For years, Donald Trump worked to build a reputation for making hard decisions and firing people, and his second administration has defined itself through mass firings. Yet, in the wake of the Signal scandal, it seems unlikely that anyone will be fired or even publicly reprimanded over this massive breach of national security. 

Finding Trump and hypocrisy in the same sentence perhaps shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but this event can help us truly wrap our heads around what accountability looks like in his second administration.

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In a plot point that would beggar belief if it were in a movie, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was added to a group chat on the messaging app Signal where high-ranking Trump administration officials were discussing plans for bombing Yemen. While Republicans and rightwing media are trying to spin that as a goof that could have happened to anyone, it’s a more serious breach that shouldn’t have been able to happen and only happened because rules around data security were broken.

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Obviously, adding not just a journalist but the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to your highly classified meeting is a faux pas. But beyond that, if Goldberg could be added, who else might have been? And what if they had fewer scruples? 

Moreover, these sorts of conversations shouldn’t be happening on a public messaging system, especially when it seems likely that the platform was chosen for its ability to disappear messages and not be part of the public record (as they legally should be).

In any other administration, heads would roll over a situation like this. If not for the actions that were taken by the people at the top in the first place, then certainly for allowing it to become public knowledge. After all, we were subjected to years of hearing about Hillary Clinton’s email server, which the GOP claimed left the door open to espionage from other countries and put our armed forces at risk. 

So can we expect to see at least some token firings in the Trump administration to acknowledge the severity of this matter?

No, we probably won’t. Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated that she’s unlikely to open an investigation. And, while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt left the idea of people being fired as a possibility, Trump has said of the national security adviser who made the Signal group: “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson and he’s a good man.” 

But expecting Trump to fire anyone over all of this sort of misses the point.

In the past, Trump has made a name for himself as someone who fires people. That is literally his backstory and how he earned his reputation as a shrewd businessman, a reputation that he used to build a political career. On The Apprentice, which he hosted for 15 seasons, his catchphrase was literally “You’re fired!” 

During his first administration, he repeatedly fired anyone who displeased him or didn’t do as he asked (with White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci famously only lasting 10 days before the firing finger came down). 

In his second term, Trump has only doubled down with mass firings across the federal government, often for no reason at all. As recently as February, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired over 100 people specifically for the misuse of a government chat tool.

But that fire-happy attitude isn’t going to extend to his Cabinet or those he has installed in government this time around, and we won’t see any real ramifications from this Signal scandal. When it comes to Signal being used to have messages disappear from the public record, we’ve seen how much respect Trump himself has for retaining important documents, whether that’s instructing USAID staff to destroy documents or keeping classified documents in Mar-A-Lago’s bathrooms. If he had the technical savvy to tell people to use Signal for this specific reason, then that would likely also be pinned on him (although it’s more likely that Musk suggested it, based on past tweets).

This administration isn’t about skill, it isn’t about competence, and it’s not about avoiding massive security leaks to our enemies. It’s about a high school-level popularity contest. Trump needs to feel important and to have his base see him as their god. He has spent the last decade making it very clear how to keep a job in his administration. To stay in a role, you have to kiss up to Trump, go on his favorite TV shows to say how great he is, and toe the party line, whatever hateful view the administration is pushing this week.

This probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. From his last administration, we’ve learned how Trump works, and we know that his concerns aren’t with the truth or what’s best for the American people. 

But this Signal scandal demonstrates clearly that there are no pretenses anymore: people can do what they want, as badly as they want, as long as it makes him and his friends more money and Trump gets to feel like a special little boy for the next four years.

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