The Signal Group Snafu

to be fired. This is horrible, and it vioally it's federal law this way, this way, this way, and oh classified information people. And this is a thing I've learned as a lawyer. You have to hear both sides of the case. You have to hear both sides of the case. And I very distinctly remember this during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, where you know, some people like him, you know, but this was just an instance of how bad this

could be. You have the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and they bring in Christine blasi Ford, the woman who accused Kavanaugh. Maybe at some point I don't know when, but I definitely know it was him. I don't know when, I don't know where, I don't know how any witnesses. I don't have any contemporaneous evidence whatsoever, barely my own recollection. Somehow I know that Brett Kavanaugh actually assulted me, and then her lawyer after the fact said, well, she was

motivated because she didn't want him to overturn Robe Wade. Okay, great, where Christine blasi Ford testified that Brett Kavanaugh actually assaulted her, And it was the hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was I remember the day. It was. She was testifying first, like she was testifying in the morning, and then he was testifying in the afternoon or something, and I remember it was like I remember like I was

like watching it in my office. It was like, you know, it was appointment viewing, and it was this in between break between Christine blasi Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, and there were conservative commentators just rushing and by the way, one of them was Ben Shapiro. By the way, so leads me to I have ever since I've taken Ben Shapiro with a grain of salt, rushing to say that the Brett Kavanaugh nomination was finished, that it was done, Trump

was gonna have to withdraw a Brett Kavanaugh. What a disaster. Christine blasi Ford was so convincing. Why because they only heard one side of the case. Then within minutes, Brett Kavanaugh came up in front of the Judiciary Committee, he testified, and everyone was like, oh wow, because he's still he's totally denying this and he's actually pretty dang convincing. And then everyone's minds on the right certainly changed and said, well, Okay, well,

maybe he shouldn't withdraw his nomination. Maybe Trump shouldn't withdraw his nomination, maybe Republicans shouldn't vote him down. And Brett Kavanaugh gets nominated, gets confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.

And I continue to this day to think that the Christine Blasiford thing was ridiculous, Especially with more space and time away from it, I realize, huh, Like, why were we convinced that this was like a huge like this was someone who made a bare accusation and had no other evidence, no corroboration whatsoever of something that allegedly happened forty years ago, where she can remember absolutely no details except conveniently for the detail that it was Breck Kavanaugh,

and we learned that she was politically motivated to do it. That was sort of how I felt about this story about the hoofies, Like it was so bad, the first telling of it, so bad, so terrible, that eh, I was like, Okay, hold on a second before I talk about this. The legal analysis that was given along with the Atlantic article I was also highly suspicious of. I'm like, okay, the Atlantic is saying that all of these laws were broken.

All right, let's Usually the legal analysis for a story like this, it takes like twenty four to forty eight seventy two hours, maybe even a whole week before people really get a solid sense of the legal issues at play. So I was like, all right, well, let's hold off here, let's wait and see. And I'm glad I did because I think there's a better a clearer legal picture here, and a clearer picture sort of the of a bunch

of different issues involved. All right, so let me discuss sort of what happened, because I've actually used this app, this app called Signal. All right, all of these top defense officials, along with Vice President Vance, they think one of the participants was Steven Miller, who's one of the president's top advisors. We're all on this chat in this app called Signal, and Signal is basically a forum for

secure and encrypted a synchronous group discussions. Think of it like your a text group that you have with multiple people, which for high level government officials who are trying to discuss sensitive top difficult topics. Some kind of asynchronous platform for talking with each other where you don't you don't have to coordinate that everyone has to be online all

at the same time to all discuss it together. This could be useful for a bunch of high ranking government officials who all are busy and have busy lives and busy schedules, where you can go in, send a message, review what other people have said, give your opinion, and go about your day. Now, the problem is is that actually safe? Well there, I guess there are two problems.

