Sorry about that Signal chat. Let's move on now. (03-25-2025--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:29] All right. Deep breath, everybody. Let's talk about Signal. Well, not actually the platform. I don't really know anything about it. It's just like a messaging platform. And apparently it promises like, you know, encryption. So it's more secure or something and you can have all of your conversations deleted on a schedule or deleted immediately, that kind of thing. It's like WhatsApp doesn't what or no, sorry, Snapchat does that too, right?

[00:00:57] The messages delete. So apparently there was a Snapchat. So if you're not aware or not Snapchat, there was a Signal group chat that was set up and a bunch of people in the Trump administration cabinet level, like top officials were in this group chat and they were going over the plan to bomb the Houthis.

[00:01:24] No blowfish. No blowfish were harmed in any of the bombing runs. Okay. Over the Houthis over in Yemen. These are the Islamists who literally have on their flag, you know, like death to the Jews and death to America.

[00:01:38] Literally, like literally it says that on their flag. So we may never know what their motivations are for why they started, you know, lobbing rockets at the shipping lanes, trying to hit all sorts of commercial and private and even military ships. I think it might have something to do with their religion, but I'm not sure. I don't want to just be, you know, spitballing with wild accusations.

[00:02:09] So they have they've been engaged in this campaign basically since October 7th because they stand in solidarity with the Hamas terrorists, the designated foreign terrorist organization, Hamas. They stand with Hamas. And so they are they're also like a proxy of Iran, much like Hezbollah, who also started shelling Israel.

[00:02:33] That was the whole point. Of Hamas launching its incursion into Israel, massacring a bunch of Israelis and whoever happened to be in their way, just murdering and raping all the way through the area. And and and then the idea was to draw all of their Iranian allies, Iranian backed allies into a fight against Israel.

[00:02:59] Why? Well, the conventional wisdom, the thinking is that. The Abraham Accords that Trump signed four years prior. has been bearing fruit and it is it is warming relations with certain Muslim countries in the Middle East.

[00:03:20] And so these countries that are warming to America and even to Israel, that that is an existential threat to the Iranian regime. They are opposite of the Sunni Muslim countries because Iran is Shia. By the way, you should just eliminate the word Shiite from your vocabulary. It's apparently not a they're Shia, Shia and Sunni.

[00:03:47] So you you've got this power dynamic in the Middle East. Iran wants to be more of a regional power and the other Muslim countries do not want to see that. And so as they begin warming to America and Israel. Iran's like, oh, we can't have that. And so this was supposed to trigger a larger conflagration in the area and to prevent anybody from dealing positively with Israel.

[00:04:18] So that's what the Houthis are doing this for right there. They're there and they're launching all of these rockets, usually from the shore, as I understand it, into the shipping lanes. So. So. America decides we're going to protect the shipping lanes. And by the way, if you don't understand the importance of protecting international shipping, like this is the stuff that leads to large scale war.

[00:04:44] If you if you cannot protect maritime vessels, that you need to have free passage in the in the waters. If there is no penalty for piracy, then international trade is done. Basically. You got to have the ability to float through without with all of the merchandise going someplace. And so America has protected those maritime passages for a very long time, along with some help from allies.

[00:05:13] But basically it's fallen on to America. And you may not like that. But that is kind of the way it's been. Right. So. This this meeting is set up, this chat group chat is set up. Apparently by Michael Waltz. That's the understanding. Michael Waltz.

[00:05:38] He is Donald Trump's national security adviser. I don't know if it was him. I don't know if it was one of his people. Here's another thing I've not seen is whether or not they used a preexisting group. Right. A preexisting group that was already set up. I don't know. I don't think that could be the case.

[00:06:01] But to me, I would like to know who the hell has Jeffrey Goldberg's name in their contacts list. Why would you have that guy in your contacts list? You know who Goldberg is, right? Goldberg is the guy that wrote the story about the suckers and losers. Remember that one? The discredited story. And he wrote that story. This is Jeffrey Goldberg.

[00:06:28] And like a lot of people suggest, I have no idea if this is true, but he's a cutout basically for the Obama CIA crew. So whenever they want to leak stuff through into the media that comes out of the intelligence community, if you're in the Obama wing, then you go through Goldberg, among others. Somehow or another, Goldberg gets added to this group. Probably because he's got the same initials as somebody else that was supposed to be invited but wasn't.

