Donald Trump the Megathread part II - mod warnings in OP, Updated 18/03/25

Leroy42

No, it wasn't deliberate, that is giving these people far too much credit.

They are massively lucky that the number that was added was this particular journalist. It could have been anyone, and clearly, there are no ongoing checks to ensure security.

Russia, China etc will now be looking to infiltrate these groups as clearly there are no checks in place to check the lists.

Hegeseth should be gone. The man has no experience and clearly is not up to the job. He should have already submitted his phone, and any other devices, for review and a complete review of all communication channels should be already be taking place.

Hegeseth cannot be trusted. This isn't a mistake that you can simply wave away and 'learn from'. Its 101, basic bloody operational stuff.

Hegseth should be treated as the major security risk that he clearly his. And I very much doubt this is the only time, which begs the question just how compromised is he at this point? If we take Trump's lie, then Hegeseth didn't even own up to the FU, which makes it even worse. He either knew and buried it to save himself, or he didn't know and thus he cannot say with any certainty what other information he has compromised.

JD Vance has also made a serious issue for himself. He is openly disagreeing with the POTUS and letting others know about it. So this is a two-pronged problem for Trump. Fail to deal with Hegeseth and he clearly has no care about the security of the US. Failure to censure Vance makes him look weak and as soon as the Mid-terms are done he is done as POTUS.

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295646#Comment_123295646

Let’s me clear, it’s only a view I’m leaning towards- I may well be wrong.
I don’t know the journalist but given his actions and discretion I imagine he was deemed trustworthy at the time - but yes, while you make the clear point that his addition to the chat was unlikely a deliberate act, considering Musk more than likely had a briefing on war strategy regardless of the White House denials, I don’t discount any levels of crazy at this stage- if you disbelieve everything issued from the White House, you won’t go far wrong 😂

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295642#Comment_123295642

They are not

Not that there is need for intelligence anyways, the clowns will just publicly share their plots

https://news.sky.com/story/pathetic-european-free-loading-what-was-said-in-leaked-group-chat-13335365

Kermit.de.frog

The message about countries in Europe freeloading is 100% correct and about time.

Blame the messengers not the message.

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295707#Comment_123295707

No it’s not, most of the shipping traffic in the Red Sea is Chinese and Russian dark fleet

But hey not like you ever cared about facts

You might also want to flip to the pages in history books about Suez crisis and US participation and pressure in it and their aims, they literally didn’t want Europeans to protect that part of world

Kermit.de.frog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295734#Comment_123295734

Europe has freeloaded on the US for defence since WW2. That is a fact, not a debate.

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295749#Comment_123295749

You might also want to take a look at map at where the Red Sea is

Your self loathing and traitorous hate of anything European (while looking at map also check where Ireland is in relation to European continent) has reached desperate new heights

Kermit.de.frog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295753#Comment_123295753

Ireland has been a freeloader as well, clearly.

thatsdaft

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295766#Comment_123295766

You are shifting goalposts not being able to prove that europe is freeloading on traffic going thru Red Sea, if you cast your eyes to recent history european navies also constituted majority of the warships that did protect traffic in this area in last few years

Yes Ireland and Europe has underspent on defence

But that’s precisely what US wanted and was their policy for 80 years now until Trump came along

Just like the MAGAts you have no knowledge of geography, economics or history and are assuming people will swallow drivel and lies unquestionably

Cluedo Monopoly

I just read about that Signal group chat. Unbelievable stuff. Amazing insight on the other clowns surrounding Trump. I didn't know who half the names were. The lack of professionalism is staggering.

I have always wondered when Trump will start to fire people - before 100 days or after. I think it might be before. I predicted long ago that Musk would get a P45 by summer. Others could follow soon.

twinytwo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295707#Comment_123295707

So you are going to ignore the reality of the situation, European history and US foreign policy since WW2? Fair enough.

What exactly does the US bombing Yemen for its actions in the red sea as a result of Israeli actions in Gaza have to do with Europe?… by all means expand on our "freeloading" - clearly you have superior sources of information.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295663#Comment_123295663

Hegeseth should be gone.

