Inside the Messaging Meltdown of the Signal Chat: From Denial to Damage Control

Foreign. The title says it all inside the messaging meltdown of the signal chat fallout from denial to damage control. But that title doesn't even come close to the title in the Atlantic written by Jeffrey Goldberg. The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans. I don't know the last time you remember the Atlantic coming out with the story that grabbed the headlines for a number of days, but this one certainly did the job on this episode. Let's break down the meltdown. Hey there. Welcome to the PR Breakdown podcast. I'm your host, Molly McPherson, and as I said, that article title in the Atlantic is a great title, but the article itself. Let me bring you back a week. I don't know if this is quite the story where I ask you, where were you when you read or heard about the Atlantic article by Jeffrey Goldberg? But I was traveling. I was in Chicago. I was out of town for a work event. I was speaking at a company, a corporate event. And it was fabulous, by the way. It was a two part trip. The first half of the trip, I was visiting my daughter Kathleen. We were prepping for an interview and also shopping for that first interview, wardrobe capsule. But the second half involved me participating in a corporate event. It was a corporate event in Chicago, downtown. Great setup. It was a great event and my daughter attended that event as well. But this story was on my mind and I didn't really want to weave it into this event, though I did touch on it because here's the disclaimer. It's political. I wanted to come up this story without a bias. I don't want to fall on one side or the other. However, it is impossible to talk about this story without looking and scrutinizing at what the Republicans are doing here. So if you can try to remove the political bias out of this, I don't want to share it via bias. Let's look at this as a nonpartisan take at politics. I'm coming in strictly in a PR crisis management, reputation management mode. But if you know me, you know my ethics and you know just my principle in communication, why this was such a fail. Now, the Atlantic story. This piece is good. One of the reasons why I loved it. Not only was it like a bomb drop, you know, going out and you knew it was going to have legs, it was clever. It had a touch of snark to it as well. Like you could picture yourself as Jeffrey Goldberg and he brought you through so many of the stages. And what I didn't truly appreciate until days later when I read it again is not only Is he writing a story, which isn't easy, and he's writing it on deadline because they likely wanted to get it out because the. The attack already happened. So they wanted to tighten that timeline. They were probably researching it, vetting it, making sure that they weren't breaching security by what they were sharing. And certainly in Goldberg's measured writing, they did not include all the information initially. Now, once the administration started backpedaling and denial and pointing fingers, then certainly the Atlantic came out and released more of information from the chat. I should also say that Jeffrey Goldberg does a really good job giving credit to a contributor, and that is Shane Harris. So it sounds like Shane was, you know, back at the office, like, researching like crazy while Jeffrey Goldberg was looking at this chat in real time. I'm not going to go too deep into it. It's a big news story. If you haven't heard about it, just hit pause on the podcast and then come on back. But it's essentially everywhere. But the disclosure by the Atlantic of the Signal Group chat where senior Trump administration officials and figures discuss plans for a military strike on Houthi targets in Yemen, it did not ignite a firestorm because of the attack itself. It was the crisis PR meltdown that happened. Jeffrey Goldberg had to be very careful in these sensitive discussions when he was releasing this story. The fact that he was able to do it and report on a breach at this level just makes it a truly extraordinary story. Now, the immediate aftermath saw a flurry of statements from officials, administration, but also the people who were on the chat itself. I mentioned I was in Chicago when the story hit. I spent the morning in the hotel working, but it was a chance that I had to put the television on. I normally don't work with the television on, but I. Not only did I watch the coverage in the morning, I was watching Morning Joe because they had the round table. They had a big round table, which I like and wasn't really Roundtable had people on the screen, and they all said Jeffrey Goldberg. I wanted to hear straight from him. So that's the first time I heard from Jeffrey Goldberg. But also I had a chance to watch the hearing, the Senate hearing, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who did not come off as a CIA operative or a very good one. And it was interesting. Watch. I used an appropriate channel to communicate sensitive information. It was permissible to do so. I didn't transfer any classified information. And at the end of the day, what is most important is that the Mission was a remarkable success. Now, what I'm interested in was the denial and the deflection. I want to know who said what and why they said it, because I'm always looking to read between the lines to see what's going on. What I'm looking for in particular is who's going to be the fall guy. Now, President Trump. I'm going to list some of the claims, charges, deflections, denials that the administration put out and a lot of the characters, we'll call them a cast of characters. So he led the charge