Signal chat big takeaway? Trump has effective team

Published 4:00 am Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Amid the outrage over Signalgate, one thing should matter most: The text exchanges have given Americans a window into the inner workings of a highly competent national security team carrying out a successful military operation on the orders of a decisive U.S. president.

After four years of Joe Biden’s disastrous leadership on the world stage, we should all be relieved.

Most Americans will never sit in on a National Security Council principals committee meeting. But thanks to the mistaken inclusion of a journalist in a Signal group chat last month, we all got to be flies on the wall as President Donald Trump’s team deliberated before executing effective military strikes against the Houthis, Iran’s proxies in Yemen whom Biden had allowed to fire with virtual impunity more than 140 times at merchant vessels and 174 times at U.S. warships.

Trump’s team respectfully debated the costs and benefits of military action. Vice President JD Vance raised concerns that the mission might be “a mistake” because the Houthi attacks primarily affected European trade. He suggested proceeding with the mission could lead to a rise in gas prices, adding that “there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe chimed in to say that “a delay would not negatively impact us and additional time would be used to identify better starting points for coverage on Houthi leadership.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded: “If I had final go or no go vote, I believe we should. This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish[ing] deterrence, which Biden cratered.” National security adviser Michael Waltz pointed out that only the United States could carry out the mission because “European navies do not have the capability to defend against the types of sophisticated, antiship, cruise missiles, and drones the Houthis are now using,” adding: “we have a fundamental decision of allowing the sea lanes to remain closed or to re-open them now or later, we are the only ones with the capability unfortunately.”

Hegseth agreed: “Mike is correct. … Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go.” Vance replied: “If you think we should do it let’s go.”

Hegseth then laid out the timing of the initial strikes, adding “Godspeed to our Warriors.” Shortly after the operation began, Waltz reported to the group that “the first target — their top missile guy — we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.” Hegseth added: “More strikes ongoing for hours tonight, and will provide full initial report tomorrow. But on time, on target, and good readouts so far.”

Nothing embarrassing was revealed, no military operations were compromised, and no Americans were killed. Trump’s team executed a successful military operation. There was no “Team Pete” or “Team Mike” or any daylight between them. There was only “Team Trump.”

Should we have had this window into NSC deliberations? Of course not. U.S. officials should not have been using Signal or Gmail (as The Washington Post reported this past week), for confidential conversations, and as a result of this incident I expect future conversations will be conducted differently. But those missteps fall far short of the breach by Hillary Clinton, whose personal emails, then-FBI Director James B. Comey revealed, included multiple chains with information classified at the Secret and Top Secret/Special Access Program level.

The idea that anyone on Trump’s team should be fired for this minor incident is absurd. And it’s clear that the inadvertent disclosure was also a blessing in disguise, because it showed the world what a well-oiled national security team faithfully executing the president’s policies looks like.

We never saw the deliberations by Biden’s NSC as it planned the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, the most shameful foreign policy calamity in my lifetime. We weren’t privy to the behind-the-scenes debate when Biden rejected the unanimous advice of his military commanders to leave a residual force in Afghanistan that could have prevented a Taliban takeover. We never saw how Biden’s NSC came to the catastrophic decision to put the safety of U.S. service members at the Kabul airport in the hands of the Taliban and Haqqani network by refusing the Taliban’s offer to let the U.S. military secure the Afghan capital while we evacuated — a decision that led to the suicide bombing that killed 13 Americans.

And we never learned its internal deliberations for the retaliatory strike to that bombing that killed an innocent aid worker and nine other Afghan civilians, including seven children — and then failed for three years to fulfill Biden’s promise to hunt down the terrorists. (It took Trump’s national security team just 43 days to capture one of the senior ISIS-K officials responsible.)

No one was fired for these acts of incompetence, just as no one was fired for the Biden administration’s capitulation to Russia on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline after Trump had stopped it in his first term, or for its refusal to provide Ukraine with Stinger and Javelin missiles for months before Russia invaded — which, together with the Afghanistan debacle, sent a message of weakness that clearly emboldened Vladimir Putin.

No one was fired for allowing a Chinese spy balloon to enter U.S. airspace, withholding critical weapons from Israel, or allowing U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria to be attacked dozens of times by Iranian-backed terrorists virtually without consequence. And no one was fired for the decision to remove the Houthis from a U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Those were all firing offenses. The accidental disclosure of a group chat discussing a successful military operation is not. Trump’s national security team is serving him and the nation well.