[00:06:57] JG. And so when I guess on the app, when you're looking to add people, you see the little circle and they have the initials JG or whatever. And you click on, and so they added Jeffrey Goldberg. It seems to me like the most, because I'm an Occam's razor kind of a guy, the most obvious answer is probably the simplest one, which is that they did not mean to put him in that group chat. That was unintentional.

[00:07:25] They fat fingered the thing or they, you know, maybe didn't have his readers on. And so he just, he looked at the phone and hit the wrong person, whatever. And they add in Jeffrey Goldberg. And now he sees this stuff. And he at first says, he at first does not believe that this was actually the people that it now turns out it was. He thought that it was, it could be like a scam.

[00:07:54] It could be like a James O'Keefe kind of an operation to make him do a story that wasn't true. But it turns out it was true. This actually did occur. There was a group chat message and he was added incorrectly into it, erroneously into it. And then he got apprised of all of these, these plans. And so now the outrage, right?

[00:08:18] And so Democrats are all about getting themselves another impeachment against Donald Trump, who, by the way, was not part of the group chat. They're calling for everybody to quit. They want, yeah, they want resignations from everybody that was involved. By the way, the operation was a success. It went off without a hitch. That doesn't mean it wasn't compromised. It was because you brought in Jeffrey Goldberg. But Goldberg didn't report on any of this stuff. Now, maybe that's because he thought it was all a scam. Maybe he thought it was a lie. He wasn't sure.

[00:08:48] But when he saw that they were getting ready to launch in about two hours, he says he hung out in a parking lot at some grocery store. And he went on to X Twitter and. And. He saw that we were bombing and that's when he knew it was real. So he only knew it was real after. And then. He wrote a story about it. And the story was published yesterday.

[00:09:14] And that's what everybody is focused on now is about. How could this have happened? Well, obviously, I think it was a mistake. Surely they would not have put him in the group chat. There's no reason to put him in the group chat. Right. Unless you were trying to what? Leak the plans ahead of time to Jeffrey Goldberg. The FBI says it's doing an investigation. Kash Patel said that today when he was up on Capitol Hill at a hearing.

[00:09:42] Tulsi Gabbard says there was no classified information in it. Pointing out here, I feel it's necessary. Got to point out that just because. Well, a thing is not classified because it is marked classified. It is classified because of the nature of the information. And I am consistent on this explanation, which, by the way, goes back to 2015, 2016, when it was Hillary Clinton.

[00:10:11] And she had exposed all sorts of classified information on her server that had like no security on it whatsoever. So like the stuff that was classified that was moving through her server via the emails and such. Yeah. So Democrats are now saying we don't ever want to hear anything else about Hillary's emails because you guys did it, too. Now. I think there is a difference in erroneously including a guy in a group chat. And.

[00:10:42] Creating, building a homebrew server so you can control all the information and then you can wipe it all away and it's irretrievable. That's the point of creating a server, not using like a Gmail account or something, because that's Google servers. Now. They share a similarity in that they expose the classified material or the sensitive material. They expose it to potential hackers.

[00:11:09] If anybody knew that this was going on, they could have gotten into that and seen it in real time. It does not appear that occurred. So dodged a bullet. Sure. But. Impeach everybody just to be safe. No, I'm kidding. Here's a great idea. Yep. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain. And Cabins of Asheville is your connection.

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[00:12:27] And they have pet-friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. We shall go to the phones now. Tom, welcome to the program. Hello, Tom. How are you doing? Thank you so much. Yes, sir. Listen, let's just be perfectly clear. Ted Spaff and his staff, they dropped the ball. They put our nation at risk.

[00:12:56] And people are wondering whether he still is drinking or not. So we'll make it fair whether he's drinking or not. They dropped the ball. And national security is not a Democratic thing, left or right, or Republican thing. National security covers all Americans. So they made a mistake. And I think about President Biden's chief staff that had the same job that Husqvar had.

