While Hegseth hides in Manila, Signalgate and Sen. Duckworth demand his head
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth holds a joint press conference with and Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro at the Armed Forces of the Philippines Headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City, Philippines, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerard Carreon)
Someone should be fired for SignalGate, and if it were up to me I’d say the sights are on at least three, maybe even four people.
And Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) agrees with me. She thinks everyone on that chat, in terms of our national security, was in dereliction of duty. Except for the inadvertently included reporter, of course.
If you think that’s harsh, consider how the Trump administration uses national security as a pretext to bolster its policy of harassing, rounding up and deporting even legal immigrants with green cards or student visas.
The recent cases of student protesters at Columbia University, a graduate student at Tufts and the cases involving legal green card holders from the Philippines and Colombia, all show an alarming hardline.
With that attitude toward immigrants, how can the Trump administration be lax on national security when its top officials are caught talking about secret war information on Signal, an encrypted but hackable public app.
And yes, we should call it Signalgate.
The neologism is appropriate. Every scandal needs to compare with Watergate. When top-level advisors – primarily Pete Hegseth, the Fox weekend anchor-turned-defense secretary; Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; and Michael Waltz, national security advisor – show their inexperience and discuss on a non-secure platform the specifics of an attack on Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, there’s got to be accountability.
Believe me, if it were any of us involved in that Signal chat, we’d all be fired.
Trump not firing anyone so far belies his “Apprentice” pedigree.
Hegseth tops the list
Conveniently, as people were calling for his head, Defense Secretary Hegseth was in the Philippines and practically hidden from the news in the US.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro hold a joint press conference at the Armed Forces of the Philippines Headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City, Philippines, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerard Carreon)
There was little coverage of his visit with President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.
But how hollow do Hegseth’s words in the Philippines sound after Signalgate?
When Hegseth identifies the Communist Chinese as a threat and says that “friends need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder to deter conflict, to ensure that there’s free navigation,” can you trust him and the US after all that’s transpired in the news lately?
It’s said that some of the info divulged in the Sign chat came from foreign operatives. After this, will allies be so willing to share intel, let alone rely on the US for anything?
Also look at how the US treats Canada, calling it the 51st state. Any way to treat an ally? Look at how the US has flipped on its NATO allies and Ukraine, switching sides and backing the aggressor, Russia.
So when Hegseth is in Malacañang talking about backing the Philippines, is there any way to take it but with a drop of patis?
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., left, meets with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Malacanang palace in Manila, Philippines, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Basilio Sepe, Pool)
Of Trump, Hegseth said, “He [President Donald Trump] and I both want to express the ironclad commitment we have to the mutual defense treaty and to the partnership, economically, militarily, which our staffs have worked on diligently for weeks and weeks and months.”
Marcos underscored the Philippine-US friendship, noting that being friendly to the US was “inherent with most Filipinos.”
Of course, the Philippines was the first US colony. But fortunately, it didn’t have the fate of Guam or Puerto Rico.
Last week’s visit just felt different after Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit under the Biden administration. There seemed to be more a sense of connection.
I doubt Hegseth even understands the US role in Philippine history. It’s all the more important now since Trump is an expansionist who considers McKinley the imperialist, among his presidential heroes.
The Philippines is the colony that got away.
So I think Hegseth was just hiding out last week, while Trump tries to deflect the impact of Signalgate by saying it’s no big deal.
The coverup of truth is always worse
Meanwhile, even the American public knows it’s being gaslighted.
A new poll by CBS News/YouGov shows Signalgate has become a bipartisan issue, with 56 percent of Republicans and 91 percent of Democrats saying that discussing military plans on Signal was not appropriate, and 76 percent overall saying it was wrong.
Signalgate could go down as one of the biggest blunders ever in US national security history.
And mostly because, like Watergate, we have what appears to be a coverup.
Tulsi Gabbard – the politician who put the “NH” in AANHPI – was the first official under oath to speak publicly.
Before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gabbard stumbled, denied the reality and when she came close to the truth, said nothing discussed was classified.
But it was all revealed last week by Goldberg in the Atlantic:
Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth texted on Signal: “We are a GO for mission launch.”
And then came some remarkable details on the chat:
1215 et: F-18s launch (1st strike package).
1345: Trigger based F-18 1st Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME—also, Strike Drones Luanch (MQ-9s)”
If an enemy had gotten this pre-strike information, American military personnel would have been killed.
And there’s more:
1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)
1415: Stirke Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITEYLY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based targets).”
1536 F-18 2nd Strike Starts—also, first sea based Tomahawks launched”
MORE TO FOLLOW (per timeline)
“We are currently clean on OPSEC” this is operational security.
Godspeed to our Warriors.”
Under oath, Tulsi said she didn’t recall any of it.
But she pointed the finger at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who she indicated may have declassified all that info in real time. But he didn’t.
And then like all good liars, the next day before the Senate side, she doubled down.
“No classified information was shared,” she insisted before the Senate. ”There were no sources, methods, locations or war plans that were shared.”
Re-read the texts. An enemy would have had a field day.
Bottom line for the AANHPI in the loop?
A real leader would have admitted mistakes were made, and commit to never letting it happen again.
Gabbard couldn’t do that. Neither could Hegseth.
Duckworth knows what should be done
Leave it to Sen. Tammy Duckworth to speak up for real common sense. The Asian American politician who served as a combat helicopter pilot in the Iraq war and is considered a trailblazer for being the first female double amputee from the war, called Hegseth, a “F—ing liar.”
She didn’t stop there.
“They should all lose their jobs,” Duckworth told NBC News. When the details of the time of the strikes and the weapons used were discussed, she pointed out how “not a single one of them spoke up.”
“That is egregious dereliction of duty,” Duckworth said. “Especially those in the intelligence community.”
In addition to Hegseth, she points out Gabbard and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director who was formerly the director of national intelligence, all should know better. But none have even admitted a mistake. Ratcliffe under oath said no mistakes were made. And no one admitted any information discussed was classified.
That’s three. Waltz, the national security advisor who put together the chat group, makes four.
So far, the Dodg-y Trump administration has shown it prefers to fire people by the thousands.
For a serious national security blunder, to justifiably fire four people would be easy.
Firing someone may be the best way to offset all the bad news of the tariffs Trump is scheduled to make official this week.
He’s calling it Liberation Day? By firing the unqualified Hegseth and Gabbard, and the merely incompetent Ratcliffe and Waltz, it may be the only way Trump can liberate himself from the lingering impact of Signalgate.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist, news analyst and stage monologuist. He writes for the Inquirer.net’s US Channel. He has written a weekly “Amok” column on Asian American issues since 1995. Find him on YouTube, patreon and substack.
