SignalGate Jeopardized Her Husband's Life - Her Viral Response Struck a Chord

here's a quick refresher. The President's national security team got caught using Signal, a private messaging app, to discuss sensitive military operations, top tier secret stuff that should only really be discussed on the Pentagon's ultra secure, billion dollar communication systems. But instead of following protocol, Vice President j d Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseach, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and others were chatting on Signal. Now, I want to

be clear, Signal the app did nothing wrong. We're huge fans of the Signal app here at there are no girls on the Internet. It's run by a nonprofit led by Meredith Whittaker, who I deeply admire. This was user error, plain and simple. So how did we even find out? Well, it wasn't through a leak or a hack or a whistleblower. No, no, no, no no. Someone accidentally added the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the group chat, I have

to be honest. It's the kind of fat fingered mistake I find kind of relatable personally, but I am not handling national security. And it gets worse. After the scandal, Waltz was photographed using an unofficial signal knockoff called TM signal, made by a company called Telemessage, which was recently bought by I kid you not a company called smarsh That's a name that definitely inspires confidence. Now, unlike Signal, TM signal stores messages on central servers insecurely, kind of the

opposite of signals. Whole thing. Since this story broke, hackers have breached the servers multiple times. One hacker told four l four media that Telebassage had not bothered to implement basic digital security of practices, and that's the whole thing, always with about fifteen minutes to break into. Now, this is not just political drama. It's about real lives, like those of America's three million service members, people like the husband of my friend Kendall Brown, a digital strategist and

content creator. Service members can't always speak out, but Kendall can. She makes it her business to use the Internet to speak up for service members like her husband.

it out there. And I knew that this is one of those topics that the people in power get away with this shit, specifically because they know the people most impacted. Active duty service members literally cannot say anything publicly, and so the overwhelming majority of Americans have no way of connecting emotionally with the topic. And so you know, most democrats, most leftists can look at the story and be like, yeah, logically this is bad, but they can't feel the emotion

of how scary it is, how infuriating it is. And I think it's really important for people to connect to the emotions of it. I think that's one of our biggest flaws on the left is that we get like really absorbed into the like facts and we're going to fact check you to death and somehow if we just tell you enough facts, you're going to be on our side.

And that's just not how humans work. So yeah, I try to show up emotionally in most of my content, but especially when I'm talking about a subject that I know most people just have no I mean most people not only haven't served, they don't have a loved one that like a close immediate loved one that has served. And so there's just there's no way to connect to that.

And we live in a society where media has depicted military service as this like romantic you know, oh, it's the sacrifice and everyone that does it is so ready to lay down their lives and just oh, and the reality is like most of the people in the military are just poor people that needed a path out of poverty or out of whatever rural hellhole they were born in, and like they just want to do their job and go home at the end of the day. They're just normal people.

there was. What was the response like, so on Twitter, it was basically just immediately launched into like a week and a half of thousands of people calling me fat essentially, like that was the primary response is oh, well, you're a fat bitch essentially, And then Instagram was a little bit of both. I just got to the point where I started oscillating back and forth between I'm not gonna look at any of the comments, screw them. I said

what I said, and I'm just whatever. They can have their feelings and I don't have to listen to them, to then oscillating back to no, you know what, I am going to read the comments and I'm going to go in and I'm going to be mean back to them because none of these motherfuckers know how to make a funny insult. So I really for the first week that's mostly what I was doing, just because it was fun to me. And then weirdly on Instagram was first of all, Instagram was like right in the middle in

terms of how people respond to it. But that was also where I started hearing from a ton of military spouses, a ton of active duty service members reaching out to me and being like, oh my god, thank you, Like we can't say this or we didn't know how to say this, And so once I started getting those messages, I didn't give a shit what they were saying on Twitter at that point because like the people that responded by telling me how repulsive they thought, I was, like,

they clearly have no idea what it's like for military families, So who gives a shit about their opinions when the actual military families are reaching out to me and saying that they're grateful.

met with unexpected pushback. About two dozen military families, mostly young people, gathered to make their voices heard. They booed, heckled, and even chanted d Ei d ei, you know, basically saying you, Pete Hegseth, are the dei higher? You know?

