Everyone has sent a text message to the wrong person at some point. I once thought I was sending a "Happy Birthday" text to someone I was close friends with, but it went instead to someone I hadn't seen in years. Needless to say, it was not that person's birthday, and the text kind of sat there for a little while. There was another time when I accidentally posted an Instagram story that I didn't mean to, and I had to research how to take it down before people saw it. Mistakes happen, especially when it comes to technology. There was even that time when I picked up my phone, made a group chat with a few friends and sent out classified military documents detailing the bombing of Houthi targets in Yemen. Without even thinking, I unwittingly added a journalist from The Atlantic. Oh sorry, that last one wasn't me; It was the Trump administration.
News broke Tuesday, March 25, that Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a group chat with White House senior advisors discussing the bombing of Houthi targets in Yemen. Goldberg claims he was added to a group chat on March 15 by United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, using the Signal messaging service. This reflects a significant breach of national security stemming from the seemingly frivolous actions of upper-level administrators in the Trump administration. However, in a press conference, Trump maintained that "national security is now stronger than it's ever been." Yes, because when classified war plans are being discussed over a messaging app with unintended parties receiving those plans, national security is at its strongest.
The Trump administration claims that a staffer by the name of Michael Waltz made the mistake and that Waltz has learned an important lesson. If a breach of national security had happened like this before the first Trump presidency, it would have been headline news. However, it seems that a national security breach is just another headline on page three of a newspaper. The frequent and continual dysfunction of the Trump administration has lowered the bar and image of a presidential administration so much that a simple national security breach has become the bar. The standards of the American people are so unbelievably low that the leaking of classified information is no longer a serious cause for concern. Ultimately, this national security breach just cements the defining narrative of the Trump presidency, the fall of the United States on the world stage.
A significant point in this administration's fall can be seen in the recent meeting between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump and Zelenskyy met at the White House on February 28, 2025. The meeting was intended to discuss the future of American support in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War; however, things turned sour over the course of the meeting. Things started from a mutual place of respect and diplomacy, answering questions in an oval office press conference. However, the tone of the meeting began to shift when topics turned to how the United States planned to support Ukraine, given Donald Trump's relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At one point, a reporter attacked Zelenskyy for not wearing a suit to the oval office, claiming it was disrespectful, to which Zelenskyy replied that he would wear a suit when the war was over. The meeting worsened when Vice President JD Vance interjected that Zelenskyy seemed ungrateful for the United States' support. This led to a shift in Trump's formerly respectful attitude, leading to an unprecedented heated exchange in front of the media. The discussion got so heated that the mineral rights deal the two presidents had intended to sign was taken off the table.
In the aftermath of the meeting, the international consensus was firmly against the United States and President Trump. Never before has such an apparent disregard for the presidency and the nature of diplomacy been shown. Repeated actions like this have led the American people to believe that they are relatively isolated from international relations, and they settle for a president who only allows "minor" national security breaches to occur. That is what the Trump administration has done for the United States: taking it from a global force of diplomacy and mediation to being the butt of the joke.
Declan is a surviving biochemistry major at the University of Notre Dame. He is usually trying to figure out how to work the printer. Contact at dburke7@nd.edu.