by repeatedly asserting, quote, it wasn't classified information. That is the talking point out of the administration right now. It wasn't classified. He dismissed the entire episode. I don't know about downplaying. The press upplays it. I think it's all a witch hunt. That's all. I think it's a witch hunt. I wasn't involved with it. I don't. I wasn't there. And labeled the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg as a, quote, total please bag, which I found interesting because typically Trump uses that type of derogatory language for women. He only calls women those types of terms. Hillary Clinton, Rosie o', Donnell, Megyn Kelly at a time, but now she's completely back over on the other side. Trump also suggested that, quote, signal could be defective, to be honest with you, as the end quote, likely explanation for it. He downplayed the severity of it. He called it, quote, the only hiccup in two months of his administration. And then he also attempted to shift blame by suggesting that, quote, joe Biden should have done this attack on Yemen. Let's get into Pete Hegseth. Before I get into this, Pete, let's just do a quick sidebar on the other Pete. Pete Buttigieg. The other piece of content that I saw immediately after the Atlantic, like the algorithm serves me, it dishes me hard, was Pete Buttigieg is social media post, drops an F bomb, drops an S bomb. But he's measured, he's calm. He's putting it out there in a very direct signal that I think this guy is going to run without a doubt. He's talking about his military service. He's talking about the importance of keeping information secure specifically around any type of military action. He's talking about incompetence. He's talking about that lives are at risk. It really was a spot on response from a candidate whose primary objective for anyone from the Republican side, the conservative side, I should say would be his sexuality. That is a problem for Pete Buttigieg. But for him to come out and speak in such a measured, calm tone, yet drop the expletives. That's a signal that he was messaging towards his way back into politics. Just calling that one right there. So let's go back to the other Pete. Defense Secretary Pete Hegsett. Now, he was the key participant in the chat. He stated unequivocally, there's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information. There wasn't a specific name in there. There wasn't a specific street address, location. But he created the no list. It was classified information. Even though there weren't names in it, it's still classified information. Doesn't mean that it has to include names to be classified. What the Republicans are trying to do, specifically Pete Hegseth, is attempting to draw a distinction by claiming that details were shared, were an attack plan rather than a war plan. Okay, again, semantics. Hegseth later claimed that his disclosures were intended to, quote, provide updates in real time and justify is why he was doing it. And they had to use a signal app because it was in real time. That is a statement that strains credibility given the pre strike nature of the information and the chat. The next character in our cast, National Security Advisor and fall guy, Michael Waltz. He's the one who created the chat. He is taking the fall for the chat. He offered a variety of explanations. He initially suggested that Goldberg may have been, quote, sucked into, end quote, the group. He also claimed he was not a conspiracy theorist. He later stated that, quote, a staffer wasn't responsible, he was taking full responsibility, while also claiming he had, quote, never texted Mr. Goldberg and that he wasn't on his phone at the time of the chat. And even after acknowledging the mistake, Waltz maintained that all the information in the exchange was unclassified. What's interesting is that Michael Waltz, by falling on the sword and taking responsibility and not blaming a staffer. There is a crisis management move in there. I call these Crazy Ivans, straight out of Hunt for Red October, one of my favorite movies of all time. 1, 1 ping. Only the Crazy Ivan is that idea that you're just gonna. You're gonna turn into it. You're gonna turn into the crisis. You're gonna turn into the missile that's coming. He's not going to name the staffers. If you have access to New York Times, that's where I was reading it, you'll see that it was that staffers were involved. Alex Wong, the deputy to Michael Waltz, he was tasked with pulling together a Tiger team. Also Dan Katz, he was representing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessert. Dan Caldwell representing Hegseth. Andy Baker representing Vice President J.D. vance. Mike Needham, counselor to the State Department. So there were other staffers on there. They could have figured it out as well. So it may have been the staffer, Michael Walt, staffer, who made the error when putting the chat together. And he. And he has no choice. Walt has no choice. Trump has said, you, my friend, are going to be the person who takes the fall on that. Then there is Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it, quote, a big mistake that, quote, someone made in adding a journalist. He echoed the administration line that, quote, there were no war plans on there and suggested the incident could lead to reforms. Rubio wants to get in and he wants to get out. Then There's Vice President J.D. vance, who has an additional layer of stress on this text chat being exposed because it showed that he publicly, or at least in this group chat, went against his boss, President Trump, which is not something that people do in this cabinet in this administration. So he had