It has to be a real specific kind of dynamic where if you are a service member or somebody close to a service member, you can't always say your opinion about things or you know, even if you are not a service member yourself, if you're close to one that comes with its own kind of baggage, that might be very silencing. So in ways, do you feel like you're able to sort of be the person who you know explains the emotionality behind this situation for folks who sometimes really can't.

of the German bases. And right at the very beginning of like right after Pete Hegseth had been confirmed, he went to this military base and not only was he met by a couple a dozen active duty military families, like when he was getting off the plane, they were standing there protesting him and yelling at him about how

he has been attacking the concept of DEI. But also when he visited the middle school that's on base, the there was like a fifth grader that led a walkout of all of the students in response to him.

Usually it's like, you know, shitty teenagers being shitty teenagers and like vandalizing something, and if they figure out who did it, that whole family has to move off of base housing. So like it is very very serious. So the fact that these kids were brave enough to do that knowing that, like, the stakes are even higher when you're at a base overseas because if you get kicked out out of base housing on an overseas base, where

the fuck are you going to live? You know, and we already know that these this is an administration that is willing to strand people overseas, like they did to a bunch of the US AID employees that were stationed overseas, and then they were just like, well, not only are we eliminating your job, We're also not going to pay to fly you back, so have fun figuring out how

to get home from Sudan or wherever. So it was a huge risk that they took, and so I was very inspired by them, and I recognize that I'm in a very fortunate spot this like weird intersection of you know, I work in communications, so I have the ability to put together an argument at a level that maybe not a lot of people have been trained to be able

to do. I also, because I work in comms and because I work in politics, I have from the very beginning kept my digital online footprint separate from my husband, so like, I don't have to worry about, oh God, if I say something now, I have ten years of posting about him constantly that they could connect me to. And I'm really lucky that I have a partner that

is like, yeah, girl, go get them. You know, like he understands that my career and my activism is really important to me, and as long as I'm not just blatantly setting out to ruin his career, he is very accepting of the fact that, like, this is a calculated risk that I am taking. So yeah, all that together, I think just put me in a very fortunate spot where I could be that mouthpiece to try and put

it in people's face. And yeah, as long as I'm in this position and I can do that, I'm going to continue to do that because I think the military industrial complex has gotten away with a lot for a really long time, and a huge part of that is because the people with the most knowledge and ability to push back on it are also the people who were most often silenced.

that is deeply human and emotional at its core. Why do you think it's so easy to sort of skip over the human emotionality of these stories in favor of things like facts and figures.

it's an easier leap in people's brains. I also think that again, it is partially just a democratic and leftist impulse that we always jump to the facts of the case and the logistics, like we want to know everything, and we're just if we can just get you to see that you're being hypocrites, we can finally get you

to stop. So I think that's partially it. And I also think that there's some element to it that is the American people, I think have been groomed to do that somewhat like it's beneficial to the Trump administration if we skip over the emotion of it, because it's a lot easier for the Press Secretary for the White House to get up there and be snide and dismissive and like mocking of reporters when they ask questions related to

the logistics. It's a lot harder for her to be dismissive and snide if the emotion of it is put in their face. And yeah, so I think the the Trump administration wants us to do that. They've been grooming us to do that. I also think that the media is kind of complicit in it because when you have a media that is so overwhelmingly a certain type of person, a certain socioeconomic status of person, like, they can only convey the emotion of the experiences that they understand themselves.

And there aren't a lot of service members or military spouses that go on to become reporters, and so it's just most of the media doesn't have the ability to write about it in the same way that like most of the media has no idea about how to write about the emotion of Gaza or the emotion of being an undocumented immigrant, and so they don't, and so we get further groomed into not thinking about it or carrying about it.

who were organizing. Now these days, everybody says they were against the Iraq war, but that's not how I remember it. What I remember is that if you were anti war like I was, people would say, oh, so you don't support the troops. Support our troops kind of became this slogan that basically meant you could not criticize US military policy because if you did, you were somehow against the very people risking their lives. That was two thousand and three. Today,

it feels like things have really changed. I feel like there was a time, especially for the Republican Party, where the troops were these like exalted people that you had to support the troops. You could not question the troops, just like you were saying this like massive hero narrative that these are people who are risking their lives and we have to do everything to support them, including not questioning what the government is doing with regards to service members.