[00:13:23] That when he was sick and went to the hospital and didn't report it, they made a big federal case out of it. It wasn't a federal case, yeah. There was no federal case, no. Or congressional case. Yeah, they wanted to know why he went AWOL, which is a big deal. And we're wondering why these guys put our nation at risk. And there's no excuse for it. There's no excuse. Not Democrat, Republican. So real, just hang on, Tom. Let me say, hang on, Tom. I got to stop you real quick. Because you've said his name a couple times, Pete Hegseth.

[00:13:51] He's the defense secretary. But the guy who created the group chat, that would be Michael Waltz, the national security advisor. All of them who were in that group chat should be reprimanded. All of them. And the guy put together. And I thank God the man brought it out. It's wrong. And it's not a Democrat or Republican thing. But the bottom line is this. Did you have a problem with the defense secretary going AWOL?

[00:14:21] With Hedgepeth doing... No, no, no, no. I mean, Tom, I'm asking whether or not you have a consistent standard, basically. Were you mad? Were you angry that... I think that he should have apologized, and he did. And I think these guys should apologize. I'm not trying to play word games here, because I'm just straight up to the point. I'm a loyal American before I'm a Democrat. Yeah, no, I'm asking... That's why I was asking you straight up whether or not you had a problem with the defense secretary

[00:14:46] going AWOL while we were in the middle of three different international operations. I apologize to the American people like it was supposed to. And these guys need to apologize, and they need to be reprimanded. But let me finish this, and then I'll let you twist it or spin it however you want to do it. DEI... This seems like a good faith argument. Yeah, go ahead.

[00:15:05] But these DEI guys, they could have did a much better job than this group chat thing. And I thank God that this reporter, whoever he was, brought it forth. And that's all I got to say, and that's my story. And I promise you, I'm sticking to it. Oh, yeah, that's fantastic. All right, Tom. I appreciate the call. See, here's the thing, Tom.

[00:15:29] Tom, you would do way better in those types of conversations if you approached it at least with the sort of facade of a good faith mentality. Because here's the thing, like, I want to know what happened as well. And what have I always cautioned here? Like, let's give it a minute. Let's find out what happened. And hopefully we get some clarity.

[00:15:56] And when we know what occurred, then we'll be able to say what we think should happen. It does seem to me like it was a mistake. But there's also the larger question of why are they doing this stuff in the signal group messaging? And to me, they're doing that in order to avoid having those discussions ever become preserved as part of the record.

[00:16:26] And that's a problem for me. That should, like, these types of discussions should be held in a SCIF, in a secure location, over secured comms, and then the record's preserved. Now, I don't know, nobody knows at this point whether or not they did make a record of this conversation and then preserve it, which you could do in order to preserve the records. Like, that's possible, but we don't know if that occurred. All right.

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[00:17:52] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right. Let's head over to the phones again and get Joey on. Hello, Joey. Welcome to the show. Hey, Pete. Yo. First of all, I wonder if Mr. Tom got this upset when we lost 13 of our heroes from the incompetence of the Biden administration. I highly doubt it. Nobody lost their jobs for that. Nope. Nope. Nope.

[00:18:19] So I'm calling about the CJ initials and all that, and I think there's only two options here. Either there's a mole within, which I hope not, and I doubt it, or there was a mistake made with whoever, you know, the initials of CJ. And if that's the mistake, let's find out who the real CJ is. They, I have seen the name. It's the, yeah, the initials are the same as somebody else who is in the security apparatus. I forget her name. Okay.

[00:19:17] Yeah. That's who it should have been, and it answers my question. Yeah. I feel, I mean, I'm glad there is. I'm glad there is the here one with that initial that should have been on it. Yeah. That's the way it appears at this point. Joey, I appreciate the call, bud. Oh, thank you, Pete. Yes, sir. This is a message from Tim Oteo, who says, Dear Democrats, sorry, it was a mistake. It will be addressed and remedied. No, we are not going to empty Trump's cabinet to further the Democrats' agenda. Get over it.

[00:19:45] Hey, let's just apply the Democrat standard. Shall we? Yeah. I'm okay with that. I did not approve of the Democrat standard when the Democrats were behaving badly. I didn't approve of that, but I lost that argument to Democrats and the media, but I repeat myself. And so here we are. And I warn people, you're not going to like it when this is the new standard, right?

