app that was accidentally opened to a journalist.
ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ were discussing a secret Houthi bombing campaign, including specific targeting and timing information which would take place within hours. Our secretary of defense and others didn’t realize they were texting with a well-known and respected journalist. It was arrogance and negligence on steroids.
Someone should be fired, but they won’t be. President Donald Trump demonstrates every day that, as he stated in his first term, he has “the right to do whatever I want†... such as appointing senior officials with little to no experience to sensitive government positions no matter how dangerous to national security and U.S. military personnel they may be.
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The Chinese are listening. The Iranians, the Russians and the North Koreans are all listening.Â
Secretary Hegseth’s response was to deny the breach of national security information: “Nobody was texting war plans.†He is obviously lying. The dangers were real.
So what does Hegseth do? He reflexively attacks the journalist, falsely calling him a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist†instead of addressing his own incompetence.
James Etling
St. Louis
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