He should never have got the position in the first place because he was demonstrably unsuited for such a role. He's a weekend warrior now in charge of the most powerful military in the world, simply because he'll bend the knee to a manchild wannabe dictator. It's a ludicrous scenario. You wouldn't even see such an obvious wrong way to doing things in a computer game.

which begs the question just how compromised is he at this point?

The bigger question is how much everyone in this admin is compromised, from the top down. It's clear that Putin is pulling Trump's strings and the obsequious, lickspittle, nature of Trump's cabinet picks display a compromise all of its own.

These people are extremely dangerous, because they're utterly reckless and care only for their own self aggrandisement.

The only hope for that country is if they get a right kicking at the mid terms and some sort of normality can return to the proceedings over there. Because right now it's an absolute car crash.

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295707#Comment_123295707

That's a complete misreading of post war European history. The Americans wanted to keep Europe relatively weak militarily for two reasons: to stop them fighting amongst themselves but also long term to prevent Europe becoming a military pole to rival it. By providing the defence umbrella, the US knew Europe could never stray too far from it's policy goals, ensuring communism stayed behind the iron curtain.

AbusesToilets

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295209#Comment_123295209

In fairness, Signal is open source and frequently audited. It's currently the best secure messaging platform available. EFF and other privacy focused organisations promote it for that reason. Israel and Russia are constantly trying to undermine it. Alternatives like Wicker or Wire have transparency or functionality issues. Regardless, there's no hand waving this away. Multiple violations of the law in this text thread, if not outright felonies. Average service member would be quick marched to Leavenworth for doing a fraction of what happened in this incidence.

All_in_Flynn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295749#Comment_123295749

You've fallen hook line and sinker for the MAGA rhetoric.

It was America itself who wanted to de-fang the European nations and act as the guardians. Former President Eisenhower was concerned about how we as European's seemed to like to fight each other too much.

This has suited America for decades. But now that Trump is throwing soundbites around and it's gullible people like yourself who lap it up. He'll get what he want's - Europe will without doubt now increase military spending. But it's going to come at a cost to America who will become more isolated. For the time being they can no longer be trusted to govern themselves coherently. An ally, yes but a stupid one.

Field east

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123294429#Comment_123294429

there are ONLY TWO things going on under the Trump administration that have potentially very serious consequences for world order and the world economy Ie (1)bringing US industry / businesses operation overseas and. (2) the 180 degree turn re its relationship with Russia.

So let’s assume that it will be a democratic president the next and with the support of congress both of the above can be turned around though it might take several years.

With the way Trump is behaving he probably will have enough people pi - - ed off by the next election that the GOP may not get in to that seat of power

If your typical Overseas US overseas business thinks that they are better off staying overseas then they can ‘drag out’ their return until 2028

Things could also change if Trump Is attacked by a ‘flu’ that he never recovers from

amandstu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295663#Comment_123295663

Not A serious point ,perhaps but did you notice his uncanny resemblance to Jim Carrey as he laid into the Atlantic?

Dumb ,Dumber and Hegseth.

Edit Vance can't be fired.Is this bad for him?

LambshankRedemption

8 years ago, we were in the early days of Trump Whitehouse 1.0 and it felt like there was a firing of some high level members of the new administration every other day. I just looked it up, General Flynn was fired on February 17th. This time around, I'm not familiar with any (so far!). Maybe this latest revelation will be the straw that breaks the the camels back. Will we see a new wave of firings?

aloyisious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295766#Comment_123295766

And Greenland?

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295888#Comment_123295888

It's currently the best secure messaging platform that is available to anyone. I think most of the shock from this revelation stems from, considering the massive defence budget, that they were using an off the shelf application. If they were using their own application, even if it was a fork of the Signal code, it would have been impossible to accidentally add a leading journalist to the discussion.

Suckler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295749#Comment_123295749

Just because you imagine something; it does not make it a "fact".

fly_agaric

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295749#Comment_123295749

It is not a fact. Below is a potted history of Europe since WW2.

First it was mostly in ruins after destroying itself, hardly in a fit state to defend itself from anyone.

The USA could have demobilised, exited affairs in Europe stage left after defeating the Nazis, and everything as far as France might have become some kind of Soviet puppet states under threat of military force from Stalin's armies or something…but it was a different country and they had wiser leaders back then and understood that probably was not a smart thing for the US to do (apart from any moral aspect of leaving people in W. Europe potentially to suffer under Communist dictatorships).