And today seeing Republican leaders be so flippant about those very same service members when dismissing the fact that they needlessly endangered their lives with signal gad that just a few years ago we were saying were the most important people that you had to support the troops, It just really makes clear that maybe they didn't really give that much of a shit about service members and their families.

featured in an episode of the Newsroom. So there's a moment where they are, you know, they have questions that are being asked by general like normal people, and they have a soldier who is currently he was stationed, he was deployed to either Afghanistan or Iraq like as he was asking this question, they were video videoing him in and he says, because this is when don't ask, don't tell was still a thing, and so he says, you know, I am a gay service member and all I want

to do is serve my country. Like I this is very important to me. I want to continue to serve. I want to continue to put my life on the line. And of course this is when there was like active war, so putting your life on the line like really had weight to it at the moment at that time. And you know, I want to know, are there any anyone on this stage, any candidate that would be willing to do away with don't ask, don't tell so that service members like me don't have to hide who I am

in order to serve my country. And not a single person on that stage responded with any empathy towards him with any respect for his service, and the overwhelming majority of the audience booed him.

when it started to shift. And I think that a huge part of that shift is because the Republican Party only wanted to focus on the emotional side of things when they could be assured that military service members and their families were a silent audience that they could tokenize without any risk of them pushing back in the same way that the Conservative Party still tokenize it, like talks about like, oh, the unborn babies, and this is why we're so you know, because they know unborn babies, like

literal zygotes cannot speak up and be like, hey, actually, we do support women's right to choose, so uh, I think that was part of it once they realized that, like at any moment, if we invoke the military and try to romanticize their service, somebody in that audience could stand up and be like, you, motherfucker, how dare you invoke our service when you are sending us to die? You know, just like the guy that threw his shoes at at George W. Bush. And that's why, you know.

In addition to my original signal Gate video I had, I recorded myself when I called and talked to Senator Mark Wayne Mullen's office since he's my senator, Kendall recorded herself calling her Oklahoma Senator, Senator Mullens, and let's just say her anger comes through loud and clear. Quick heads up, there is a lot of strong language and what you're

about to hear. And so help me, God, if I have to quit my fucking job to make sure that I can drive to every fucking campaign and public event that the senator has for the rest of his career, I will make it my life's work to destroy his career by making sure that every fucking Oklahoma knows how few fucks he gave about my husband's life and the lives of other active duty service members, But I do want to make it very clear, and I hope that you will take down this message and relay it to

the Senator to help encourage him to actually be a man and make sure that I get a call set up when I reach out to this scheduler. I want you to let him know that if he doesn't reach out to me, I'm recording every single time that I have called his office and left a voicemailt or spoke

to an intern like you. I am recording all of those and if I don't hear back from him, I will be sending them to every possible newsroom, both in Oklahoma and nationally, to let them know that the Senator is too much of a coward to call back the wife of one of the service members in his constituency

that was put at risk. And so help me God, if I have to quit my fucking job to make sure that I can drive to every fucking campaign and public event that the Senator has for the rest of his career, I will make it my life's work to destroy his career by making sure that every fucking Oklahoma knows how few fucks he gave about my husband's life. And the lives of other active duty service members. If I'd known that video was gonna go viral side note,

I would have cursed significantly less. I'm a little embarrassed that I cursed this much on the phone to a US senator's office, but I straight up said, like, I don't care. If I have to quit my job and make it my life's work to destroy Senator Mullen's career, I will do it. I will drive to every fucking campaign event he has for the rest of his life and be in the audience and be there to remind people of how few shits he gave about my husband's life and about the lives of other service members.

I think politics in our country would look a lot different.

been elected to serve. I don't know, I really appreciate that about your content, that it's like about shifting our understanding of like who works for who, who should be

afraid of who? I think that's the magic of the internet, you know, Like, think about how many videos we've seen over the years of constituents trying to confront their elected official in Congress on any topic, whether it's military, health care, whatever, and almost without fail, those clips end with that member of Congress getting into the congressional member only elevator and then the doors slowly sliding shut in front of their face and protecting them from actually having to have that

hard conversation with their constituent. And I think the magic of the Internet is that it can it can knock those sliding elevator doors down. They can't run from their constituents in the same way that they can in real life. And obviously, you know, there's there's other ways that they can dodge that. When it's the Internet, right, they can just pretend that they don't see it or whatever.

and have any wish come true. I would love to be able to like dedicate significant portions of my time and of my life to being able to train other people on how to do what I'm doing right now. Like I I don't want to be the one person that's like seeing as like ooh, she's doing this thing, you know, Like I want there to be so many people doing the same exact thing that no one ever again thinks that like what I'm doing is special or remarkable.