One is that safe? Two is that legal? So one is it legal if you're sharing highly sensitive intelligence material, there's a question about whether it's legal to do so over a forum like Signal. Signal is encrypted, it's more secure than just texting your buddy from your smartphone, but it's not perfect. Russians had hacked signals servers once before in the past, so it's not a perfectly immune thing. Also, signal officials can use signal from their phones. Now were

they using it from their phones? Unclear? You can also use it from a desktop or a laptop computer, which that's how I've used signal. Also, there are some issues that some of the officials who are on the thread, or thought to be on the thread, were in foreign countries. One of them was allegedly in Russia. One of them was in South Korea. Being in Russia with your phone doing messaging with your phone could leave your phone open

to hacking from intelligence agencies. You know, if you're in Russia, Russia, there are hostile actors and hostile intelligence agencies trying to hack into your stuff. If you're in South Korea, there, you know, there's far more Chinese influence in South Korea as far as intelligence, official intelligence entities, blah blah blah. However, there's also this that signal might be the best thing

we've got. There's an interesting piece by an interesting piece by Michael Brendan Doherty from National Review who wrote that basically, basically Americans have this idea that our intelligence services have better, more secure They've watched too many James Bond movies and think that we've got that. Here. They are using this commercially available app on their phones for communications. How insecure

is that? And what Dherty is saying, well, first of all, there was a Biden era memos sent out through the Department of Homeland Security actually recommending the use of signal for high level discussions. And what Dherty is saying is, well, look, let's not kid ourselves. The US government actually doesn't necessarily have like more secret, more secure, like better channels for

asynchronous communication than this. Now, some people have pointed out, if you're going to share classified intelligence, you need to be in a skiff, a secure contained intelligence something. It's an acronym, but it basically needs Hey, you need to be in this secured area. All of these officials probably have a skiff in their homes. They can also set up a sort of traveling temporary skiff for anyone who's on the road. But as far as asynchronous communications go,

signals seems to be the best thing going. And again, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is the part of the Department of Homeland Security recommended that high level government officials switch to signal last year. So there's a couple of different things. Was the law violated. It seems like maybe the law was violated. There is a dispute right now. Jeffrey Goldberg, Now, why did this? All of

this become known? I should have led with this. This all became known because Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg into this chat. Jeffrey Goldberg, who is not a national security official. He's just a writer for The Atlantic, a mainstream media journalist and a pretty liberal one at that. And Goldberg was added to this and just was astonished as he was reading, like all this stuff about attacks against the Hoho thies that turned

out to be true. Now, Goldberg characterized some of the stuff that was shared as quote, war plans, and the Trump administration is saying, well, no, there wasn't any classified info that was actually shared on that. Goldberg also said that something was shared that might have involved an active CIA intelligence agent, and he so he didn't publish certain

of these things. Now more stuff has been published, I think in response to the Trump administration saying none of them are Trump administration officials who keep saying, no, none

of the stuff actually shared on that was classified. So it's a bit of a screw I mean, it's a screw up, certainly, and I continue to dislike this thing where now and by the way, it doesn't seem like anyone's head is going to roll over this, even for the obvious mistake of adding a journalist to a conversation between the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the Vice President of the United States, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. It doesn't seem like anyone's head is

going to roll over this. And the National Security Advisor has publicly been stating he's never met Jeffrey Goldberg, he has no idea who he is. He doesn't know how that would have gotten into his signal contacts. There's a thought that there's a different Trump mitration official whose initials are JG, whom he was trying to add. I wish he had added me. I mean that would have been super cool. But you know, alas as also a JG. But it sounds like nobody's heads are going to roll

over this. And there's a part of me that doesn't like that. So again, though we were not one hundred percent sure was all of this information classified. Was all this information not classified? Unclear if classified information was being shared over an unauthorized platform. Low level people who do that,

a lot of them tend to get prosecuted. If you're like a low level government contractor a low level official who works for the CIA, a low level member of the United States military and you share classified information in a way you're not post do you get prosecuted and you go to jail. If you're a high ranking government official and you do it, if you're Donald Trump, if you're Hillary Clinton, if you're Joe Biden, if you're you know, Secretary of State or something, you don't get in trouble. Now.

Actually Trump almost got Trump was indicted for it. Actually Trump faced more potential retribution over it than anyone has, and even he it didn't go very far. Now that he's been elected, I think that whole case is going to now that he's president of the United States, I

think that whole case is going to get dropped. And actually, out of all of the lawsuits filed against Trump, the only one that I ever thought was like legitimate was his retention of documents in mar A Lago that I think that was the one thing that he clearly actually did something wrong. And of course Joe Biden did the exact same thing. So there's a part of me that doesn't like this culture of like we will literally send low level people to jail for doing the same thing

that high level people do. But I also I don't know if what level of objective seriousness this is getting away from what the law requires. I don't know how bad this is as far as now. Obviously adding a journalist accidentally is bad, but using signal itself as a means of communicating this stuff, I don't know how bad it is. It seems like it's not sort of what is authorized legally, but at the same time it's more secure than what is authorized, or as secure as what

