Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and Clinton’s use of a private email server did not elicit the same furious calls for scalps.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the media and Democratic reaction to “Signalgate” and cover more media misses.
Signalgate Critics Overlook Democrats’ Own Failures
After Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly included in a Signal chat of top Trump administration officials discussing an upcoming attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Politico Playbook boldly claimed that there is “no administration in the world” where a “blunder of these proportions happens and nobody gets fired or resigns.”
“Not in London. Not in Moscow. Not in Tokyo. Not in Pyongyang. Nowhere,” the outlet underscored.
Playbook’s author missed at least one glaring example: President Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, which cost the lives of 13 service members but did not result in a single firing.
CNBC host Joe Kernen brought up the Biden administration’s abysmal withdrawal during an interview with Senator Mark Warner (D., Va.), who actually laughed off the comparison.
During an appearance on Squawk Box, Warner dismissed those who voiced concerns about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and former President Joe Biden’s “incompetence,” saying the Trump administration was no better.
But Kernan noted the air strikes against the Houthis were a success, while Biden failed disastrously in Afghanistan.
“You remember the Biden administration started with the biggest f-up in history with Afghanistan and 13 dead Americans,” Kernen said. “Let’s not get too sanctimonious and high and mighty about screwing up.”
Warner laughed and said, “Should we go back to even to—”
“That’s only four years [ago], senator!” Kernen interrupted.
Fox News also reported on Warner’s hypocrisy on the issue, with the senator having used the Signal app himself to work with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch to connect with the disgraced Steele dossier author.
But Warner’s office doubled down in its criticism of the Trump administration’s use of Signal. “The fact that Fox News is in possession of these messages demonstrates exactly why Signal shouldn’t be used to discuss classified national security material like war plans,” spokeswoman Rachel Cohn told Fox News.
Others practically celebrated the Trump officials’ error in judgment.
The View played past clips of Trump and other administration officials discussing the importance of protecting classified information.
“Should we be saying, ‘Lock them up’?” host Whoopi Goldberg asked, while co-host Sunny Hostin suggested the officials involved “may have violated” provisions of the Espionage Act.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, never one to miss out on a chance to dunk on Trump, called the Signal chat leak and the president’s policies “dumb” in an essay for the New York Times.
“It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws,” Clinton wrote. “But we knew that already. What’s much worse is that top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”
Clinton, it should be remembered, did not do anything as obviously boneheaded as adding a journalist to a group chat where sensitive military plans were being discussed. The then-secretary of state did, however, jeopardize classified information in a way that required significantly more premeditation: She set up a private email server in her residence where she stored thousands of emails, at least 1,600 of which were found to contain classified information. That number is likely an undercount considering that, after being informed that she was under investigation, she or one of her aides tried in vain to delete all of the information stored on the server.
Of course, Clinton’s use of a private email server at the State Department famously contributed to her 2016 loss in the presidential election against Trump.
At the time, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) said then-FBI Director James Comey’s decision to tell Congress that his agency may have found more emails from Clinton’s private server so close to the 2016 election was “highly unusual” and “cryptic.”
Now, however Blumenthal is calling for a Pentagon investigation into the “reckless” leak.
Senator Dick Durbin, for his part, is also calling for a probe into the Signal fiasco, but he previously defended President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“President Biden understands history when it comes to Afghanistan. He made the difficult decision to not hand over this longest of American wars to a fifth president,” Durbin said in August 2021.
Meanwhile, he called the signal leak “a serious life or death matter” that should be treated as such.
Headline Fail of the Week
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sells a sad story with the headline: “Milwaukee-area woman deported to Laos though she’s never been there, doesn’t speak the language”
But in the second paragraph of the story, readers are informed that the reason the woman, Ma Yang, is being deported is because she pleaded guilty to taking part in a marijuana trafficking operation.
Media Misses
• Politico Playbook’s British author Jack Blanchard came under fire last week for his seeming lack of knowledge of U.S. geography after he commented that “Hegseth (to his relief) is out of the country, and heads from Hawaii to Guam today.” The line was later amended to read “Hegseth (to his relief) is far away from Washington, and heads from Hawaii to Guam today.”
• Representative Jasmine Crockett (D., Texas) made headlines once again in recent days for her controversial rhetoric, this time for calling Texas Governor Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels.” After receiving backlash for her comments, which many took to be her mocking Abbott for his wheelchair use, Crockett claimed her comments were being misunderstood.
“I wasn’t thinking about the governor’s condition—I was thinking about the planes, trains, and automobiles he used to transfer migrants into communities led by Black mayors, deliberately stoking tension and fear among the most vulnerable,” Crockett said. “Literally, the next line I said was that he was a ‘Hot A– Mess,’ referencing his terrible policies. At no point did I mention or allude to his condition. So, I’m even more appalled that the very people who unequivocally support Trump—a man known for racially insensitive nicknames and mocking those with disabilities—are now outraged.”
• A Reuters video published after the United States’ attack this month on Yemen’s Houthi rebels aims to explain who the Houthis are, but instead “whitewashes” the terror group and fails to acknowledge the anti-American, anti-Israel and antisemitic views central to the group’s identity, a prominent Middle East media watchdog says. Read more from Ryan Mills here.