Never one to pass up the opportunity to pump up a party, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has gone retro and started using the free commercial phone app Signal that lets people listen in to his cool defense department ideas like missile deployment and bombing run dates.  “That’s Pete,” said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.  He’ll get a wild hair, spike up a martini, and call a meeting.  Usually he prattles on about missiles and drones and army stuff.  It gets kind of confusing.  But he’s all about transparency and having a good time, so it’s nice he figured out a way to provide a chat room that is so easily accessible.

With pressure mounting concerning the appropriatness of using a commercial app to conduct a defense department conference involving classified material, President Trump had this to say.  “There was no classified information involved.  I know because I’m the president and can declassify anything I want.  So if this was classified, I now declare it unclassified.  I dont’ know if it was classified because this is the first I’ve heard about this thing, whatever it  is.  But this is another example of the lame-stream media pushing their Trump Derangement Syndrome, and there’s no one more deranged than this Atlantic magazine guy.  It’s a crappy magazine by the way.  Sales are way down.  Nobody reads it.  This is the guy that should be going to jail! This Goldberg guy.  He should have spoken up!  It’s like the old Ma Bell party line.  Remember that?  Back in the 50’s.  We love the 50’s don’t we.  We had a party line when I was little.  Lot’s of yelling on the phone back then. ‘Get off the phone! It’s my turn!’  Old man Snyder.  Big man, old man, always hogging the phone line.  It’s like that.  Get off the line!  This whole thing is just a big hoax.  Another witch hunt!  Guys like Goldberg are scum,  always nosing  around where they have no business.  How the hell did this guy get on this call anyway?”

Seriously, that is a very  large question.  We do know the “who” part.  That is National Security Advisor Mike Walz.  The Jeff Goldberg chat invite came from him and he admitted it.   Entwined in the obfuscation and flat out lying by participants in this monumental fiasco is that undeniable fact he had to admit was true.  Given that taking responsibilty for anything by anyone in the Trump administration is the moral and political equivalent of a root canal procedure, at least Walz didn’t try to muck things up with typical Republican denial and deflection.  But when it came to the “how” part, watching him try and explain that to Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham was downright painful to watch.  Somehow Goldberg’s phone number just got “sucked in” to Walz’s phone, according to Walz.  So Walz figured, and probably rightfully so knowing Trump’s distain for unfaltering media,  it was less damning to admit to using a device  that vacuums up phone numbers from strangers than admitting he has had conversations with Goldberg.

You can bet Trump is very concerned about the “how.”  Walz  knows that.  And whenever he thinks about his vindictive boss contemplating  the “how,” his response, one typically barely heard, could very well be audible to anyone in the next room.  What Walz has to say about the “how” in that context is “Gulp.”