A journalist was added to a text thread with high-level Trump administration officials revealing plans for the timing and weapons to be used in a military strike against Houthi militants. Administration officials disputed that any classified information about the military operation had been shared. WSJ’s Nancy Youssef joins the chat with Ryan Knutson and Molly Ball to discuss the fallout of the group chat pinged ‘round the world. Further Reading: -An Annotated Analysis of Signal Group Chat With Top Trump Officials -Hegseth Comes Under Scrutiny for Texting Strike Details as Fallout Grows -Democrats Are Taking Their Anger Out on Chuck Schumer Further Listening: -Trump’s Attack on Big Law -Trump’s College Crackdown -Trump 2.0: A Showdown with the Judiciary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What sparked the group chat controversy in the Trump administration?
We are, of course, talking about the group chat heard around the world. The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic was inadvertently included on a signal conversation between Trump's national security advisor, defense secretary, director of national intelligence, secretary of state, and others discussing an upcoming military strike on the Houthis in Yemen.
Molly, what did you think when you saw this story?
Chapter 2: How did Washington react to the group chat leak?
Wow. I think everyone in Washington's jaw sort of dropped when we saw the initial report. It was pretty mind-blowing.
This is obviously embarrassing for the Trump administration, but how big of a deal is it, do you think?
That is a matter of debate. One thing we've heard from the administration is, oh, the media is making too much of this. It was a simple mistake. Let's all move on. We've all learned something, etc. But I think a lot of national security experts think this is deeply troubling because it potentially put American troops at risk.
So there is a lot of concern about the potential ramifications of this scandal beyond just the particular instance of this group chat.
From the Journal, this is Trump 2.0. I'm Ryan Knudsen.
And I'm Molly Ball.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of classified information mishandling?
It's Friday, March 28th. Today on the Trump 2.0 group chat, we're going inside the fallout from the private signal conversation that the entire world now gets to be a part of. All right, Molly, so this isn't the first time that handling of classified information has been the subject of political scandal.
President Biden and President Trump each had investigations launched against them because they held on to classified documents after leaving the White House. During the 2016 campaign, Trump and Republicans criticized Hillary Clinton for keeping sensitive information on a private email server when she was Secretary of State. So is this situation any different?
It is and it isn't. As you say, there have been a lot of scandals involving the handling of classified and sensitive information over the years. This one is different in the specifics. In today's fast-paced world, you know, almost everything that we do in our jobs can be done on our phones, but you're still not supposed to do war planning that way.
And so I think that gives this scandal a new wrinkle.
All right, well, to help us understand all of the wrinkles of this situation, our colleague Nancy Youssef, who covers national security in the Pentagon, has entered the group chat.
Hi.
Nancy, thanks so much for being here.
So great to be with you. Hey, Nancy.
So you cover national security. What was your reaction when you heard that a journalist had accidentally been added to this highly sensitive group chat?
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Chapter 4: Who is Nancy Youssef and what insights does she bring?
on signal, that a reporter would be added, that the times of strikes when F-18s were taken off aircraft carriers would be included on the check. It was all so shocking to me. And also because I've covered a lot of these strikes, you rarely get to see sort of the behind the scenes in terms of what they're talking about in those critical minutes and hours before a strike.
So to see that conversation and what's happening was interesting to me. So it was all really surprising.
In terms of the mission itself, what was the goal of this attack?
So the Houthis are a militant group in Yemen. They control large swaths of Yemen. And after the war in Gaza began, the Houthis had started launching strikes and attacks on commercial and military vessels traveling through the Red Sea. And that is one of the busiest commercial shipping waters in the world. And so...
Those strikes really reduced the use of those waters and fundamentally changed commercial shipping. And the Biden administration had conducted strikes on them to try to stop this and get those ships back in those waters. They conducted about 200 such strikes intermittently throughout 2024. But the Houthis continued to strike.
Then there was the ceasefire in January and the Houthis announced that they would stop the strikes in light of the ceasefire. Then when the ceasefire started to collapse, they announced that they'd resume strikes. They hadn't yet when the U.S. launched this campaign that they have said will be different in targeting Houthis and reopening those waterways.
The Trump administration in this attack, the U.S. is going after Houthi leadership.
The big difference that we see is that they're going after leadership and personnel. And I think that they are trying to do it more offensively rather than doing it sort of over a couple of days that they're going to try to do it over several days. I think we're in day 11 or 12. I've lost count of days on the strike campaign.
And it sounds like what you're saying is this is an ongoing campaign and we don't know yet whether it will achieve its ultimate objective of unblocking these sea lanes for commercial traffic.