concerns about the timing and rationale for the strikes. He also worried about the potential inconsistency with the president's message on Europe. He expressed a sentiment of not wanting to bail Europe out. Again, aligning with the administration's argument, here are the response tactics by the Trump administration. Imagine this as a talking point sheet. This is their plan of attack at the top. The key message. Downplay the significance of the story, the significance of the chat. You'll notice in a lot of Trump's quotes, he is consistently downplaying it. He's referring to it as a glitch, and it wasn't classified information. I was on Reddit, I was on military Reddit. The amount of people lighting up over this, and everyone is saying the same thing. If we did this, we'd be in prison. We'd be in Leavenworth. They'd be out of the military. So it is interesting that Hegseth is at the center of it. Another tactic, lightly subtle, but it was there. Blame shifting. You can't just defend and deflect without pointing it somewhere. Trump, he blame shifted. He called the app itself that it could be defective. Michael Waltz floated the idea that Jeffrey Goldberg, as I said, was sucked into it, which Jeffrey Goldberg had himself said. He was worried that it was a, like a media gadfly, like a trap to get the journalists, like, sucked in to report incorrectly. And then the administration could say, see, you know journalists, they're untrustworthy. Another tactic attacking the Credibility of the source. This is where it's difficult. Of all the journalists and of all the media outlets that you want to go after, the Atlantic is a tough one to go after. First of all, it's print. It's established, it's privately owned. There isn't a Jeff Bezos who owns it. He has the bonafides in Washington, D.C. jeffrey Goldberg as a writer, he's a good writer. He's been in the Beltway for years. He's been considered a trusted journalist. There's never been stories about him. Ethical challenges at all. Jeffrey Goldberg on Morning Joe said, we're privately owned and we have over a million subscribers and growing that, particularly nowadays in the media landscape, is pretty strong. He's a very difficult source to attack. That is problematic. So these instances that I just outlined demonstrate a multi prong approach to denial and deflection. That's what it looks like in full display. The administration was aiming to minimize the severity of the situation. They denied any classified information wasn't compromised. They shifted the blame away from senior officials, except for poor Michael Waltz. They discredited the reporting and they redirected the focus towards perceived success of the military operation, which was met with skepticism and calls for investigation from Democrats and even some Republicans. What made it worse for the administration, I shouldn't say the Republicans, but for the Trump administration, was this push into Greenland in the same news cycle, Usha Vance, J.D. vance's wife, was scheduled to go to Greenland or that her plans were released that she was going to Greenland with her young son and this was a traveling group that was going to be met with a lot of resistance. The administration could not move from these talking points from the signal gate onto a positive story. They had to go dive head first straight into the Greenland story. Bad luck, bad timing, bad moves, bad response and bad communication. By discussing an attack plan on a commercial app and then inadvertently adding a journalist. Now, denial. Why do people refuse to acknowledge mistakes? Denial. It's a psychological strategy to avoid anxiety, emotional pain, shame. It's when people don't want to accept uncomfortable truths. It's usually considered an immature defense mechanism because it's there to regulate the emotions. People do it when they're stressed, when there's fear. You know, I say fear is behind almost every crisis. The denial is something that soothes it because you don't have to face it. Now, why do public figures use denial? They do it to protect their image and to avoid accountability. The cast of characters on that techst app, if you could see their feet under the water they are peddling like crazy because they are worried about not only their place in the administration, the level of trust that President Trump will have with them. Admitting mistakes could harm their reputation or career prospects. Avoiding accountability allows them to sidestep any consequences. They want to deny that it was classified information because they don't want to have to manage the fallout from that and take the consequence of sharing classified information. There actually comes a legal consequence with that. There's also psychological vulnerabilities, insecurity, fear of failure, particularly if you're dealing with a narcissist. That's going to be part of the coping mechanism. But it is also strategic manipulation. They needed to use denial in their defense to just get through this and hope that something else happens in the news cycle. Now, there is a psychological term when overconfidence in one's abilities can result in denial of limitations or mistakes, and that is the Dunning Kruger effect. How many of you remember that from a college class or from a high school class? So that's why you're going to see a lot of denial as a strategic mechanism in the upper levels like politics and celebrity people in the public eye. And while it does provide temporary relief, it can hinder problems. It leads to long term damage. Let's talk about media ethics and journalistic integrity. Did the Atlantic get it right? Did they do the right thing? Did Jeffrey Goldberg do the right