All right. Welcome back. More now on the fallout from our top story, the Trump administration confirming a stunning leak of secret military Battle Channel plans in a signal group chat. I want to bring in now the former national security adviser in President Trump’s first term, John Bolton. Ambassador Bolton, thanks very much for being on the show.
Glad to be with you. So let’s just start with this. What was your reaction to learning about these secret plans being communicated in The Signal group chat? Well, I was shocked and, I really I was without words, and, I say that not not because I’m more virtuous than anybody who was in that that group. I just couldn’t imagine it was happening.
I couldn’t imagine anybody would use signal. you know, some of the guests have commented that signal’s highly encrypted. I’ll just say this. If you think signal is equivalent to U.S.
government secure telecommunications, think again. so all the consequences you’ve been discussing, are obviously going to be, enormously important, but I just can’t to this moment get over the idea that during the days that group was going on, not one of the participants said, we shouldn’t be doing this on signal.
Sir, do you know of anything like this happening in Trump’s first term? I’m certainly not aware of it. I mean, I didn’t even use the government’s unclassified or classified email systems that much.
most of the things that, were covered in, what was recorded in the Atlantic article should have been discussed in the Situation Room in a principals committee meeting or a full NSC chaired by the president. It looks to me like this was a typical Donald Trump decision. Let’s bomb the hoodies that then everybody raced to implement without talking about the implications, including, for example, Vice President Vance apparently on this chain saying, I don’t agree with this. why are they discussing it after the decision is made? That alone shows what’s what’s wrong with what’s going on here.
Ultimately, if people can’t attend the Situation Room, you’re on a secure government line. You’re not on WhatsApp or signal. and some of these issues, honestly, it’s old fashioned, I know, but they should only be discussed face to face where people can have it out if they have a disagreement. Not on an email chain. sir, do you think somebody should be fired over this?
listen, Donald Trump’s not going to fire anybody unless he thinks this redound to his personal detriment. and we’ll see what happens. do you think that this is worse than what Hillary Clinton did with her private email in 2016? I know you were very critical then. Yeah, I was very critical then.
And, you know, we call this process learning, that when somebody does something like what she did, whether she deserved to be prosecuted or anything else, that goes into the memory in the body politic.
How can you then turn around and conduct? Let’s forget the classification issue. How can you conduct official government business over non-official channel? Maybe there’s some in extreme a situation when you’re, you’re on, Samoa or something and there aren’t any official channels, but it’s that’s they were they were in Washington probably in their offices.
I just as I say, I words fail me here. I cannot even imagine this happening.
Sir, do you think that Trump administration officials broke the law when they had this signal chat? You know, I don’t know enough about it, but I’ll tell you this. Just like Donald Trump isn’t going to fire anybody whether they deserve to be fired or not, unless he feels that he personally, I have zero faith that this Justice Department will prosecute anybody.
Zero. Mr. Ambassador, I want to play for you what President Trump so far has said about this. He was asked about it, by reporters who were covering a different event with him at the white House.
Let’s watch.
I don’t know anything about it. Yet you’re telling me about it for the first time. So he says there that he’s being told about it for the first time. Now, when that happened, the story had been out. And, you know, in the in the banners, on various news networks, for a couple of hours at do you buy what the president said there?
no, because he, he sits in his dining room, or at least in his first term and watched, Fox mostly occasionally tune in to CNN. But maybe even MSNBC, but mostly Fox.
If Fox had it on the news in the past several hours, then he knows about it for sure. Or somebody like Dan Scavino would have run in and told him. But notwithstanding that, now you’ve got him on tape saying he’s hearing about it for the first time.
Now we’ll see if he feels any heat, if he doesn’t feel the heat. These people are golden. They’re in for as long as they can stay. sir, do you think. Are you convinced that the Chinese or the Russians or any of our adversaries had access to this information as it was being communicated?
Do you think it was fundamentally insecure and possibly widely disseminated? You know, I don’t I don’t really know enough about, what they were up to to be able to comment on that. I would just say this. We have government secure communications facilities for a reason. They may not be perfect either, but there isn’t anything else that’s as good.
How how else? How more how clear can I be on that point? That’s why you don’t use non-official channels for official business, and especially not for business.
That’s sensitive or classified. it I just, it’s, it’s a very simple point, and you would think that somebody on this chain would have figured it out unless it, bespeaks of a wider pattern of behavior that goes well beyond the events dealing with the strikes on Yemen.
What’s your assessment of how Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, handled this situation? And he watched this unfold. He when he realized it was legitimate, he took himself off. He did write that this happened, but he did redact significant, classified information that he was then privy to. It was not published in The Atlantic.
Overall, did he do the right thing? Well, from a very brief reading of the article, I didn’t see anything to criticize. I think his initial reaction that it might be a scam. It’s somebody trying to entrap a journalist, or it might be a spoof or who knows what. It was legitimate for him to stay on, whether he should have cut it off early or not.
I think that’s a question that, reasonable people can disagree on. I didn’t see anything in the article that looked to me to be, worse than a general description of what was in there.
So I don’t think he released any classified information. But again, I just say, why are we having this conversation? How could you?
I don’t know who put this chain together, but, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have such a I can’t I just can’t even suggest. I was going to say I put somebody who had technical capabilities to put it together. All right. Ambassador John Bolton really very much appreciate you scrambling, to come talk to us about this, breaking story. Thanks very much for your time today.
Thank you..
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