The debacle of the Trump administration having The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg in a secret group text is the first true scandal of this second term. Everything up until now has been litigated, legislated, or within the confines of standard executive orders. Journalists in classified text chains is a self-inflicted wound.

If you've somehow missed the story, the short version is this: Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, was added to a group text on the encrypted messaging application Signal. While he was in the group, Vice President Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, and others coordinated messaging on Trump's plans to bomb the Houthis, including the timing of bombing the group.

After the events were over, Goldberg posted screenshots of the conversation in his write-up for The Atlantic. The White House admitted the messages were real. Pete Hegseth bizarrely denied the authenticity of the story, while NSA Mike Waltz took responsibility for what happened.

Donald Trump claims that one of Waltz's aides added Goldberg to the group text, not Waltz himself. There's allegedly a leak investigation underway to determine how this happened and how it can be prevented.

Predictably and understandably, this has triggered a backlash. Democrats are accusing the White House of mishandling classified intelligence, and Goldberg is claiming classified plans were discussed in the thread. For Republicans and theWhite House, it's a black eye.

We'll get to the real problem with this, but first, let's deal with the method they used in this case: Signal. Truthfully, this is the least worrisome part of the story.

In December, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned federal agencies and politicians to stop using regular text messages and phone lines. The concern is that China is spying on and can view all communications through standard text messages and phone calls.

The first recommendation from the agency: "Use only end-to-end encrypted communications."

Reuters noted, "End-to-end encryption - a data protection technique which aims to make data unreadable by anyone except its sender and its recipient - is baked into various chat apps, including Meta Platforms' WhatsApp, Apple's iMessage, and the privacy-focused app Signal. Corporate offerings which allow end-to-end encryption also include Microsoft's Teams and Zoom Communications' online meetings." (emphasis mine)

The problem with this story isn't the communication method. Signal is one of several top-of-the-line messaging applications. The U.S. military has tested using both Signal and Wickr (a similar app) with troops in deployment situations to communicate while on the ground.

Signal is secure, and Democratic Party jeers that the Chinese are reading the messages are simply unfounded and untrue. If the Chinese have broken Signal's encryption method, then they have likely broken every encryption method in the U.S. military as well.

Bizarrely, Hillary Clinton's section of Democrats was loudest over this story. It's strange because Clinton's homebrew email server had no encryption, and both the Russians and Chinese are presumed to have read everything she had - which included classified information.

It's also a stark contrast to Biden, who used GMail email addresses to move classified information around. There was no safe encryption there, either.

I get that they want to dunk on their political partisans, but it's one thing to use high-end encrypted messaging applications and another to use unsecured email addresses - for everything.

I digress.

That brings us back to the Trump administration. The problem here is twofold. First, how did Goldberg get access to a group text chain with anyone in the White House or federal government? Second, we only know about Goldberg because he's a journalist who opposes this administration. Who else is getting access to group text chains like this in the White House?

On the first point, Trump claims an aide did this. If so, we need serious security training in the White House on how to handle classified or secret information. This is Information Security 101, and anyone who has had to sit through boring video training in corporate America knows the drill. It's troubling that the White House staff doesn't seem to know this.

On the second point, if this wasn't Jeffrey Goldberg, we likely wouldn't have known about it. This is especially true if a right-wing journalist was involved. The United States could shell out billions for the best encryption in the world—if you just let unauthorized people through the door, it's all for naught.

The White House has earned this black eye, and it needs to rebuild trust quickly. The operation against the Houthis went well, and the Trump administration is working on reopening sea lanes, which is necessary to fix global shipping and ease inflation pressures. But good operations get undermined when you can keep classified secrets.

Whether Trump fires someone is secondary to locking down internal communications. After that, the White House has to restore trust in its work.