Hillary Clinton on Friday called the Trump administration’s approach to governing both dumb and dangerous in an essay excoriating the Signal chat scandal, the Elon Musk-led mission to slash the federal workforce and concluding that Trump would make the US “feeble and friendless”.
The former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate wrote an op-ed for the New York Times that has been given the headline: “How much dumber will this get?” and opens: “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity.”
Clinton starts with the Signal chat group scandal, when Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, mistakenly added a top US journalist to a small group of government leaders on the encrypted but unclassified app and then the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, proceeded to discuss intricate details of a forthcoming airstrike on Houthi militants in Yemen and report back to the group on the deadly results.
The US vice-president, JD Vance, was included, who took another swipe at European reliance on US military security, and so was the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. Hegseth relayed times that US fighter jets would take off and his updates on death and destruction on the ground elicited triumphant comments and emojis from some others in the group.
Clinton wrote: “Top Trump administration officials put our troops in jeopardy by sharing military plans on a commercial messaging app and unwittingly invited a journalist into the chat. That’s dangerous. And it’s just dumb.”
She went on: “This is the latest in a string of self-inflicted wounds by the new administration that are squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security.”
Clinton sharply criticized the slashing of the federal workforce that has been under way since the first days of the new administration, overseen by the top Trump adviser and tech billionaire Elon Musk, although she did not mention the mogul by name or comment on the growing oligarchy that is alarming many outside the White House.
Clinton especially criticized the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development – a so-called soft power program introduced by John F Kennedy as president to help spread American influence around the world through human rights work, in contrast to military and diplomatic power alone.
“In a dangerous and complex world, it’s not enough to be strong. You must also be smart. As secretary of state during the Obama administration, I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence,” she wrote.
“None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power. Instead of a strong America using all our strengths to lead the world and confront our adversaries, Mr Trump’s America will be increasingly blind and blundering, feeble and friendless.”
She slammed “swagger” over competence and wisdom in Trump and Hegseth’s attacks on diversity policies in the military and called the administration’s overall approach reckless.
Clinton concluded that the administration appeared not to know its way, was putting the US in danger and mused that perhaps Trump “is in way over his head”.
“If there’s a grand strategy at work here, I don’t know what it is … he’s gambling with the national security of the United States. If this continues, a group chat foul will be the least of our concerns, and all the fist and flag emojis in the world won’t save us,” she said.
