‘Trump is on the rampage. It’s not safe to talk’: ANDREW NEIL reveals his extraordinary phone call with top White House insider… and why the war plans leak scandal confirms a terrible truth

As self-inflicted security breaches go, it was epic — the sort of blunder-cum-fiasco you’d expect if the Keystone Cops had been put in charge of the nation’s military and intelligence services.

Not only did the Trump administration convene a confidential group chat on a commercial messaging service (Signal) to discuss sensitive national security matters, the group included, bar the President, the highest officials in the land: the Vice President (JD Vance), the Secretary of Defense (Pete Hegseth), the Secretary of State (Marco Rubio), the head of the National Security Agency (Michael Waltz) and several other high-ranking officials, including the head of the CIA (John Ratcliffe) and the Director of National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard).

Not only did the issues discussed involve matters of the highest national security, they included the sharing of imminent plans for US military strikes on the Houthis in Yemen. So lives were at stake.

And, most bizarre of all, not only was a journalist inexplicably included in the chat group, it was a staunchly anti-Trump journalist (Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the left-leaning magazine The Atlantic).

Signal is an encrypted platform. But it is nowhere near as secure as the government’s own sophisticated channels designed specifically for the exchange of highly classified and top secret information.

To resort to Signal to discuss upcoming US military action betrays a pretty cavalier approach to security, born of incompetence and inexperience at the highest levels of government.

Perhaps that’s to be expected when a cast of clowns fills too many top administration positions. A Fox News bloviator for Defense (Hegseth). An anti-vax zealot for Health (Robert F Kennedy Jr). The co-founder of fake wrestling for Education (Linda McMahon). A controversial TV doctor for Medicare and Medicaid (Mehmet Oz). A pro-Kremlin, pro-Syria’s recently ousted dictator for National Intelligence (Tulsi Gabbard).

The Administration has dealt with the fallout from the Signal scandal with its hallmark mixture of arrogance and ineptitude.

Hegseth’s first response was to dismiss it all as a ‘hoax’, even as the White House was confirming that the exchanges on Signal were ‘authentic’.

When untruths didn’t work, the administration – from the President down – resorted to the time-honoured political practice of throwing a dead cat on the table to distract attention.

The Atlantic was a failing magazine, claimed Trump, which is as untrue as it is irrelevant. The editor is ‘deceitful’ and ‘discredited’, piled in Hegseth once he got a second wind. He’s also ‘sensationalist’ chirped White House secretary Karoline Leavitt.

I can understand why Team Trump is wary of Goldberg. He’s no friend of the President. But he’s not the one who’s done anything wrong in this scandal. He’s just the lucky beneficiary of the scoop of a lifetime landing on his lap.

He has no idea why he ended up on the Signal chat group (it looks as if his name was added, mistakenly, by Waltz or one of his staff).

At first even he thought it was a hoax. He waited for a week after the attacks on the Houthis before going public. Even then, rightly, he did not give any details of the military planning he’d been privy to.

Hegseth and the White House deny any ‘war plans’ were revealed in the high-powered chat room. But there is no reason to disbelieve Goldberg.

He says he received a text in the chain two hours before US forces went into action from the Defense Secretary detailing ‘minute-by-minute accounting’ of ‘forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying and attack sequencing.’

There was even a weather report covering the time of the attack.

If that doesn’t amount to war plans then the world is not round and night does not follow day.

Goldberg has not published these texts, which shows he has a higher regard for national security than others on the Signal chain.

But he knows a congressional committee might well request him to make the texts available behind closed doors. It could also insist others in the chat room to do the same.

So far the White House is toughing it out with typical defiance and bluster.

It remains adamant no classified material was exchanged because if it was on a platform like Signal the consequences for those involved could be dire. The use of Signal for conducting classified discussions about imminent military action would be a serious breach of security procedures governing the handling of sensitive defense information.

In front of a congressional committee on Tuesday, a nervous Gabbard refused even to confirm she’d participated in the chat. But she still felt it necessary to insist no classified material had been involved. At least not from her. She was a bit vague about Hegseth. But how would she know either way if she hadn’t been part of the exchanges?

Waltz had been touted as the fall guy but Trump rallied behind him, saying he’s a ‘good guy’ who’d ‘learned a lesson’ — barely a slap on the wrist for one of the great security scandals of our time.

It should get him through the week. But perhaps not beyond that should more incriminating material come out about how Goldberg ended up in the chat room.

Waltz’s reputation as a serious player has taken something of a dent now we know he marked the Houthi strike in the Signal chat with emojis of a fist, an American flag and a flame. Not quite the grown-up America requires for national security.

Hegseth’s job is also on the line. He has stated categorically that ‘nobody was texting war plans.’ Should that prove to be less than the truth, his position would also become untenable.

Whatever his displays of public support, Trump is privately furious, raging in colourful language at the ‘stupidity’ of Waltz and others. I called a close aide of the President for a heads up on the situation.

‘The President is on the rampage,’ I was told. ‘It’s not safe to talk. I’m keeping my head down.’ He then hung up.

Nor will it have escaped Trump’s attention that his vice president, for all his public displays of loyalty, is developing policies of his own. The Signal texts show, beyond doubt, that Vance was skeptical of the need to strike the Houthis.

Yes, they’ve been attacking shipping in the Red Sea en route to the Suez Canal for over a year. But, argued Vance, very little US trade passes through the Suez Canal, which connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, whereas ’40 percent of European trade does’.

So, attacking the Houthis would benefit Europe far more than America.

‘I am not sure the President is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,’ Vance said, adding that, while he would support the consensus of the other top officials in the chat, ‘I just hate bailing Europe out again.’

In the end Vance was placated by a suggestion that Europe could be sent the bill for the military action (good luck with that) and the insistence of Stephen Miller, a senior White House aide, that the attack was the President’s will.

Trump will be fine with Vance’s visceral anti-Europeanism, which we’ve seen before but never in such raw and stark terms.

But he will be suspicious of Vance’s freelancing on foreign policy, especially since the reason for attacking the Houthis is not to do the Europeans a favour but to cripple the one Iranian proxy group left in the region (after the demise of Hamas and Hezbollah) which is still a military threat to America’s interests.

Vance’s forays into foreign policy often reveal him to be out of his depth in complicated matters. But in his distaste for Europe, he is very much in sync with the rest of the Trump administration.

Even Hegseth got in on the act, telling Vance on Signal that he ‘fully’ shared his ‘loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.’

Long after the row over security breaches dies down, what we have learned about the Trump administration’s unvarnished attitude to Europe could well turn out to be the most significant feature of the Signal scandal. It has gone from mere animosity to outright hostility.

If Europe’s leaders still don’t realise, they’re now on their own – after the revelations from the Signal chatroom, they cannot be in any doubt.