{"id":3932,"date":"2025-03-29T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=3932"},"modified":"2025-03-29T11:00:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T11:00:06","slug":"opinion-the-trump-white-houses-signal-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=3932","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | The Trump White House\u2019s Signal Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\u201cIt\u2019s not the crime; it\u2019s the cover-up\u201d is a horrible clich\u00e9 of Washington journalism, but nonetheless it fits the Signal scandal that engulfed the Trump administration this week.<\/p>\n

The apparently unwitting inclusion of Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, in high-level national security preparations for a strike against the Houthis, is both a great story and a grave embarrassment. But it\u2019s not nearly as fundamentally damaging as the wall-to-wall coverage might suggest.<\/p>\n

The Trump White House\u2019s reflexive attempt to attack the messenger, on the other hand, is an illustration of the new administration\u2019s biggest political problem: its difficulty in speaking to anyone who isn\u2019t already invested in its cause.<\/p>\n

The scandal itself belongs to the world of Trump\u2019s first term, when an administration took power unprepared and stumbled through various chaotic episodes that yielded similarly stumblebum attempts to take the White House down. The artistic touchstone<\/a> for these follies was the Coen brothers\u2019 mordant comedy \u201cBurn After Reading,\u201d a Washington movie about hapless people blundering their way through an imagined world of international skulduggery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n