Commentary: Trump’s Signal Weakness

By Abe Greenwald

One of the most frightening aspects of the Signal group-chat scandal is the least discussed. It gives our enemies the impression of a hapless American national-security apparatus. This will surely inform their future calculations. 

Think of it. According to the transcript of the exposed chat, the vice president, secretary of defense, and various high-level U.S. officials are fulminating in tough-guy mode about “European freeloading,” which will come as nothing new to European heads of state. But if you’re Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, you look at the very fact of the revealed messages and think, “How did we get so lucky?” 

If a Russian or Chinese defense official butt-dialed a journalist into a discussion of a planned bombing attack, heads would literally roll. For Putin and Xi, information discipline is a deadly serious matter. Authoritarian regimes foster a culture of fear around secrecy in order to preserve their strength. They look at our text-happy blabbermouths and see weakness.

They’re not entirely wrong. No matter the issue, the Trump administration’s biggest weakness really is indiscipline. From DOGE’s showboating, to ICE’s sloppy deportation prep, to the Justice Department’s overenthusiasm, to Vance’s public dyspepsia, to planning military strikes on a messaging app, the root problem isn’t a penchant for tyranny, oligarchy, or unconstitutionality; it’s wild impulsivity. We’re governed by ADHD patients who seem unable to govern themselves. 

And, of course, it starts at the top. Donald Trump all but makes policy from his own social-media platform Truth Social. Sometimes he does so late at night, as when he “hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” Joe Biden’s pardons for members of the House Select committee on January 6. He dreamed up that quasi-official decree at 12:35 A.M.

In Trump’s world, you do as he does. If he wears blue suits and red ties, so do you. If he likes tariffs, you now like tariffs. If he hates Ukraine, you’re done with Ukraine. And if he takes a loosey-goosey, break-things-and-have-fun approach to policy and affairs of state, you end up on a compromised Signal chat using all caps to call Europe “PATHETIC” while disclosing war plans to Jeffrey Goldberg. As did Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who also followed the Trump template in then calling Goldberg a “so-called journalist.” Only he judged wrong, as the White House had already confirmed Goldberg’s story. 

Hegseth is a wild card who’s new to this level of responsibility. But group indiscipline spreads, and it infects even those who should know better. Which is how National Security Adviser Mike Waltz ended up in the chat and inadvertently invited Goldberg to sit in on it.

Government officials are apparently allowed to use Signal to schedule meetings, not bombings. But a serious national-security team wouldn’t even use it for that. Kremlin teams have long been at work hacking away at the app. Why should they potentially get the jump on a meeting of U.S. foreign-policy decisionmakers? If nothing else, Signal and similar platforms should be taken off of all federal employees’ devices and machines. Trump could make it official and announce it on Truth Social.

But, of course, someone should be fired over this. Trump often says that Biden never fired anyone, no matter how bad a job the person did. He’s right. And it’s true that Trump has no problem getting rid of people. But, here too, Trump acts impulsively. He fires those he doesn’t like, not necessarily those who need firing. If everyone involved in this embarrassment keeps their jobs, that too sends a message abroad.

This administration is hard to read with any consistency. As Americans, we look at the occasional absurdities and think, “I hope someone serious is in there keeping this thing together.” Moscow and Beijing, however, look at the administration and fear that things aren’t as confused as they sometimes seem. The Signal blunder gives us more reason to worry and gives our enemies less reason to fear the United States.

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.

The spirit of Lent in Jubilee years

(Roberto de Mattei)

Most people are unaware of or have forgotten what Lent is. Yet the Catechism of Pope Saint Pius X was very clear, calling it “a season of fasting and penance instituted by the Church according to apostolic tradition”. In the following paragraph, Saint Pius X explained its ends:

“To make known to us the obligation we have to do penance all through our lives; to imitate in some way the rigorous fast of forty days that Jesus Christ did in the desert; to prepare ourselves by means of penance for a holy celebration of Easter.” (No 36)

 

But often for good Catholics who do not forget about it, Lent is reduced to a few ascetic practices: fasting, mortifications, almsgiving, certainly praiseworthy and always recommended by the Church, but not sufficient to transmit to us the spirit of Lent, which is first of all that of detaching ourselves more deeply from sin and embracing the will of God with greater generosity.

