Lemon LIVE at 5 | Trump Administration Accidentally Sent Journalist War Plans - March 24th, 2025
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What breaking national security story kickstarts tonight's Lemon LIVE at 5?
Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Lemon Live at 5. So glad that you could join us. So glad that you joined us this morning. If you did at 10 a.m., you missed a fantastic live show. But now on to another great live show. And I have a bunch of people here or a couple of people that I want to speak to. You'll see them soon. But we have the perfect person to talk to us about a breaking news story. So stand by for that. Let me just inform you, update you on what is going on now. And it is. actually quite quite stunning uh this turn of events there's been a lot of talk especially at the the um defense department and elsewhere in the trump administration about diversity equity inclusion hires dei hires their definition is that you know these dei hires that means that these folks are what not qualified and they should be you know shouldn't be hired because of
For whatever reason, maybe it was the color of their skin, maybe they are a woman, or whatever, for whatever possible reason. So we're going to discuss a major, major, as we can say here on streaming, a major, major F-up. by the Trump administration and specifically the Secretary of Defense himself, none other than Pete Hegseth. So as you're joining us here, make sure you hit the thumbs up, make sure you hit the like, it affects the algorithm. You can subscribe, it's at the bottom of the screen and also become a member It is, you know, you keep us streaming if you do that. So we appreciate all of your support. So let's go and get the breaking news in and discuss. So as we are going on tonight on the air, if you want to say, or we start the stream, we're in the middle of perhaps the single greatest national security scandal in American history.
That is a question. Are we right now? Perhaps we are in the middle of the greatest security, I guess, breach or scandal in American history. That is what we're going to talk about tonight. Could a member of the Trump administration actually face accountability and lose their job over this one? That's the truth. Breaking just a few hours ago. We know now that top U.S. officials mistakenly texted war plans to one of the president's most hated journalists. A shocking oversight by those in the Donald Trump administration. The bombshell comes to us from the Atlantic magazine, the Atlantic report or the Atlantic, I should say. They're reporting war. That shows screenshots of a lengthy thread of the messaging app Signal.
I don't know if you guys have Signal, if you know what it is, but it is an encrypted private messaging site. Still not approved, though, for highly classified information like that. It included should be clandestine text from the vice president, J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and others that I believe is director of national intelligence on there as well. We'll get clarification from our guests in moments. Those messages were about the logistics of and the apparent need for a military strike on Houthi targets in Yemen on March 14th. That strike to send a message and to help clear Middle East shipping lanes was ultimately carried out and killed 53 people.
The messages, which a White House National Security Council spokesperson said Monday appeared to be authentic, gave unprecedented insight into how the Trump administration communicates behind closed doors. So joining me now, the person who can discuss this, I believe, better than almost anyone. is John Kiriakou. He is an author, an American author, a journalist, and the former intelligence author. Thank you so much, John, for joining us. John. Thank you. First of all, where is this on a, I don't know, scale of one to 10? Is it perhaps a 14? What is it? Yeah, this is big. This is a nine. This isn't openly selling our secrets to the Russians or to the Chinese, but my God, this is a screw up of historic proportions.
We have here, I'm going to say it up front just because I think it's probably the most important information. This is a violation of the Espionage Act.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What breaking national security story kickstarts tonight's Lemon LIVE at 5?
0:18–10:20
2
How were Signal messages used to plan the March 14 Yemen strikes and who was included?
10:20–17:45
3
Could the Signal group chat constitute violations of the Espionage Act?
17:45–31:24
4
Why is using Signal or WhatsApp for top‑secret targeting a serious security risk?
31:24–45:39
5
What did The Atlantic report reveal about who texted Jeffrey Goldberg and the timeline?
45:39–1:03:42
Speakers
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