is authorized, and actually far more useful. If that's the case, then probably the law needs to change to reflect that, and or we need to be less severe in punishing low level people who violate the law. So I guess I obviously adding a journalist to a text thread like

this is bad. I think we need to wait and see about how classified was all this stuff actually and when we return, I want to talk about people's selective outrage at selective select members of this group chat and how it all just seems to line up with people's ideological priors. That's next on the John Girardi Show. It's very funny to read who people think, whom people think

should be fired, who people think should be fired. I'm get a little confused by who and whom they're I think it should be whom whom people think should be fired for the accidental adding of Jeff Goldberg, a columnist for The Atlantic, into a signal chat group discussing the imminent American strikes against the Houthis that happened earlier this month. Who should be fired over it? Whose heads should roll?

Democrats say everyone should be fired. The same Democrats who didn't think a single person should be fired for the Afghanistan debacle where people actually died, think all these people should be fired over this. And both sides accused the other side of hypocrisy. And it's sort of like, well, if both sides are accusing the other of hypocrisy, are

both sides hypocritical? Here? You then have the selective people who selectively we want to fire there are certain kind of more neo con leaning outlets, including I like National Review a lot. I write a lot for National Review, but they're definitely Their foreign policy tends to lean a certain direction that I don't one hundred percent agree with all the time. I probably align most with their writer,

Michael Brendan Dherty. They've got two columns out, one saying that Now, again, these are not editorials by the newspaper, by the paper, it's just, you know, individual pieces by individual people. One that Trump should fire Pete hagg Seth

and the other that Trump shouldn't fire Mike Waltz. Mike Waltz is a good guy, Mike Waltz the National Security Advisor, So we should fire Pete hegg Seth, the Defense Secretary, but we shouldn't fire the National Security Advisor, even though it was the National Security Advisor himself who started the whole group chat, added Jeff Goldberg to it, the guy who wasn't supposed to be on it. It's the whole

reason this debacle started in the first place. Now, why are people wanting to fire Pete hagg Seth and not wanting to fire Mike Waltz. Well, Waltz as the National Security Advisor, was not thought to be a particularly maga pick by Trump, and Waltz seems to be more favored by some of the more neo con leaning people. He has more friends in sort of what used to be the quote establishment, right, so everyone it seems like there's a bunch of people like rushing to say no, no, no, no, no no.

hate JD. Vans. They just despise him. They hate everything about him that. They hate his foreign policy, they hate his views of foreign relations and the foreign policy stuff. Really drives these people. Their knives are sharpened. They hate his views on Ukraine, they hate his views on America's role in the world. That they are just desperate for any chance to knife him, any chance they get. And I think they're trying to think, Okay, whom can we

groom to replace JD. Vans in twenty twenty eight. They just despise him, and they've really been playing up certain aspects of what was shared in this signal group that I actually thought was fascinating. When we return, I'm going to talk about the actual content of what was shared and why it left me actually somewhat impressed. That's next

on the John Girardi Show. Less discussed, although definitely noted, definitely noted in the commentariat, especially among neoconservative commentators who despise Jade Vance and all his works and all his pomps and just hate everything about him. Is the actual content of the discussions that took place in this leaked signal chat room between Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, JD. Vance, Pete Hegseth, et cetera, et cetera,

et cetera, Stephen Miller. It's thought one of the President's close advisors. In this discussion about the houthis and it reflects, I think, a very different kind of approach to American foreign policy. All right, so, what's the problem. You have these houthies who are harassing shipping in the Red Sea international shipping. Now, some American shipping goes through the Red Sea, but it is more so a benefit to Europe. A

lot of European shipping goes through the Red Sea. And these hoothy rebel pirates basically are huge disruptors to international trade and have made things more expensive, made things more difficult. It's bad, okay, And so the discussion comes, well, should we more aggressively strike Vance in this discussion, I thought, by the way, that the level of the discussion was actually like the kind of thing you would expect and

want to see from top administration officials. The problem is us seeing it no in the pages of the Atlantic rather than you know, them just keeping it confidential. Vance discussed at length a couple of points that I thought were noteworthy, that this would be another instance of the United States bailing out Europe. That you know, again, this

is Europe freeloading on the United States. As military build up, that the Europeans have been able as NATO members to reduce their level of military spending in their countries as a percentage of GDP lower and lower and lower and lower and lower, including lower than sort of the required levels for NATO membership. Why Well, because they know that the United States has got it, and we kept building up, up, up, up, up up up our military, especially for our misadventures in