Like I if I could completely drive myself out of a job as a content creator by getting enough people other people to be doing the same thing, I would because I really think that the internet is our best shot at holding these cowards accountable.

or a smug sense of superiority for her. It's about connection, persuasion, and doing the harder work of actually reaching across divides. I feel like you're able to occupy this very specific lane where you're able to speak to people that might not be there yet and train other people on how they can do the same. Is that intentional with your sort of content strategy here?

four hours. Uh, but I think genuinely one of the most destructive things that has happened in content creation writ large over the last several years, and one of the most destructive things that TikTok specifically has groomed people into doing, is is viewing political content as solely through the lens of those like clap back videos that lots of people do, right Like, I'm gonna find a conservative doing the dumbest fucking video I can, and then I'm gonna take it,

and I'm gonna respond to them. I'm gonna be smug and snide, and I'm gonna tell you why they are the dumbest piece of shit ever. And then I'm gonna get one hundred thousand likes on it. I'm gonna make thousands of dollars. But have I moved the needle in any way on any issue? No, absolutely not.

an itch I wish I didn't have. And I think I'm seeing the results of that writ large on our on our social media discourse. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'll just say yes, I agree with you one hundred percent.

normal in any way? So like watching somebody get put in their place can feel satisfying, but first of all, those people are not getting put in their place. Most of the people being featured in those videos are thrilled when they get featured in a leftist clapback video, because all it does is drive up their engagement. These are just dollar Tree brand, like store brand Tommy laurens in the same way that Tommy Lauren used to intentionally piss

people off in order to increase her stardom. At least she was like actually trying to reach, like you know, actually being on television. These people are settling for like I just want to get ten thousand views on my TikTok video and make one hundred dollars off of it. But like it's the same general process, right, and like they just the two sides feed off of one another, and it's just this like circular. I mean, it's honestly,

it's just and a digital and political human centipede. They're just regurgitating the same shit into each other's mouth over and over and over again. Like not to be too graphic, but like that's what's happening.

doing all the Republican things. And like, I genuinely believe, we don't have to compromise on any of our values. We just have to figure out how to talk about our values in a way that appeals to a conservative morality system. And so that's what I'm now focusing a lot of my content on doing, is trying to help

people learn that. Like you know, I use the moral foundation theory that Jonathan Hate came up with, where he said, like, there's six different foundational blocks that people build their morality off of, and people on the left tend to focus on two of those six, people on the right tend to focus on three of the six, and then the sixth one both sides like. And so I think the biggest issue we have with leftist messaging right now is we're talking about these values in a way that appeals

to our morality system, not theirs. And we can talk about it in a way that appeals to I mean, like for example, immigration, like we're talking about it from the perspective of, like this, you know, you have to be fair. It is like horrific and unfair to think about deporting a DACA recipient to a country that they have never called home. They might not even speak about the speak that language, you know. All and all of

that's true. All of that's true, And in a perfect world, at least in my opinion, that would be enough to convince people. But the reality is we don't live in a perfect world, and there's fifty percent of the country

that doesn't give a shit that it's not fair. But if we can talk about it from the perspective of what that DACA recipient means to our country, like, you know, they're big into patriotism, And if we can talk about immigration from the perspective of, like, we are this incredible nation that is welcoming these people in, Like these are people that believe in our wors of life so strongly that they just want to be a part of it, you know, And if we can talk about those values

in that way, then we can actually start to like narrow that divide a little bit and hopefully win some of those people over, because unfortunately, talking at them endlessly from our perspective, and especially creating videos where we're making fun of them and like you know, making money off of being snigged towards them. That's not going to pull them in. That is not going to get them to change their mind on anything.