[00:20:15] That's the thing about slippery slopes. When you have, as Jeffrey Goldberg, I think in his piece, he even mentions, I think he mentioned, or no, maybe, no, it was the AP. I think it was the AP. Yeah.

[00:20:32] The handling of national defense information is strictly governed by law under the century-old Espionage Act, including provisions that make it a crime to remove such information from its, quote, proper place of custody, even through an act of gross negligence.

[00:20:46] The Justice Department in 2015 and 2016 investigated whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton broke the law by communicating about classified information with her aides on a private email server that she had set up, though the FBI ultimately recommended against charges and none were brought. And so that's the standard. I'm sorry, did you guys not want that standard?

[00:21:14] Because it seemed like you really, really wanted that standard. Everybody seemed to say that it was all getting blown out of proportion. Oh, but her emails and all this stuff. They didn't bring charges. She didn't suffer any penalty. Legally, I mean, she lost her run for president and they blamed Jim Comey.

[00:21:36] Which I think is pretty instructive and illustrative of the point I am making, which is that the Democrats did not feel that she should be punished whatsoever. And the fact that she lost and they blamed somebody else for investigating her crime, which she was never prosecuted for. Right. That that's somehow the reason, not the fact that she engaged in the behavior. Also, she was just a terrible candidate. Didn't campaign in Wisconsin.

[00:22:04] So there are a lot of a lot of different reasons why she lost. But. That's the standard you guys set. And I'm not really interested now in. In hearing your demands to revert to the standard that existed prior to your gal getting caught. Right. If that's the if the argument is that they should not have been using the signal app. Well, I agree with that.

[00:22:35] I don't think they should have been using that. They should have been doing this stuff over a secure secure communication channel. But when you're doing it and then you get caught doing it. The standard is that you don't suffer any kind of repercussions. And there are all sorts of examples of this over the last 10 years since the Hillary Clinton server story blew up.

[00:23:03] Anybody ever get punished for the botched withdrawal in Afghanistan? No. No repercussions for that. 13 service members were killed. Nobody. Nobody. Punished. They never even mentioned it again. Caller Tom mentioned Lloyd Austin, the former secretary of defense who went AWOL for weeks during.

[00:23:30] Three different operations that were ongoing at the time. Nobody knew where he was. Not even the president. Now, to be fair, the president didn't really know where he was. So let alone Lloyd Austin. But still, like, you should be able to get in contact with the defense secretary while you're running these ops. And they and they didn't. They couldn't. They just apologized. He said, I'm sorry. And that was it. OK, that's the standard now. Just say you're sorry, guys. Sorry. Our bad. Won't do it again.

[00:24:00] OK, let's move on. Right. To me, it seems like that's the standard that now applies. To me, also, the bigger issue is why did whoever set this group chat up, which we don't know, but it seems to track back to Michael Waltz, the NSA. The national security advisor.

[00:24:26] It seemed like that was the origin, the creator of the group. Did he do that? Did he create the group or did he have some underling do it? Did he have some aid do it? Is that the person who gets thrown under the bus? Does anybody get thrown under the bus? Like Democrats. Dare I say it? I know this. This might be a bit controversial, but I'm going to say. Democrats seem to be pouncing.

[00:24:56] I'm just saying they seem a little bit pouncy right now. They're seizing on it. Now, not that that's being used in any of the articles about this, but they're simply, according to the media, they're calling on and they're saying. They're not pouncing and they're not seizing. But I got to tell you, I feel like they're pouncing and seizing. Maybe they take it to seizing level two or something, and that's where we'll start seeing this word used.

[00:25:24] But they are demanding that people resign and get impeached and get charged and all of that. And those are the old standards, guys. You blew those up. It's like the filibuster. Remember when you all blew that up? I do. You blew that up. New standard applies. And now you don't like it. See, that's the thing. You're dealing with people who are not arguing in good faith. And this is why you got Donald Trump, folks.

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[00:26:52] Mail orders are accepted, too. Get all the details at createavideo.com. Democrats are calling for Pete Hegseth to resign. No, he should not resign. Based on the standard of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in the media, right? That's the standard. You don't have to suffer any kind of repercussions for doing this sort of thing. None. They gave out pardons to Chelsea Manning. So, or what was his name before the sex change?