Up to late 80s and end of Cold war Europe remained an arena of conflict between US/USSR and their world visions, the main and most important one.

During the Cold war both "Western" and "Eastern" European allies (most of latter now in the EU) of the 2 superpowers rearmed very heavily and they contributed significantly to military power that would be used on the side of each superpower in Europe, if the Cold war ever turned hot.

Europeans decided to reduce their militaries and spending on them after Cold war ended, which I think was natural since the main threat to them (Soviet Union) was gone and their US "protector" was still very much a firm ally and a friend and the last standing superpower, who nobody would dare challenge militarily anyway unless they had a death wish.

You are right that could be categorised as "freeloading", but until quite recently (perhaps 2010s) the US did not mind too much and certainly preferred that situation to alternative of Europe as a collective ever becoming a military power itself, and perhaps independent in policy to the US.

They still don't really want that IMO. They might want Europeans to buy some more US weapons, that's about the size of it. The people in this admin./and what now seems like the majority of modern Republican party just hate us, and they currently want to weaken and divide us for several other reasons.

They likely will continue that policy until we elect more politicians they approve of (i.e. dumb far right populists/wannabe autocrats with their paws out for a buck anywhere they can get it, who will do as they are told).

everlast75

I read online someone just called it Whiskeyleaks. 💀

aloyisious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295929#Comment_123295929

I'd wait for the return of one of the disappeared or a two-post promotion inside the Admin team. They do exist. I would not want Bannon resurrected.

Reportedly the person listed as being officially in charge of Doge is not Musk but Amy Gleason as Administrator of Doge while she holds down another position within the Admin. Clearly she is a more capable administrator as she had succeeded [to date] in keeping out of the lamplight.

General Flynn was fired after Trump realised that the advice he got from Obama not to hire him was real-time gold. Obama had also terminated Flynn as head of the DIA during his time in office.

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295017#Comment_123295017

Nothing wrong with the investigation, but I don't see heads rolling. Certainly not many, and those that will I don't think will be soon. On the legal side, we have precedent. Nothing happened after the Clinton email thing, even though the investigation concluded that multiple contents should have been classified. They weren't, there was no mishandling of materials marked as sensitive, so there was no specific violation. Thus seems to be the case here. Or, in other words, errors were made, but it wasn't enough to warrant prosecution.

The difference isn't legal, it's competence. Clinton and those she communicated with didn't CC reporters (or as far as I know anyone who shouldn't have been in the loop). The military routinely fires people for "loss of confidence" in their abilities. However, despite the lack of experience and confidence many of us may personally have had in some of the appointees, Congress still confirmed them. For that same Congress to do more than censure the people in question, those Congressmen will have to effectively reverse themselves only a short time after they expressed their confidence. I don't see that happening, there will probably be tut-tutting, maybe a slap on the wrist. If it's important enough to the voters , I guess we'll see in about a year and a half.

I agree with your last paragraph in its entirety, and as far as I'm concerned, they are certainly not increasing their chances that I will vote for them or those who appointed them. I didn't before, but I'm only one voter. Apparently I'm not in a sufficient plurality.

AbusesToilets

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123296073#Comment_123296073

Sorry Manic, but there was clear mishandling of highly classified material here. This was TS level information that would only be accessible in a scif, being transmitted on an unapproved platform. That's before one even gets into disclosing said information to a person without clearance to receive it. I'm addition, the deleting of conversations are a violation of federal records laws.

aloyisious

Sometimes, for the sake of confidence in the ranks, it's necessary to wash ones laundry in quiet and I think that will be what will happen here. The offender against Trump's peace of mind may be shuffled sideways to a nothing post as a sign of Trumps displeasure while the others involved in the text chat will heed the cabinet re-shuffle. The only thing to worry about is if Trump resurrects the career of some-one he had fired in the past to fill a spot vacated in any sideways shuffle. Bannon is still knocking on the door from outside.

I keep in mind that the way AH kept his appointees on their toes in the 1930's was by playing their ambitions against each other forcing them to curry for his favour.

Incidental to moves of Trump appointees, Louis De Joy has left the USPS with immediate effect not retiring as planned next month. It seems he had differences with Elon Musk over access to USPS staff data.

