CNN continues to try to make hay out of "Signal-gate." Apparently, the most egregious mistake ever made by a Secretary of Defense was having an advisor accidentally add a left-wing journalist to a fairly surface-level encrypted discussion. Everything else in America's history has been small potatoes. Truly, it gets no worse than this.

Obviously, I'm being sarcastic, but that is how the press and Democrats are treating this story, with the latest iteration being that American lives were "put at risk." Is that true, though? Last I checked, no locations of the strikes on the Houthis were given in the chat (only times and aircraft type), and that information was not made public until weeks after they were successfully carried out. Further, the terrorist group in question does not have the air defenses to threaten America's manned airpower.

So saying Americans were "put at risk" is a political talking point not based in reality. It's the kind of thing one says to sensationalize a story for political purposes, which is exactly what happened on CNN on Friday evening. Facing off against Scott Jennings (because who else?), Lulu Garcia-Navarro trotted out the aforementioned claim only to be left squirming when faced with a logically consistent rebuttal. 

RELATED: Scott Jennings Becomes All of Us, Absolutely Demolishes Left-Wing Calls for 'Accountability'

🚨Scott Jennings torches Dem panelist calling for firings over Signalgate —

JENNINGS: “You don't have to make up hypotheticals, Lulu, about if this happened in a Democratic administration. Let me take you back in time in a Democratic administration. The secretary of defense… pic.twitter.com/CPBThXNspK

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) March 29, 2025

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This isn't, you know, Cowboys and Indians and calling for scalps. This is actually what most people would think was, if someone has behaved in a way that puts American lies at risk, they should be held accountable for it.

JENNINGS: You don't have to make up hypotheticals, Lulu, about if this happened in a Democratic administration. Let me take you back in time. In a Democratic administration, the secretary of defense oversaw a disastrous military operation in which 13 servicemen died in Afghanistan. Then, to try to make up for it, they vaporized like seven children in a drone strike. Then, later, the secretary of defense went AWOL and didn't even tell the commander-in-chief. 

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is a completely different thing that you're talking about!

JENNINGS: You don't have to come up with a hypothetical, Lulu, because the bar is apparently very high for dismissing a secretary of defense. 

(Crosstalk)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: My reaction is, it's not the same thing.

You have to love the implication there from Garcia-Navarro that having information not leak prior to a successful attack on terrorists is somehow inherently more serious and more worthy of resignation than getting 13 American service members murdered and mistakenly vaporizing seven children. Talk about being insultingly out of touch. Heck, one might even call it ghoulish, but let's talk about it, shall we?

Is it a "completely different thing?" Well, I suppose so, though not in the way Garcia-Navarro means it. One mistake actually did put Americans at risk, while the other didn't. I don't think I need to explain which is which in that comparison. I'd also argue that former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin disappearing for weeks while his second-in-command was on vacation put more lives at risk than anything discussed in that Signal chat. 

This entire discussion is absurd, but what makes it more absurd is what Garcia-Navarro didn't say. If her concerns were genuine (they aren't), the proper response to Jennings would have been, "Well, Austin should have resigned." That would have disarmed some of his rebuttal while showing some logical consistency. 

Garcia-Navarro is a complete hack, though, so that never even crossed her mind. Thus, you get the laughable contention that a chat screw-up that put no one at risk and had no effect on any operation is worthy of resignation while creating 13 new Gold Star families due to rank incompetence wasn't. I'm getting angry just thinking about that assertion.

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