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With each new communication medium comes new opportunities for politicians to get themselves into trouble. Congress demanded that letters from envoys to the French government be turned over in the XYZ Affair, thwarting President John Adams’s desire to maintain a tenuous peace with France. The leak of the Zimmermann telegram helped push the U.S. into World War I—the opposite of what its German author intended. And the tapes that President Richard Nixon used to record conversations in the Oval Office helped drive him out of it.
We live in what my colleague Faith Hill has pronounced the Age of the Group Chat, and so naturally enough, that’s where this generation’s politicos are stepping in it—particularly those in the MAGAverse. Yesterday, Paul Ingrassia—President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead a whistleblower-protection office—withdrew from consideration following Politico’s disclosure of texts to a group in which he used a racial slur and wrote, “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time.” (Ingrassia’s lawyer didn’t outright deny the messages’ authenticity, but suggested they could have been manipulated; he also said if they were real, they were “satirical.”)
That came just days after another Politico article about messages in which Young Republican officials cracked wise about “gas chambers” and used the N-word. Meanwhile, Lindsey Halligan, an interim U.S. attorney overseeing politically motivated prosecutions, sent unsolicited texts to a Lawfare reporter in which she discussed grand-jury matters.
As astonishing as these all are, none of them rises to the level of the Signal chat that top Trump-administration officials used to discuss a bombing of Yemen—casually sharing highly sensitive information, and inadvertently including The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg. Reporting since then indicates that this was not the only instance of Defense officials using Signal—which, though encrypted, is not a totally secure platform—to discuss sensitive information; it’s just the only one that included a journalist.
The basic problem here is a foolishness about what one puts in writing. These leaks show hubris about the reliability of communications systems: In the fateful chat on Signal, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote, “We are currently clean on OPSEC.” They were not, and that is, as experts told The Atlantic, a serious security risk for the country.
When you’re texting about your admiration for Hitler, the danger is less about national security and more about job security. There’s no good place to call yourself a Nazi, but there are less risky ones. If you’re doing it in person with your edgelord friends, at least you’re not leaving a paper trail. Doing it where someone can easily screenshot your messages and send them to a reporter (two members of the Young Republican chat blamed internal rivalries for the leak) is much dumber. During the first Trump administration, my colleague Adam Serwer wrote about the Stringer Bell rule—don’t take notes on a criminal conspiracy—and these ill-advised chats are a cousin: not illegal, but politically perilous.
Lots of people in politics, like the rest of us, say or write stupid things, so what is it about the specific combination of MAGA folks and group chats that keeps resulting in fiascos? I think one problem is that group chats aren’t just a neutral medium—they’re a style of conversation that fosters an eagerness to outdo one’s friends. If what you and your friends are into is bigotry, as is evidently the case in these circles, you might try to say the most howlingly offensive thing.
Also to blame in these cases are immaturity and incompetence. In another text-message-related flap last week, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt who it was that selected Budapest for a planned meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (The summit has since been called off.) “Your mom did,” Leavitt, 28, replied. This is a joke—or it has the shape of a joke, even if it’s not really funny—but the way you communicate with your friends is not especially useful for running the government, which Trump’s inexperienced staffers find themselves in the unlikely position of doing.
Ingrassia is 30 years old—old enough to know right from wrong, but not seasoned enough to lead the Office of Special Counsel. Many of the people involved in the Signalgate chat are also far less qualified for their roles than typical holders (though Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who inadvertently added Goldberg, was one of the more traditionally qualified of the group). Halligan had never prosecuted a case when she was named to lead a very important U.S. Attorney’s Office. Officials who are less experienced are more prone to sloppy mistakes.
Then again, how great are the risks? The Young Republicans chat led to a state senator’s resignation and the end of two state chapters of the organization, but such accountability is the exception. Ingrassia was forced to withdraw, but his nomination was already in trouble, and as of now, he continues to hold a job at the White House as liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. (Having a “Nazi streak” is not a deal-breaker in this administration. The texts Politico reported are only barely more outrageous than what was already public, including Ingrassia’s connections to the unabashed racist Nick Fuentes.) Or consider Waltz, who took “full responsibility” for the Signal fiasco. He was ousted as national security adviser, though apparently not over the breach, but rather because the president found him too hawkish. He was then nominated as ambassador to the United Nations and, amazingly, confirmed by the Senate.
Republican figures are texting as though they have impunity because by many measures, they do. Perversely, these stories may simply reinforce for some of them that everyone is texting the same things they are, and that they won’t face major consequences for doing so. If they get caught, they don’t need to apologize or change careers. They can just tap out a simple “lol, oops” and then return to what they were doing.
Related:
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
- A “death train” is haunting South Florida.
- Donald Trump’s war on reality
- Trump is trying—and failing—to shield MAGA from the shutdown.
Today’s News
- Late yesterday, the U.S. military struck another suspected drug-smuggling vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of Colombia, killing two people, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. This marks the first known strike to take place in the Pacific since President Donald Trump started ordering attacks on boats believed to be carrying illegal drugs.
- North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature approved a new congressional map designed to give the GOP an additional House seat ahead of the 2026 midterms.
- The White House continued demolishing much of the building’s East Wing yesterday in order to construct Trump’s new ballroom, sparking criticism over lack of transparency and damage to historic parts of the building. The Treasury Department, located next to the White House, told employees Monday evening not to take or share photos of the construction.
Dispatches
- The Weekly Planet: “My car is becoming a brick.” Andrew Moseman writes about the problem with EVs turning into smartphones.
Explore all of our newsletters here.
Evening Read
Holy Warrior
By Missy Ryan
Doug Wilson has a white beard and a round belly, and is therefore somewhat Santa-like in appearance. He does not seem at all like someone who delivers denunciations of homosexuality and women’s suffrage, and who takes an ambivalent position on the subject of pre–Civil War slavery.
On a recent Sunday morning, Wilson preached from the lectern at a conference center near Washington, D.C. The Idaho pastor’s sermon was mostly an academic examination of Ephesians 3:1–6 and its offering of God’s salvation. In this setting, at least, he skipped the hellfire rhetoric for which he’s known, making no reference to his theocratic vision of America’s future or his belief that the apocalypse described in the Book of Revelation already took place—and is enabling a project of global Christian conquest. Throughout the service, I couldn’t help glancing from my spot in the back at a familiar figure seated with his family near the front, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
More From The Atlantic
- Trump to DOJ: Pay up.
- Moscow is planning to create its own USAID.
- What an Iranian filmmaker learned in prison
- OpenAI wants to cure cancer. So why did it make a web browser?
- The David Frum Show: The triumphs and tragedies of the American Revolution
Culture Break
Remember. D’Angelo’s work was steeped in Black tradition, and never lost sight of the future, Vann R. Newkirk II writes.
Watch. After the Hunt (out now in theaters) seems to reckon with cancel culture, before revealing where its true interest lies, Shirley Li writes.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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