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Chapter 5: What was the objective of the U.S. military strike discussed in the chat?
military resources for things that are not primarily U.S. military, U.S. security concern interests, raises objections. Should the United States be investing in this kind of risky, expensive strike for something that does oppose a major economic threat to the United States? We're the minority in terms of using those shipping waters.
Yeah, I think in the chat, Vance says something like 3% of U.S. trade runs through the Suez Canal while 40% of European trade does.
Yeah, I don't know the numbers, but that doesn't sound off to me based on prior reporting. And then Stephen Miller comes in and says, no, this is what the president's asked for and this is what we're going to give them. And so to hear them sort of debating it literally days, hours before the strike was really interesting to me and speaks to sort of the divisions about how the U.S.
military is used. So, you know, in the past we have been the leading nation in terms of defending not only U.S. interests, but that of our allies. And there's a real time debate going on about how much we're willing to continue to do that going forward.
Yeah, I love how, you know, J.D. Vance in that chat says, I'm willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying. Those concerns are no longer being kept to himself.
That's right.
This group chat has been made public.
That's right. That's right. And by the way, Europe saw that. And I think you saw a lot of reaction to Europe about that because I think they'd been concerned about how much the U.S. would come to their defense and to see that debate happening. I think for those who are concerned that maybe the United States wouldn't be as a reliable partner, this sort of reaffirmed their fears.
Now, having said that, the U.S. did do the strikes. So you get a sense, though, that this is an ongoing debate in some ways, not one that's been resolved.
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Chapter 6: How did internal debates shape the U.S. response to Houthi threats?
And so it was sort of a yes, but kind of scenario, for lack of a better term.
If it was a mistake and if it was Walt who did it, do we have any idea who he might have meant to put on there?
No, there's a lot of speculation about that. It's sort of a search for every JG in government who might have been involved. I mean, it's sort of the parlor game in Washington. The other reason it's hard for me to answer is I'm used to what used to happen, or at least what happens at DOD, which is like... These guys at that level, top level, have a communications team that travels with them.
So first of all, they have a secure communications setup in their house. But let's say they're out when something is happening. The communications person is with them to give them a secure phone to set up a secure communications channel. So it's hard for me to know because it's an unconventional way to even start this conversation.
Is Signal even allowed on government phones? I know there was an alert that went out recently from the Pentagon about Signal being a potential target of hackers.
So I went around the Pentagon the other day just asking people for their government phones and asking them if they could download Signal. And they could. They could actually get the app on the government phone. But no one had the gall, and I didn't have the gall to push it, to try to start a Signal chat to find out if you could actually send messages on a government phone
What I saw is on Signal, you can actually download the app on a government phone, but there are all sorts of regulations about then using that to send communications about anything other than something innocuous like let's meet at this time or that time.
Where do you want to get lunch later?
Yeah. And I should note, the most similar scenario that I've seen along these lines is in Afghanistan. They use WhatsApp all the time to communicate with the Afghans because the Afghans didn't have secured comms. That's the closest that I've seen where military sort of planning has gone over an unsecured system.
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Chapter 7: What role did Mike Waltz play in the group chat incident?
So on Wednesday, there was a hearing on the House side with Tulsi Gabbard, the ODNI director, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, and they both basically said, well, we thought it was okay because Pete Hegseth said it was okay. He says it's unclassified, so we took him at his word.
And so there was a lot of suggestion on Wednesday that the responsibility of assessing whether to share that information sat with Pete Hegseth. It is the biggest sort of pointing at him that we've seen so far this week and suggests that they are looking at him at least on that portion of it. I think it's because that was among some of the most sensitive information released on that text thread.
Thanks, Nancy, so much for your time. Appreciate it.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Nancy. Bye, guys.
All right, Nancy has now left the group chat, and it is just you and me, Molly, at least I think. So how have other members of the chat been explaining themselves? There were these hearings this week on Capitol Hill where we heard from two other members of the chat, Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. What did they say?
It was very interesting because, as you say, there were two days of hearings, and in between the first and second day, the Atlantic released the transcripts of the full text message exchange that showed just how detailed and sensitive the information being shared in this group chat was.
And so, you know, on the first day, the administration officials had said, oh, you know, I don't remember exactly what was in there. I couldn't tell you. It's not in front of me, et cetera. But then they came back and they were sort of confronted with it.
And particularly, you know, the Democrats on the committee were really pushing them to acknowledge that they were trying to cover something up and to account for the the discrepancies in the administration's explanations for all of this. And what we saw was Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, saying, well, the things that I shared were not classified.
And if you have concerns about these attack plans, you're going to have to ask the person who shared them, which was Pete Hegseth. And the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, also said, saying a version of this.
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