thing now? Worth noting. He is the editor in chief. This isn't a cub reporter who went rogue. You know that The Atlantic vetted every single thing that they did. He felt and addressed in his piece. He was justified. He knew, like the Atlantic likely knew, that they were going to face scrutiny regarding the decision to publish the information, sensitive military information. The magazine defended it as a necessity to inform the public as a potential national security breach. I would have to agree with that. I mean, this is a massive security breach. Lives are on the line. Also, they chose not to publish sensitive details. Eventually, it came out because of the denial tactic by the administration. But Jeffrey Goldberg stated that they withheld certain information, such as the name of an active CIA officer mentioned in the chat and specific operational details that could genuinely compromise security. Now, some might argue, is he acting as a whistleblower or is it for clout and subscribers? Okay, there could be a push there. Jeffrey Goldberg was interviewed, it seemed like by everyone. He was doing a lot of interviews, you know, first with the Atlantic, and then he went everywhere. I don't blame the PR department for setting it up. They were working overtime as well, and there's no doubt that the subscriptions went up because so many people probably even wanted to get behind the paywall and read it. They're hoping that people will read it once and then stick with the Atlantic, which likely will happen. I mean, there's going to be a residual, probably uptick in their subscribers, which is like yay, rah rah for journalism because that's an industry that's struggling right now. So from an ethical point of view, you do have to give it to Goldberg in the Atlantic. They withheld information and he stated, Goldberg stated how difficult it was for him to decide what to do and how he really questioned the veracity of what was happening there. And he only fact checked it when he saw that there was indeed military action is when he decided to publish. Now, what are the lessons for communicators? If you are part of a communication team is the cascade of denial and deflection. It definitely is a strategic device used to control the narrative, but it always comes with problems, it always comes with a consequence. Transparency is key. It builds trust. Opsification erodes it. The contrast between the administration downplaying the incident and the detailed operational information that was revealed damages public trust. The Republicans took a hit, the administration took a hit. There's no consistency in your messaging. The explanations are shifting. You're trying to minimize the seriousness. You're creating confusion. What that does is undermine credibility of the office. People see through it. And if you are an administration, you want to understand classification, you want to understand security. It's non negotiable for leadership that goes hand in hand with leadership. So it's very, very difficult to be a leader, to be a part of an administration, a cabinet, and dismiss a breach like this. Attacking the media again, the press always gets attacked. People are so used to that as a tactic. But attacking it here, wrong publication, wrong journalist. In these cases, you have to focus on accountability, you have to focus on corrective action. Somewhat understandable why the Trump administration is not going to do that. However, for all of you listening, you don't want to go that playbook route of deflection and denial moving forward. Some takeaways from this. If you're a leader or communicator, now's a really, really good time to champion a culture of security awareness. Why not newsjack this story? Perfect time to look at your own sops. Your standard operating procedures for your security measures. Also comprehensive training. Do a tabletop, do a training when you're using secure messaging. Have enforceable, clear communication policies. Be an advocate for secure technology in your office. This is a great example why you need it Develop protocols for group communications how do we communicate now? On social media? On chats? You do want to foster open communication at your organization, but you also want to foster secure communication and it's good to have audits of communication at your company. And most importantly, develop a crisis communication plan. You need to maintain control over the message. You need to maintain control over the messenger. You need to maintain control over the messaging app. The patterns from the fallout of the Signal Gate crisis that denial, deflection and attempts to discredit are common in crisis situations, but they are ineffective in the long run. In other words, don't do it. That's our breakdown of the Signal Gate crisis. Thanks so much for listening. If you want more insightful analysis navigating the complexities of PR at crisis management, particularly in the public space which is where we all inhabit, you can listen to me every week and you can also find me on Substack, that is now my communication hub. I have an area for free members. You can follow me there for free or you can subscribe to my PR Breakdown. That's where I go into more extended commentary and a little more off the record on how I feel about a lot of these crises as they are happening. I get a lot of comments on social media people asking me questions all the time. Sometimes I just don't have the time to do it on particular social media apps, but I bring it all in to Substack. So you want to check me out there. You can find me by name on Substack and my publication is the PR Breakdown. That's all for this week. Bye for now.