Benedict XVI, in his Message for Lent 2009, recalls that in the first pages of Sacred Scripture the Lord commands man to abstain from consuming the forbidden fruit: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen 2:16–17). This injunction that God gave to Adam is the first precept of abstinence from food that man receives. Commenting on the divine injunction, Saint Basil writes that “the ‘you shall not eat’ is, therefore, the law of fasting and abstinence”.1 So, Benedict XVI goes on to observe, if Adam disobeyed the Lord’s command “not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, “the believer, through fasting intends to submit himself humbly to God, trusting in His goodness and mercy.“2

More:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/124256074

BREAKING: Cesare Sacchetti on Pope Francis’ condition

“I see that some, the usual charlatans in bad faith, are claiming that we wrote that Bergoglio was dead. Never said anything of the sort. Just look at the previous writings. We wrote that he was in serious health conditions and that he was not able to do anything that those false bulletins attributed to him. Even his doctors, despite the thousand contradictions, said that he was at the end of his life. Today's statement confirms what was written. Francis appears at best like a vegetable, so much so that the Santa Marta circle itself says that he has at the most two months remaining.”

ANALYSIS DEFUND Planned Parenthood: Dehumanizing preborn children while harvesting their body parts

 By Cassy Cooke | March 12, 2025 , 08:38am 

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Planned Parenthood still inexplicably receives hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, despite numerous scandals, criminal activities, and continual lies. And starting a decade ago, undercover journalists from the Center for Medical Progress sought to expose one of the most gruesome aspects of this corporation: its partnerships with fetal tissue harvesters.

In the Human Capital Project, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP)’s pro-life investigators, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, went undercover for two years to expose Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in the body parts of aborted children. They found that, even as Planned Parenthood denied the humanity of the preborn children it killed, it often sought to profit from the sales of the babies’ body parts.

LYING ABOUT HEARTBEATS AND PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT

One of the biggest criticisms leveled against Planned Parenthood is that it has a history of lying about prenatal development. Staffers have been caught calling preborn babies in the first trimester “undeveloped blobs,” with one staffer specifically saying that organs aren’t present in the first trimester.

One staffer was caught lying about a 1o-week preborn child in a Live Action undercover investigation, saying, “[A]t this point, there’s nothing developed at all. There’s no legs, no arms, no brain, no heart,” At this point, it’s just the embryo itself” (emphasis added). Yet preborn children have remarkable development in the first trimester:

Video, more: https://www.liveaction.org/news/defund-planned-parenthood-dehumanizing-preborn-harvesting-parts/

GRAPHIC WARNING: Up to 17,000 Slaughtered in Syria as World Remains Silent

 The genocide of Alawites and Christians in Syria continues as the mainstream media continues to downplay the thousands of dead. Death toll estimates range between 7,000 and 17,000.

More than 7,000 Christians and Alawites have been “slaughtered” in Syria, according to Greek Member of the European Parliament, Nikolas Farantouris, a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Security & Defense, who visited Damascus on 8-9 March, Greek City Times reports.

“Basically, what happened is (President Mohammed Al-Jolani) sent his Al-Qaida gangs to Latakia to suppress the Alawite civilians there under the claim they are (Assad) Regime remnants,” said Armenian Christian YouTuber Kevork Almassian. “Kids, children, newborn babies, women and men have been executed in daylight in the streets, all documented on video because the goal is not only to kill, but they are having pleasure by killing all these ordinary people.”

Photos, more: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/03/graphic-warning-up-17000-slaughtered-syria-as-world/

Trump Judge Rebuffs Catholic Bishops – Refuses to Order White House to Continue Flow of Money to Catholic Groups for Their Open Borders Work with Illegal Aliens

 

Photo credit: depositphotos.com

By Jim Hoft Mar. 11, 2025 8:40 pm

Federal Judge Timothy McFadden, a Trump appointee to the district court in Washington, refused on Tuesday to order the Trump administration to restart money flowing to Catholic groups supporting open borders and unlimited migration into the United States.

According to the Washington Times, Judge McFadden says the dispute is a contract matter that should be taken up in the Court of Federal Claims.

McFadden’s order comes after the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on February 19th, challenging the administration’s decision to suspend federal funding for refugee resettlement.

The move comes as part of President Donald Trump’s broader effort to realign American priorities—protecting the homeland first, rather than funding programs that facilitate unchecked migration and open borders, something the US Catholic Bishops support.

More: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/03/trump-judge-refuses-order-white-house-continue-flow/

Lent meditation: the sword of truth

 In the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of His glory, and when the dead shall rise again from corruption incorruptible, i Cor. xv. 53, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones of judgment, condemning the twelve tribes of Israel, because, when ye believed in Me, they would not. John iii. 18. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My Name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life. This place agreeth well with that other where the Saviour saith I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. Matth. x. 34. Every one, therefore, that hath set no store by affection, and riches, and the pleasures of the world, for Christ's faith's sake, and the preaching of the Gospel, shall receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

- S Jerome