I have been rather hard on the new Trump presidency in this space, particularly when it diverges excessively from conservative orthodoxy. I was hoping to write this week on some of the good things coming from the new administration — the determination to actually try and reduce the size of government, the long-overdue rolling back of the administrative state, and so forth.

And then President Donald Trump’s national security team had to go and do that.

There are a few things to unpack concerning the revelation The Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg, of all people, was inadvertently admitted into a Signal chat discussing pending strikes on Houthi terrorists who have spent the last couple years effectively blockading the Suez Canal to all but Iranian, Russian and Chinese shipping. The first is it was clearly a — how to put this delicately — major screw-up on the part of the President’s NatSec team. It makes little difference whether or not the contents of the group chat were technically classified — and they either were or were not, either Goldberg or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are unequivocally wrong on that point; the important datum is it ought to have been treated as the military secret it clearly was. There will (God, I hope) be some serious reviews of procedures that answer questions such as what the hell this type of conversation was doing on a Signal chat group in the first place. The very fact an unauthorized person could be admitted into such a communication is reason enough to officially forbid its use in such instances.

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The administration’s official response has preposterously made a bad situation worse. Rather than glossing over it, a simple statement by the president along the lines of “a serious mistake was made. It will be addressed. It will never happen again” would be in order. How difficult would that be? By now I reckon more than a few of us have reflected on the fact we have done something similar — not accidentally discussed active and pending defense matters with an unauthorized reporter, mind you, but inadvertently admitted someone into a Zoom or text thread, or mistakenly “replied all” to an email. Mistakes happen, and reasonable minds can argue whether or not this particular mistake warrants the termination of someone’s federal employment; but refusing even to admit the rather obvious fact something went spectacularly wrong here does little to reassure the American people, the U.S. military, or our allies the problem will be rectified.

Of course, part of that wariness lies in the fact this is hardly the first time something like this has happened. During at least the last four administrations, national security has been largely treated as an inconsequential sideshow, an annoying part of government to be tolerated while focusing on policies that test well within the party-base focus groups. Yes, the parallels with Hillary Clinton’s flippant and cavalier mishandling of classified emails are clear and pertinent to the wider discussion, and should no more be dismissed by Democrats as irrelevant than used by Republicans as exculpatory by comparison. Nor is it just these two instances — remember the 2013 mass breach of federal Office of Personnel Management data? Or the 2020 breach of DNC emails? In fact, the problem arguably started back when then-President Bill Clinton’s CIA Director John Deutch was caught entering retirement from government service with laptops jam-packed with classified data.

Is it too much to ask someone in the federal government figure out how to synchronize modern communication technology with the need for protecting national secrets?

Aside from the event itself, there is the issue of what was actually revealed. In this case, the most disconcerting revelation may be the thought process of Vice President JD Vance. Throughout the discussion he pushed back on the military operation, which Hegseth correctly pointed out was in the furtherance of “Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest” and reestablishing deterrence, both stated objectives of President Trump. Said Vice President Vance: “I think we are making a mistake… 3% of U.S. trade runs through the Suez… 40% of European trade does.” And later, “I just hate bailing out Europe again.” One can almost hear him channeling John Lennon, singing, “All we are saying, is give peace a chance.”

Vice President Vance’s mischaracterization of the geopolitical situation is almost as objectionable as his blatant championing for the abdication of American leadership of the free world. This whole episode is a pity for the Trump administration, in no small part because it centers on what should have been Trump’s greatest moment of his second presidency so far — a highly effective strike against a terrorist group, after years of tolerance that granted our adversaries control of a key shipping lane. Oh, how I would have preferred to write about that.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.