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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   31978 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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It was leaked on purpose to show European 'powers' that the administration is not just publicly making noise about big needed changes but genuinely dissatisfied

One fact to support this theory is who is doing the leaking. Jeffrey Goldberg is an editor who has been at The Atlantic a long time. He did a bid in the IDF as a young pup and written articles such as "Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe" in response to terror attacks. It is unlikely Goldberg would want to help the Houthis or hammer the admin on Houthi beating. Which he doesn't. He is seasoned and at least partly aligned on the topic of discussion. Both of these make him more likely to understand (or suspect) what his role is here despite the confusion and it appears he is carrying out his duties. This would be big 5D chess if unnecessary and reckless.

Why not just leak stuff the good ol' fashioned way? This form of leak probably maximizes the amount eyeballs, but are those necessary? Perhaps foreign parties have reason to doubt how tapped into the admin the media apparatus is as the admin seems keen on beating on it rather than filling it with juice. Might be that Trump doesn't like his cabinet using the Fake News traditional messaging apparatus, so this is technically a way to work around that. Wading into pure conjecture any which way. I'm not sure if there's a more sensational way to leak stuff if that is what occurred here.

This leak makes Hegseth look like a fool, and his crying about it afterwards and suggesting it wasn't real even after the White House confirmed it made him look like a clown. I don't think he (or any other politician in his position) would be willing to do that just to make a more convincing leak.

This suggests that Hegseth didn't know and did not consent to it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't set-up by someone else. I'd guess Waltz is most likely since he sent the invite. But yeah, there's a large number of less embarrassing ways to leak information to journalists to write a story. I'm not at all convinced on planned or intended. It's a remote possibility. Bad practice and incompetence is leading the race for me.

But if it is understood as being leaked on purpose then it becomes just more public noise.

If it wasn't gross incompetence, and I personally will not rule that out, then this is the motive I'd expect. Even if you take this as sincere incompetence, then the similar sincerity of Euroskepticism in the chat is as much / more concerning than the use of the chat.

Why? The Euroskepticism was perfectly appropriate, unlike the use of Signal. The Euros probably already know that's how the Trump administration (and honestly, likely Democratic administrations as well) think about them. Releasing it makes the mutual knowledge into common knowledge (that is, it's saying the quiet part out loud), but Trump doesn't seem to care about that in general even if it wasn't on purpose here.

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