[00:27:24] I forget. I forget. I totally would have dead named him if I remembered, but I just don't even remember his name. Anyway. Then there's this. The guy who wrote this piece, Jeffrey Goldberg. I mentioned he was the one who did the story at The Atlantic. He is the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.

[00:27:41] And he was the one that did the story about how Donald Trump told his chief of staff, a decorated Marine Corps veteran. Kelly was his last name. Forget his first name. Richard, maybe. And they're standing in Arlington National Cemetery. And Trump says, look at all these suckers and losers. What did they even die for?

[00:28:11] What was the point of it? Or whatever. Like, and that story. And then when Goldberg, when people went on the record and said that never happened, Goldberg claimed that he had other sources. And then never produced them. And so now Goldberg is saying that there was classified information in the text messaging.

[00:28:35] But the Trump administration officials, Tulsi Gabbard specifically, said there was not any classified information in the text messages. So who's who? OK, so there's no classified information. So Goldberg should release him. He should release what he's got. He took screenshots. So release them. It's not he. They just said it's not classified. The attack already occurred. Right.

[00:29:04] This was what? Ten days ago. So it already happened. You're not jeopardizing anybody now. So go ahead and show us what you have, Goldberg. Or is this another suckers and losers thing where you get some information and then you spin out a whole yarn piggybacking off of this one thing?

[00:29:57] Yeah. I'm not sure. Because he was in the group chat. He was there. The officials have confirmed it. The White House confirmed it. When Goldberg left the group chat, he then sent messages to the National Security Council.

[00:30:23] And Brian Hughes said, quote, this appears to be an authentic message chain. And we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security. Which, by the way, that's something also to keep in mind here is that it was a success. Right.

[00:30:52] I mean, the Trump administration is saying the Houthi terrorists since 2023 attacked U.S. Navy warships 174 times, attacked commercial shipping vessels 145 times. And as a result, 75% of U.S.-flagged shipping has been forced to navigate the southern coast of Africa rather than through the Suez Canal. And so it was a successful operation.

[00:31:18] But attacking Goldberg, like that, you should have just said, yeah, I don't know. I was in the group chat and if somebody got added, they weren't supposed to be in there. I didn't add them, but yeah, obviously that was a mistake. Just say, oh, it was a mistake. Move on. All right, let's see what Alex has to say. Hello, Alex. Welcome to the show. Oh, yeah. Hi, Pete. Yeah, I was listening to you talk about this message and I'm going to get put my few cents in.

[00:31:48] I'm actually listening to some of the testimony. Tulsi Garber, she actually refused to answer really a lot. Any questions about that? What did she answer about the classified material? She refused to answer that. That's not true. That's being reviewed right now. No, that's not true. Alex, that's not true. No, Alex, that's not true. I literally watched it. I watched it as I was sitting in the studio. Oh, no, I mean, I'm pretty good at watching government meetings. I've been doing it for almost 30 years. So I'm pretty good at listening to people say what they say.

[00:32:17] And she said there was no classified information in there. Okay. Well, here's the thing, though. But they are using this app that they were not supposed to use, right? No, I agree with that. Yeah. So if Trump is, you know, I mean, he's on record saying that anybody in my administration was caught using any kind of apps that are not approved, there's going to be consequences. But there are no consequences. And I guess where you're coming from with regards to Hillary and whatnot, that Democrats didn't do anything. But then, you know, of course, Trump did win the election after that, and he didn't do

[00:32:47] anything with Clinton. That's besides the point. So I guess my question is, you know, if Republicans claiming to be better than Democrats in this particular situation, why wouldn't they act on what they said they would do? I can answer that real quickly for you. The charge of hypocrisy carries no purchase any longer. None of that matters. Because Republicans tried to play along with this idea that if you said one thing but did

[00:33:16] the opposite, that you would get pilloried for it in the media and in elections and such. And then they learned very quickly that that's not the case. They were disabused of that in the 2010 to 2016 timeframe. And again, that's how you got Donald Trump. And then it only got worse after that. So Republicans are no longer playing by the old rules. They're playing by the Democrats' rules. And I said, you're not going to like it when they're all playing by the same rules.

[00:33:44] All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.