a rock in Afghanistan. So are another bad consequence of a rock in Afghanistan? I think is we built up our military and they built down theirs. So Dvance starts asking, I mean, why are we doing this? This is properly something that europe should do. Yes, it does involve some American shipping, but it's far more a benefit to Europe than it is to us. What are we going to get out of this? We should get something out of it. Are there concessions that we can get from the Europeans

for this? And that was a big part of the discussion. Now after the fact, and by the way, let me just say this, I think most Republican voters hearing that would say hell yeah, hell yeah, jd Vance. They are free loaders like That's been the funniest thing thing to me in the Ukraine discussions, where you know, President Trump's trying to do some kind of negotiated ceasefire whatever between Russian and Ukraine.

the last twenty years. There's such a gap that even if they, you know, massively increased their defense spending that they're as I've heard Michael Brendan Doherty described this in National Review, even if they massively increase their defense spending over the next ten years, there they'll barely be in the child's passenger seat of NATO as far as a

big boy contributor. But the idea that these Europeans think, ooh, we'll stick it to Donald Trump by building up our own military and taking care of these, you know, helping out our Ukraine itself. Do you really think Donald Trump wouldn't love that. That's exactly what Trump's been saying. He's desperate for you guys to build up your own military and take care of your own stinking affairs rather than us being called in.

is for acting transactional with American shipping. I'm shipping free shipping lanes or good for everyone, and it's an important role. How can a marine not be aware that the United States military has been involved in anti piracy efforts since the very founding of the Marines, from the wholes of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, which is when the Marine Corps first began its action against pirates under Thomas Jefferson.

And it's all this like preachy stuff, But this is the mandate that won the election, is the Vance view. We're tired of foreign policy stuff that isn't clearly benefiting us. Okay, it's bad that Russia is invading Ukraine. It's very bad. We don't like it. Putin's a bad guy. The Ukrainians totally understand that they want all the money in the world, all the weapons of everything possible to fight them off. That God bless them, but it's all on our dollar.

It needs to be clear that there's some benefit we get out of this, because guess what, guys, whoever controls the Donbas, the territory in the southeast Ukraine that's near the Black Sea, whoever controls the Donbas doesn't change a flipping thing for you and me. It just doesn't change much about American life. So if we're gonna get involved or give them money or something, there's got to be some kind of clear benefit to US, because that's Russia's

encroachment in Ukraine, I agree is threatening. It ain't threatening to me, it's threatening to people who live in Poland. It's threatening to people who live in Latvia and Estonia. So maybe if there was like a union of European countries who could all coordinate their funding and their militaries to provide their own deterrent against If only there was like a Union of Europe, like a like a Union of Europe that had a bigger population than the United

States does and a GDP. No, maybe not more than the United States, but maybe comparable, and that could pool its resources. But no, the European Union hasn't done that. You know, I don't think there's any reason the European Union couldn't be a stronger military power. But guess what. European Union is full of countries that have a welfare state.

They're paying off everybody's pensions, and they don't have the money right now, or they don't think they have the money, or they just have not prioritized defense spending, and so as a result, they're like two decades behind where they ought to be. If they actually want to provide a de turrn to Russia. So at any rate, do I think anyone should be fired over you know, this signal group? I mean, probably somebody should, right, I mean, I don't know, And it's all I mean, none of these people are

going to hit the breadline. Are any of these people indispensable? I don't know. I mean, it seems like signal has become kind of a best practices thing. I'm not sure that I'm actually upset about people using signal for these kinds of communications. The more I'm reading about it, the more I'm sort of thinking, well, I don't know that this is actually less secure than an actually you know,

government approved secure communications channel. And there's also I think this open question of was what you know, the Trump administration is claimed maybe this is a cya. I don't know. They could be full of it, but the Trump Administration's claiming it wasn't anything classified disgust I don't know. It seems a little difficult for me to believe the timing of a missile strike, you know, the when and where it's going to happen, A missile strike that hasn't happened yet.

