Taking Down Trump 2.0 - Clowns, texting
No sooner did we discuss Rule 10 than we were treated to one of the most insane examples of it ever, Signalgate. It's time for us to turn up the pressure, highlighting Team Trump's incompetence.
Rule 10 of Taking Down Trump holds that when Trump inevitably rolls up with a clown car, the key is to keep doing your thing — and wait for them to make a mistake.
I also said: “Focus on the signal, not the noise.”
This is turning out to be more literally true than I ever could have realized.
The scandal that has immediately been dubbed Signalgate somehow ensnares many of the key members of Trump’s cabinet1 — a cabinet that may well be the least qualified, most compromised cabinet in American history.
Frankly, I was expecting multiple different scandals to erupt regarding the various cabinet members, but I was not expecting this.
Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but looking back, of course Trump’s cabinet engaged in an illegal disappearing group text of war plans outside all the normal governmental protocols for handling, logging, sharing, and storing classified defense information — and included Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg in the group by accident. Other Trump cronies appear to have planned much of the January 6 insurrection via Telegram. Why not bomb Yemen using Signal? What could possibly go wrong?
As the current internet saying goes: elect a clown, expect a circus.
Yet the next question concerns what anti-Trump forces should do in response, and once again, Rule 10 provides us with critical guidance.
The answer: Stick to your battle plan, while exploiting their mistakes.
The battle plan for the pro-democracy coalition is a simple one: America has been taken over by a corrupt cabal of billionaires. We should not suddenly change course. Nor do we need to.
In fact, all we need to do now is to add two words: America has been taken over by a corrupt cabal of billionaires and incompetents. They’re not just corrupt, they’re also very, very, very bad at their jobs. Irresponsible. Foolish. Bumbling. Unqualified. In over their heads. They’re destroying the economy and destroying American leadership and military effectiveness. And committing a boatload of illegalities along the way.
Focusing on the corrupt oligarchy and focusing on incompetent idiocy are not mutually exclusive. Quite the contrary. Together, these arguments reinforce one another — and they provide a powerful political indictment of an administration that is tearing America apart, putting America last, and creating a shameful messiness that we must now clean up.
We should then be taking this one step further, from messaging to investigating.
Signalgate not just an accidental firing of essential employees that must be rehired; it is a massive set of indiscretions and illegalities, and it threatens to be the tip of a much larger iceberg of improper, illegal, insecure, unstored communication within the Trump White House, automatically disappearing after 7 days, creating a dark web of official communications that evade any oversight by Congress, by inspectors general, and by journalists and the public via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
If they had one Signal thread, they likely have dozens. If not hundreds. And why? Because they have something to hide?
We should not only be criticizing such misconduct but calling, over and over and over, for it to be fully and comprehensively investigated. Even if those calls for investigation are futile for now due to the Republican majorities in Congress and Trump’s control of DOJ (though it is quite possible that congressional inquiries will occur, because of the egregiousness of this embarrassment and how bad it looks for the GOP). In fact, the more Republicans try to cover this up and block any inquiry into what happened, the more Democrats should keep pressing more, every single day, demanding answers, demanding to get to the bottom of everything, howling that the American people have a right to know what their highest public servants are doing.
This is not a change in message, or in strategy, but simply in posture — from defensive to offensive, from guarding to counterattacking.
It’s time for us to bring the pressure — and to keep it up all the way through 2026 and 2028.
Although, notably and hilariously, not Elon Musk.
You are the only person to have mentioned the requirement that the communication be archived. Thank you for your accurate journalism
(The clown-car Signalgate "What chats?" scabdal notwithstabding, this is still relevant: ) With the anticipated thousands [million+?] of heroic protestors on April 5th (actually any and all days!) here's an updated partial list of those fighting back every day [as of 3-25-25). I'm also adding courageous law firms who haven't caved. Besides upstanding lawyers, and law-abiding honorable (present and former) judges (including James Boasberg, chief judge, D.C. District Ct.), here's a growing list of Profiles in Courage men, women, and advocacy groups who refuse to be cowed or kneel to the force of Trump/Musk/MAGA/Fox "News" intimidation:
I'll begin (again) with Missouri's own indomitable Jess[ica] (à la John Lewis's "get in good trouble") Piper/"The View from Rural Missouri," then, in no particular order, Heather Cox Richardson/"Letters from an American," Joyce Vance/"Civil Discourse," Bernie Sanders, AOC, Gov. Tim walz, Sarah Inama, Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Jasmine Crockett, Ruth Ben-Ghait, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Hayes, Ali Velshi, Stephanie Miller, Gov. Janet Mills, Gov. Beshear, Gov. JB.Pritzker,J im Acosta, Jen Rubin And the Contrarians, Dan Rather, Robert Reich, Jay Kou, Steve Brodner, Rachel Cohen, Brian TylerCohen, Jessica Craven, Scott Dworkin, Anne Applebaum, Lucian Truscott IV, Chris Murphy, Jeff Merkley, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Adam Schiff, Elyssa Slotkin, Delia Ramirez,Tim Snyder, Robert B. Hubbell, Ben Meiseilas, Rich wilson, Ron Filpkowski, Jeremy Seahill, Thom Hartmann, Jonathan Bernstein, Simon Rosenberg, Marianne Williamson, Mark Fiore, Jamie Raskin, Rebecca Solnit, Steve Schmidt, Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman, Andy Borowitz, Jeff Danziger, Ann Telnaes,͏ ͏Will Bunch, Jim Hightower, Dan Pfeifer, Dean Obeidallah, Liz Cheney, Adam Kimzinger, Cassidy Hutchinson--
American Bar Association, Indivisible. FiftyFifty one, MoveOn, DemCast, Blue Missouri, Third Act, Democracy Forward, Public Citizen, Democracy Index, DemocracyLabs, Hands Off, Marc Elias/Democracy Docket, Public Citizen, League of Women Voters Lambda Legal, CREW, CODEPINK, ACLU, The 19th/Errin Haines et al. And, as Joyce Vance says, "We're in this together"--or via Jess Piper, from rural Missouri: "Solidarity." FIGHT BACK! WE ARE NOT ALONE! (Latest addition h/t , Robert B. Hubbell: Law firms, see below). All suggestions are welcome.
* Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling have resisted Trump, fighting back with the help of other courageous firms like Williams & Connolly. Per The ABA Journal,
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, representing fired inspectors general. (Law.com)
Hogan Lovells, seeking to block executive orders to end federal funding for gender-affirming medical care. (Law.com)
Jenner & Block, also seeking to block the orders on cuts to medical research funding. (Law.com, Reuters)
Ropes & Gray, also seeking to block cuts to medical research funding. (Law.com)
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, representing the Amica Center for Immigrants Rights and others seeking to block funding cuts for immigrant legal services. (Law.com)
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer.