‘Too easy to hack’: Senior Trump official blasted after ‘another insecure messaging scandal’

Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration are under fire for failing to adhere to generally accepted safety standards for sensitive information. The Washington Post broke the story on Tuesday that aides of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz have been using commercial email to share information that could pose a risk to the U.S. if revealed to adversaries.The Post revealed members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council — particularly White House national security adviser Michael Waltz — conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, according to documents and interviews with three U.S. officials. National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes told the paper he hadn’t personally seen evidence of the national security adviser using the Gmail account as described, but he said Waltz’s “legacy contacts” have occasionally emailed work-related information to accounts.“They are so g—-n stupid, dangerous and hypocritical,” wrote Democratic National Committee Chief Marketing Officer Shelby Cole on X. Cole referenced the drumbeat of GOP voices calling for the head of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during Trump’s first campaign roughly eight years ago.READ MORE: ‘People are going to die’: Physicians say CDC ‘effectively dissolved’ after mass firingsThe history was not lost on critics mere days after Waltz and high-ranking members of Trump’s security team used a publicly-available app to plan a deadly strike in Yemen. The Signal outrage struck hard last week because of the embarrassment of Waltz’s team inviting Atlantic reporter Jeffrey Goldberg directly into officials’ private chat. Cognitive neuroscientist Devin Duke tweeted that top Trump officials using Gmail was “honestly worse than SignalGate.” Senior editor Jim Swift of the conservative-leaning The Bulwark (and former editor of the conservative Weekly Standard) appeared outraged at the steady drip of mistakes. He responded by posting the meme of Richard Jordan from the film “Hunt for Red October” in which the text “you’ve lost another submarine” was replaced with text reading: “you’re telling me National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has another insecure messaging scandal?”The news also infuriated onlookers who still remember Republican calls for Clinton’s disqualification after reports that she, as U.S. Secretary of State, used a private email server for official public communications rather than official State Department email accounts maintained on protected federal servers. National media outlets like the New York Times were criticized for amplifying GOP outrage at the time. Investor and social media commentator Mario Pawlowski sarcastically wrote: “But Hillary’s emails, bro.”But critics called this latest news even worse than the Signal controversy because Gmail is considerably less fit for official government business than Signal, primarily because Signal at least self-deletes exchanges. Author and historian Harvey G. Cohen tweeted: “Gmail is even more insecure for top secret conversations than Signal is. It’s NOT approved for such purposes by the U.S. gov’t–it’s too easy to hack.”READ MORE: ‘You own this’: Top GOP senator who backed RFK Jr. now under attack after HHS mass firingsClick here to read the Washington Post’s full report (subscription required).

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