The Cast

I’ll quote John Ganz at length with respect to the characters in this little drama:

This leads me to my second point: the shallowness and thoughtlessness of it all. Granted, we did not get to see the actual sit-down meeting of principals that this seems to have come out of, but some real discussion of policy happens on this group chat, which is part of why it’s so scandalous. There is no real strategic rationale described. The only considerations are political and, to some degree, ideological. But they are hastily argued and quickly put aside. Here’s what I mean: the ‘JD Vance’ account objects, writing: “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.” Then he goes on to say: “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

Now, historians and political scientists will recognize such political questions as a normal part of such deliberations: how the public will understand or interpret their actions is usually a primary concern of the elected officials in the executive branch. So, like all administrations, we now know they do worry about public opinion. But there’s another layer here: as we know from public statements, JD Vance seems to be ideologically committed to his anti-European stance. So his arguments about the public response could be interpreted as mere cover for this agenda. He comes with some very meager argumentation about the composition of trade. Vance is apparently not politically strong enough to push the issue, but feels confident enough to provide a dissenting view. Notably, the State Department is totally silent.

Anybody who has worked in any organization can recognize that Hegseth is not taken particularly seriously. He responds eagerly and enthusiastically, but a little too eagerly and enthusiastically. He’s trying to seem to be a part of the team, in the middle of a process that has essentially taken place without him: “Agree.” Well, that’s all you can do Pete. He’s clearly the least respected member of the chat. Hegseth is a “central casting” hire: he’s a cheerleader meant to go on TV, he’s not a policy guy.

Stephen Miller is the voice of the president in this chat and everyone immediately defers to him. It’s also pretty normal for a senior advisor of his type to act as stand-in for the president at such a meeting. It’s also clear that the president’s decisions are final and authoritative, but also they might not make a hell of a lot of sense either politically or strategically, hence Vance’s qualms. It’s Miller’s job to translate. We can plausibly reconstruct what the original meeting with the president was like: he was probably saying stuff like, “We need to look strong, we need to send a message, because Biden was weak.” When the issue of European trade came up, he probably said, “We will make them pay for it,” because that’s the kind of thing he says. Hence Miller’s absurd comments about Europan “remuneration” for the strikes. Inconsistency be damned, the most important for Trump thing is the appearance of strength in any given situation. There’s no long-term planning in evidence. Bombing has failed to budge the Houthis thus far; it’s highly unlikely an intensified campaign will do much more. Of course, “just bomb harder” is sadly something the United States has tried to do many times.

I will say that particular phrases that come up in conversations like this can be signifiers for much broader understandings in the chat com, so the conversation isn’t necessarily quite as shallow as we’re seeing here… but it’s not great that the Boys are hashing out grand strategic questions, in brief, on Signal.

As for the Mar-A-Lago Accord, which as you know is a bit of sane-washing intended to convince Wall Street rubes that the President actually knows what he’s doing:

My high-level takeaway is “what you see is what you get. These guys might look like idiots, and talk like idiots, but don’t let that fool you: they really are idiots. I suppose there is a small possibility that this was some kind of “op” — an intentional leak to Goldberg and the Atlantic — but to what end? It makes them look amateurish and bad at their jobs. To a president obsessed with image, this is even more important than the actual national security implications…

We can finally put to rest all the hypotheticals and theories about Trump’s governance: There’s no 4D chess going on here; the administration is very reactive and tactical; they are not prone to complicated or detailed considerations. They barely even deliberate at all: they do what Trump wants and rationalize it ex post facto.

Krugman and Tooze are right; it’s nonsense all the way down.