I think black women one hundred percent get to say, like, you know what, motherfuckers, the ninety two percent is tired, so like, you do your jobs, We're gonna be doing our thing. Fuck you. So like, I get that, But any person on the left that has a skin tone like mine, absolutely the fuck not like you don't get to do what is fun or easy. Right now. We have work to do to repair the shit that we stood by as it got broken. And so I just I want more people to start looking at their content.

More content creators and articulars start looking at their content from the perspective of what impact is this actually having beyond the check that I get from TikTok on the fifteenth of every month. And I'm really really worried about what's going to happen if more content creators don't start doing that, because I get why they don't write like my content where I'm talking about here's how to talk to a conservative about universal healthcare or immigration or whatever.

It doesn't perform anywhere nearly as well as you know, these clapback videos. It also doesn't perform nearly as well as like my emotional videos that have gone viral. And so, to use your metaphor of the McDonald's right, you eat it and you don't feel satisfied. It is a little bit of a chicken and egg situation where it's like, Okay, we can keep telling these content creators to create more useful content. We can keep telling McDonald's you need to

sell more vegetables. But if people keep going into McDonald's and only buying the French fries, eventually McDonald's is gonna be like, we can't do like you motherfucker said you wanted vegetables, and then none of you bought vegetables, and

so we're going back to just selling French fries. And I think that there is a responsibility on the side of people who are consuming content to start really trying to work against our own impulses that we've been groomed to have to where like you know, hell, I have ADHD. Anytime I see like a ten minute long video on TikTok, I'm like, oh my.

me vegetables when I wasn't buying vegetables. And so I think it has to be an effort on both sides of the process, both the creation and the consumption and I think if we don't fix it, uh, I don't know where we'll be in a few years in our country because right now the right is kicking our ass online and we have to figure out a way to fix it.

was like clearly feeling a need for me. And then someone was like, you know, you know, so I live in DC, and when all when when federal workers were all being fired and like targeted, people were saying like, oh, a lot of those federal workers were Trump voters, and so they're you know, they're getting what they asked for. Maybe they didn't think it was going to be them. And someone was like, you know, we kind of need

these people. Like if the people who are speaking up and being like dang, I feel like I got, you know, taken for a ride by Trump, somebody that I put my faith in and my trusted and he turned on me. I understand. Nobody understands the impulse to laugh at those people more than me, and I'm sad to say that I have, But at a certain point, don't we want people who are able to see that they made a mistake and are able to call out that like they

they were misled. I feel angry that these people abdicated their responsibility to put effort into who they voted for and be a thoughtful consumer of you know, American democracy, but sort of just stroking my rage boner when when they speak up about it isn't getting us anywhere? Don't we kind of like like, isn't it sort of what we want for them to be talking about, Like, oh, yeah, I'm miss I was mislied. I got it wrong, right, yeah?

her campaign. I could not have been more kammala hair, like pro kamala in this election cycle if I tried, right, But like all they see is you're talking about the military. You're married to somebody in the military, obviously you must be on the right, And like that's bad because like if you're being like if you're pushing me away as somebody that's like dedicating my life to trying to win things for our side of the aisle, how are people that are actually on the right that are like conceding

that they messed up. How are they going to respond to those kind of comments. You're only going to push him back into the cult. But I will also say I do understand like the need for that, Like I can't even tell you how many Francesca Ramsey videos I've watched of her with her ukulele singing about the leopards eating their face. And so I get it, and I think we can still have that content. It's just a matter of making sure it's targeting the people that actually

deserve it and that aren't just everyday people. So like I will watch every possible video of Dave Portnoy being sad about losing twenty million dollars, Like, fuck that guy. Fuck you, Dave Fortnoy, Like I don't feel sorry for him. He deserves it, and like everyone should laugh at him in the same way that like, there is not a song in the world that you could set that video of Richard Spencer getting punched in the head too, that I wouldn't stop and watch it, like four times in

a row, every time forever, my favorite video. Like, but there's a difference between Dave Portnoy and Richard Spencer and like random single mom of three working, you know, as an assistant manager at a rash dress for less and living in a prefab trailer park. You know, like she doesn't need to be mocked because ultimately she got tricked, she got hoodwinked. That does not excuse whatever horrible shit she has said or even continues to say to other

