The Scandal Will Also Be in How They Brush It Aside
There should be consequences for top government officials convening on Signal to discuss war plans. We fear there won’t be.
We’re getting over a case of the Mondays here at The Bulwark. But not the kind from Office Space. A former colleague worried yesterday afternoon that we “might OD on schadenfreude today.” Alas, we did not! Two months into Trump II, the writers gave us an amazingly comical scandal from the “but her emails” crew. And now, the clean up. Happy Tuesday.
👊🇺🇸🔥
Bill Kristol
If a scandal comes to light and no one does anything about it—is it a real scandal?
I suppose we’ll find out.
Don’t get me wrong: The fact that the most senior national security officials in the United States government hopped on to a commercially available messaging app to discuss details of a forthcoming U.S. military operation is a scandal.
Indeed, their behavior suggests that these officials have been doing this routinely to discuss all manner of issues, including the most highly classified ones. A failure to observe government rules and laws has probably been business as usual for the Trump administration. In other words, a further and more widespread scandal very likely lurks beneath the surface.
A basic investigation would uncover this. But the shockingly irresponsible, cavalierly reckless, and likely illegal conduct of top government officials should lead to more than that. It should be grounds for resignation and perhaps prosecution. It should lead to widespread outrage. It should result in real demands for accountability, not just from the opposition but from the president’s own party. There should be consequences.
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