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123295209#Comment_123295209

It's not waste, though. Signal is a free app.

The point is true about the indictment. The US is great at making high-end weapons, but hasn't the best record in other areas. Last week Hegseth announced the cancellation of an expensive, never-gotten-right-after-years piece of HR software. Turns out it was the Defense Civilian Human Resources Management System, started in 2018 and implementation scheduled for one year, with a $36mn budget. In 2025 it was still not quite right, the budget had hit $280mn.

At the time, however, because he didn't specify what it was in his video, most of us thought it was an entirely different new HR software system, which itself has taken years to implement and still isn't quite right.

The reality is that Signal is generally good enough, as long as there isn't an accident, and I'm not sure in the prioritisation of things that the DoD (or NSA or CIA or any other TLA) needs to do, such a software trumps anything else they need to spend money on. Unfortunately, most security leaks are entirely accidental, and there are few useful ways of exchanging information which are not subject to failure when the human element is involved. Special Order 191 comes to mind.

Virgil°

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123294922#Comment_123294922

It was certainly stupid, which goes back to the issue of possible censure by Congress. Will heads roll? I doubt it, though the National Security Council and Armed Services Committees have both started looking into it, to start with.

It was more than stupid. Stupid was adding the reporter to the chat by mistake. This was pure recklessness, fecklessness and incompetence. Running highly classified data and the highest levels of sensitive governmental operations through an app that is only a stones throw away from a WhatsApp group as a matter of process (because there's no way this is a once off) is not "stupid". That's outrageously downplaying the seriousness of this.

I doubt there's anyone in the military chain of command who doesn't use Signal. It's been an issue identified at the J6 level for years, but nobody's done anything about it yet, probably because there is no affordable alternative. Still, Four months ago the FBI recommended that people (everyone, not just government) move to apps like Signal because it was considered more secure.

This is sidestepping the issue. I work for a large multinational. I and just about every other one of my colleagues have personal cellphones. It could be said of just about every one of us that we "use WhatsApp" hell we even use "unsecured and unencrypted whatsapp groups". We may even chat about work related topics in those WhatsApp groups. Replace whatsapp with "signal" or any other off the shelf consumer level app.

If it was discovered that I was exposing confidential customer data in said groups however. I and everyone in those groups would certainly be fired and potentially be in some amount legal trouble.

Our workplace provides laptops and cellphones with a high level of in-built security and encryption. We are required to take regular trainings to ensure that we align with up to date security protocols. And I'm not running the largest and most important military and intelligence apparatus in the world. I'm not at the tippy top upper echelons of the worlds most powerful government. I'm as close to a ground level grunt as you can get.

Words cannot describe the utterly staggering, world shaking, levels of f*ckup that this is. This is the kind of mess up that could easily threaten global security. It could cost you your life. I'm really confused as to why you're attempting to downplay this to any degree.

From the definitions and examples found there and what I've been able to gather from the articles, the information would have been considered at least "Confidential." That doesn't trigger the requirements of a SCIF or secret networks. Maybe some information would have been "Secret", I presume the investigating agencies will come to a conclusion on that.

Mostly because Goldberg from the Atlantic exercised more discretion than all other participants in this group and has redacted or not included information he deemed too sensitive to share. And left the group before even its likely conclusion.

But again downplaying. The real issue is not even this particular operation or classified information set. But how the highest levels of your government are choosing to operate. As I said before. This isn't a once off. This is just the one f*ckup that we know about.

Regardless, even the most secure system is going to fail when someone does something stupid.

The point again is that they weren't even attempting to USE said system. So that's completely moot. I mean the government of America will build a SCIF room in your goddamn house if they deem it appropriate. There really is no excuse.

LambshankRedemption

It's not waste, though. Signal is a free app.

It's free but whats more it's Open Source. So it would have been very easy to fork it (the process of downloading the source code and modifying it), rebrand it as something else, remove some of the features, like disappearing messages that break federal rules, host it somewhere internally and only let certain people download and use it. A couple of software engineers from the NSA could have easily done that. And if someone makes a typo when creating a group chat it would have responded "EG is not on SecSig". This leak therefore could not have happened. Funny how tech genius Elon Musk didn't suggest something like that.