Trump has managed to spin Signalgate as a media lapse, not a major security breach | Andrew Roth

The US administration believes it can divide public attention until there is a new scandal. It may be a winning strategy

When it comes to Trump-era scandals, the shameless responses to Signalgate", in which top administration officials discussing details of an impending strike in Yemen in a group chat without noticing the presence of a prominent journalist, should set alarm bells ringing for its brazenness and incompetence.

In a particularly jaw-dropping exchange, Tulsi Gabbard, the United States' director of national intelligence, was forced to backtrack during a house hearing after she had said that there had been no specific information in the Signal chat about an impending military strike. Then, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg published the chat in full, contradicting Gabbard's remarks that no classified data or weapons systems had been mentioned in the chat.