people online, particularly marginalized communities. But if she is coming out and saying, hey, I screwed up. I realized I screwed up when I went to get my groceries and I found out my food stamps got cut off or whatever, Like, we can have discussions with her later about her other problematic shit that she's doing. But when she first says, hey, guys, I think we screwed up. I think our response should

be yes, please welcome, welcome to our side. Now, how can we help you go convince ten of your friends that they also screwed up. Because it's not just about making sure we don't push her back into the cult. It's about recognizing that the people that are in her life are going to listen to her all day long and like, take that that is going to mean more to them than you could show them every single video I have ever made, and it's not going to convince

them as much as her talking to them. And so we need to stop pushing people back into the cult, and we need to start giving them the tools necessary and empowering them to start being the pipeline out of that for the people in their life. Like, there's a reason why the alt right pipeline is so attractive to people. It's because it's easy to go down and everyone's nice to you along the way, and everyone like tells you how smart you are for like getting into the pipeline

in the first place. So, like, we need to start building the pipeline going the opposite direction.

democracy is sliding further into fascism. More people are being hurt, more innocent people are being deported to an ill Salvadorian concentration camp. Because I said nothing. That is a lot harder for me to live with than if I do say stuff. And when I lay down at night and I close my eyes, the last thing that I'm thinking about is how you know Steve zero four seven five six on Twitter thinks that I'm a fat bitch like I will sleep soundly knowing that Steve thinks I'm a

fat bitch. I will not sleep soundly knowing that I did nothing and I said nothing and things got worse.

a fat bitch. But also Steve's going to sleep tonight knowing that I made a very funny joke about his bald spot and that's gonna eat at him. That's the like, Oh, I sleep very well when I get to note because like, oh my god, I the I think the thing that blew my mind the most this entire experience has been you know, tens of thousands of insults later, not a single one of them has been funny. No, I'm a deeply insultable person. I mean, Jesus Christ, I cut my

own bangs, y'all. My bangs look like shit. One hundred percent of the time. They are uneven, and like you could make a hundred jokes about that. That would be so much funnier than just calling me a cow. So I just, in the same way that I want the left to get better at talking about our values and winning people over, I just want conservatives to get funnier, because Jesus Christ, if I'm gonna have to interact with you,

I at least want it to be funny. And I can take a good insult as long as it's funny. So please please just learn from me, develop the ability to insult someone in a way that's funny.

repeating it. So, just conservatives, if you're listening to this, please, for the love of God, just please, please get better

at comedy. Speaking from the perspective of someone that's not only a content creator but is also a digital strategist, I think one of the things that the right did during this last election cycle that the left did not did not do enough of, and also did not do nearly as well as the right is having a strategy where non political content creators were getting content out to their audiences about politics, whether that was them talking about

themselves or them just quietly reposting stuff from other people. And I think that we need to accept the party as a whole needs to accept. But also, like anyone that cares about the direction of our country needs to accept, there are only so many people who are going to willingly watch explicitly political content. The reality is the majority of people do not give a shit about political content,

will never watch it. And I think simultaneously, while yes the part that the piece of the puzzle that I am doing, I think is very important in training people to talk to conservatives, I think equally important is empowering content creators in radically different spaces, whether it's true crime

or makeup tutorials or muck bangs or whatever. I think that the obstacles that we are facing are monumental enough that just getting political content creators to do the right thing and to say the right things and like, do our part is not going to be enough. So if you are a content creator of any type at all, I would very much encourage you to try and figure out what is the piece of this puzzle that I can be playing. It doesn't have to look like creating

political content. And I would be happy if there's any content creator that hears this, that wants to do that and isn't sure how to please reach out to me, I will help you figure out a way. And oh my god, if you work for any political campaign on the left at all, please make that a part of

your strategy. And if you need help figuring out how to make that a part of your strategy, please reach out to me, because, like I mean, as stupid as it was, Trump's strategy of talking to like Aiden Ross and the Pool Brothers and all of that, that was a hugely influential into his win and we have to do that or we are going to keep losing.

just like understand that and get on board. It's not too late, but we have a lot of ground to make up for, and now it's the time.

I think you are right about podcasts. We have to we just have to stop congratulating ourselves on how good we are at certain things and start focusing on getting better at the stuff that they are clearly kicking our ass on.

bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.