It’s been a couple of weeks since the Signal leak crisis, where several of President Trump’s senior-level national security officials engaged in a text chat session.

In case you’ve forgotten, they wanted to hash out plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen and used a messaging app to share the plans. However, they mysteriously added Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, to the group chat and continued to divulge information that was, needless to say, highly sensitive.

Additionally, many of the chat’s messages were set to auto-delete in what appears to violate federal records-keeping laws. It’s difficult to decide what the most disturbing aspect of the entire scandal was. Reckless behavior or gross incompetence? The potential danger that such antics could produce? Texting prayer emojis prior to launching weapons? It was a 21st-century version of Dr. Strangelove, the 1964 film starring Peter Sellers, James Earl Jones, and George C. Scott I have shown to my students when discussing the the Cold War.

For those of you who have not seen it, the characters in the war room expose their incompetence and talk about the danger they are unable to grasp until it is too late to do so.

Rather than confess to a major screw up, the Trump administration went on the offensive, trashing Goldberg, a journalist Trump detests. Vice President JD Vance argued that Goldberg “oversold what he had.” National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who appears to invite Golberg to the chat, called him a “loser” and a liar. Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, dishonestly debunked successive stories on the major mishap as “another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well known for his sensationalist spin.”

So much for taking responsibility for one’s own actions.

Do not let the false bravado deceive you. Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and company are focused on disingenuous arguments on issues such as wokeness, DEI, LGBTQIA+ rights, and transgender people rather than preparing for important battles with the nation’s enemies. Think about it – they have demanded the Pentagon delete tributes to the Tuskegee Airmen, remove photos of soldiers of multiple races and ethnicities at Iwo Jima, and purge images of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb that ended World War II because its name is the Enola Gay.

Irrefutably stupid.

This scandal points to the larger issues of hypocrisy. When it comes to far-right politics, every accusation tends to result in messy and awkward revelations where the truth, which most people largely know, is dramatically exposed. DEI is no exception — Trump’s cabinet is one of the least diverse, least credentialed, and most professionally inept in history, saturated with incompetence. The retrograde discussion on Signal highlighted the juvenile, frat boy, manosphere environment at the administration’s senior levels.

The truth is no individual in the Trump cabinet is genuinely qualified for their jobs. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who callously shot a puppy in the face, is now running the Department of Homeland Security. Hegseth, a former Fox News presenter who decorates his body with despicable white nationalist tattoos and blatantly demonstrates his chronic personal and professional deficiencies, is now defense secretary. Attorney General Pam Bondi has adopted a “hear no evil, fear no evil, see no evil” stance when it comes to addressing any conflict relating to untoward behavior in the Trump administration. Likewise, “my boss can do no wrong” Leavitt received a top-level communications gig at the White House due to a Fox News internship.

This current administration is bereft of competence. The executive branch has no talent, experience, or knowledge — Republicans have replaced DEI with mediocrity. Right-wing lunatics are running the political asylum.

Many white people, particularly those in the middle class and above, consider their skin pigmentation an entitlement to success and high-paying careers. This has been the case throughout American history. Eradicating DEI programs is a less vile approach to promote and usher in a new era of racial segregation. “Make America Great Again” was always about returning to a Jim Crow era to make the nation “great” for an elite segment of white folks.

We must forcefully challenge such racism, sexism, and elitism

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.