It seems like that would be seems like that would be secured but they're saying not. I mean, there's a pretty bold claim to make publicly when you know that it's in the possession of a hostile journalist who can share it with the Intelligence Committee anytime he wants. So I don't know. I think it depends a little bit on whether the stuff was actually classified, how sensitive it was. I mean, I don't necessarily have I don't necessarily have a dog in the fight. I don't actually know that

much about Mike Waltz. There again, there's this person exception of him as a bit more establishment GOP foreign policy friendly, less MAGA, so there's some knives out for him. There's some people vigorously trying to defend him, but trying to fire Pete hegg Seth, which I think is silly. Waltz, clearly, though, was the person who added Jeffrey Goldberg to the group, to this chat group, and he's trying to I don't know how that could have happened, but you know he

did it. So I don't know. If I guess if anyone should be fired, it's him. I'm loath to believe that signal was an inappropriate venue. I find it difficult to believe I should say that signal was an inappropriate venue for sharing this communication only because of how many

top officials were on it. Marc Rubio, Pete hegg Seth JD vans this person that including people with with with lots of experience with intelligence and intelligence sharing and secure intelligent sharing, that that none of them would have thought, Hey, maybe this isn't the best venue for sharing this stuff. I mean, it makes me think that this is sort of the standard that is used for sharing this kind of stuff. So should anyone get fired? I don't know.

I think if anyone should, I guess it's Mike Waltz, because he was the one who added some random journalists to this, which all seems a little suspicious to me. By the way, a very prominent journalist from the Atlantic is the one who got added. I have no proof, but of all the jgs that Mike Waltz knew, he picks the one JG who happens to write from a major mainstream media outlet. Seems a little suspicious. And I wonder if there were going to learn anything more about that.

All right, when we returned getting away from all this national security stuff, the really important stuff, baby names Republican stop giving your babies terrible names. Next on the John Girardi Show. All right, to close it out, Let's close it out on something light baby names. There is this website called name Berry, which tracks names parents give their

newborn babies throughout the United States. And someone did a tweet where he did an analysis of names that are most prominent in Blue states versus most prominent in Red states and did it by boys and girls. So you take a name, and eighty percent of this name happens in Blue states. Okay. That's so eighty percent of kids with this name are born in a Blue state. Okay. So it's a little bit of an analysis of like

how liberals are naming their babies versus conservatives. Now, when you look at the most Blue state prominent names, a lot of them are Jewish or Muslim. Okay, So Yusuf, Ali, Ibrahim, Okay, those are all Muslim boy names, Mohammed. Okay. The most Blue State prevalent name is Mosha, which is a Jewish name, and I think it's probably mostly like very orthodox Jewish people naming their kids Mosha. So ninety seven percent of Mosha's are in Blue states. Okay, that makes sense. They're

probably all in New York Santino. Eighty two percent of Santinos are in Blue states, So that's probably like, if you're really hardcore Italian and you live in New York or you know, Rhode Island or something like that, you're naming your kids Santino. Okay, then you go to the girl names, and the girl names are a bit more Yeah, Fiona, are these all people who watch Shrek when they were kids now having babies? Leanna Mira Mariam I think is a Muslim name. Kira Miriam, I think that's a Jewish name.

More so, uh Nina, Aiesha, Paige Kayla. Now you read Staters listening to this, you were conservatives listening to this, I would caution you about making fun of these names, because, let me just tell you the boy names. Sorry, the Red state prevalent names are a train wreck. Let's get into it. Okay. The most Red state prevalent name with seventy two percent of these kids live in Red States, and then the alternates, seventy two percent of kids with

this name live in Red states. Cohen with a K. Red Staters, why are you naming your non Jewish child Cohen? Cohen is a Jewish surname. It's an incredibly Jewish surname. In fact, I read a thing somewhere saying that people named Cohen were thought to be descended from like the priestly line of Jewish people, like the descendants of Aaron who served as the priests in the Old Testament Covenant. That's what Cohen signifies. Red State women, Why are you

naming your highly not Jewish child Cohen? Because Cohen with a C is also on the Red State prevalent name sixty sixty one percent of Cohen's with a SEA live in Red State. Seventy two percent of Cohen's with a K live in Red State. By the way, Cohen with a K, I don't think it's even like the most common way that Cohen is spelled, like as a laughs name, So like you're you're both intentionally misspelling it and not

making any sense. Here are the other boy name Red State boy names, Baylor, Stetson, Kisen, Trip Sutton, Cohen, Gunner, Baker. Are you just trying to get all the names of all the characters from Yellowstone? And then the girl names are a total train wreck? Hattie Oaklynn with a y n n oak Lee with an E I G H. Grace Lynn with a Y N N Renley. I don't even know what that means. Blake Lee, that's the last name Collins, that's a last name, Oaklee with two e's, Are you kidding me? Sailor with an A Y L

O R Oakley. Do you like the sunglasses? That'll do it? John Girardi show, see you next time on Power Talk