The story so far

 March 15:   Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic, was invited to a group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal.  There he found J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, CIA director John Ratcliffe and national security adviser Michael Waltz discussing plans for an attack on Houthi in Yemen.  At 11:44 am Hegseth sent him "precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing."  Shortly before 2 pm the attack occurred.

March 24:   The Atlantic website published "The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans."

March 24:  The first denial was made by Hegseth.  Cornered by reporters at an airport in Hawaii he pronounced Goldberg "a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes...nobody was texting war plans."

March 24:  Back in Washington Mike Johnson told reporters, "I just was with the president just now in the Oval Office...the administration is addressing what happened.  They're gonna track that down and make sure that doesn't happen again...that mission was a success."

March 24:  On CNN Jake Tapper played a clip of Mike Waltz from 2023 attacking Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan for sending emails to Hillary Clinton's now-legendary private server:  "No wonder Americans are losing faith in our justice system."

March 24:  On Fox News Will Cain declared himself "proud" of the way leaders make decisions after years of "secrecy."  He also suggested that the confusion stemmed from Goldberg's initials, JG, which Hegseth mistook for Jamieson Greer, US Trade Representative.  Why Greer would be in the chat is not clear.

March 24:   Trump's response to the debacle was presidential:  "I don't know anything about it.  I'm not a big fan of the Atlantic.  To me it's a magazine that's going out of business.  But I know nothing about it.  You're saying that they had what?"

March 25:  Acknowledging that the report of the massive security fuckup "appears to be authentic," Brian Hughes, speaking for the White House National Security Council, said officials were "reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain."

March 25:  Senator Susan Collins pronounced it "extremely troubling."

March 25:  Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard refused to admit to the Senate Intelligence Committee that she was even involved in the chat.  "You were not TG?" asked Senator John Warner.  "There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal chat," she replied, seeming to know a lot about it.  Also no war plans were discussed.   (Goldberg made it all up.  Maybe he's the one with a history of alcohol abuse.  Yeah, that's it.)

March 25:  During his daily "Why do we need Karoline Leavitt?" session with handpicked reporters, Trump pronounced Michael Waltz "a good man" who "learned a lesson" and his screwup "the only glitch in two months...not a serious one."  Then he went back to trashing George Clooney.

At Letters from an American Heather Cox Richardson explains:

"Signal...is most decidedly not part of the United States national security system.  The decision to steer around government systems was possibly an attempt to hide conversations, since the app was set to erase some messages after a week, and others after four weeks.  By law, government communications must be archived."  During his first term Trump became notorious for tearing up official papers and even trying to flush them down the toilet; staffers often retrieved letters and memos from the trash and taped them back together.  This is easier.

The Guardian's analysis of this mess concentrates on what it reveals about the regime's "loathing of Europe."  The attack on the Houthis was meant to protect shipping through the Suez Canal, a worthwhile goal, but J.D. Vance wanted it made clear that much more of Europe's shipping uses the canal (40% compared to 3% for the US):  "I just hate bailing Europe out again."  He was among those urging that Europe or Egypt get a bill for the raid, in keeping with Trump's "the whole world takes advantage of us" whining.  Marina Hyde's take is much funnier.  "'I don't know anything about it,' was the president's sleepy verdict yesterday, a day he spent wetting his pants about some oil painting of him hanging somewhere in the Colorado state legislature."

Not anymore, Ms. Hyde!  The pants wetting paid off.  The offending portrait has been banished.  Minority leader Paul Lundeen has requested one that "depicts his contemporary likeness."  Here you go:

Our final word today comes from Hillary Clinton:  "You have got to be kidding me."