Nothing Ever Goes Wrong in Trump’s White House

Opinion|Nothing Ever Goes Wrong in Trump’s White House

Bret Stephens: Gail, before we start, is there a journalist from another publication you’d like to invite into this conversation?

Gail Collins: Gee Bret, could you be referring to Jeff Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, who wound up being accidentally included in a group chat among top Trump officials discussing classified plans for airstrikes in Yemen?

Bret: Best journalistic scoop of the season, and it couldn’t have been easier to get.

Gail: Seems to me that Goldberg behaved very responsibly in a screwed-up situation that once again defined the utter ineptitude of the administration — from top to bottom. My initial reaction was to wish I could fire them all and buy Goldberg a drink.

Bret: If President Trump were, well, someone else entirely, he’d be the one buying Jeff a drink for keeping the nation’s military secrets to himself for as long as they needed keeping — and then exposing Trump’s top national security aides as the amateurs they are.

Gail: A new week, a new dimwit roundup …

Bret: Paging Tulsi Gabbard. And that’s saying nothing about JD Vance, the vice president whose comments on the Signal chat suggest that he doesn’t think the president grasps the implications of his own foreign policy. What a shame Vance didn’t extend his weekend visit to Greenland for another, oh, 45 months.

The other thing worth paying attention to, Gail, is the Republican response, especially in the Senate. Outside of the always gutsy Alaskan Lisa Murkowski, I’m not seeing much more than murmurs of G.O.P. dismay. Just imagine if the shoe had been on the other foot, and it was Joe Biden’s secretary of defense and national security adviser accidentally sharing battle plans with, say, Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson.