Ruth Marcus:
But the I think this is one of these sticky moments for an administration.
We saw it when Bush said, “Heck of a job, Brownie,” when we all knew that they were messing up with Katrina. We all saw it when the Biden administration messed up the exit from Afghanistan. This is one of those moments that’s actually bigger than the moment itself, because, first of all, anybody can understand, anybody at the gym understands you do not treat operational details in this insecure way.
They can draw distinctions all they want about whether information was classified or not. Everybody knows this was bungled. Number two, it just illustrates what we also all knew, those of us who are honest with ourselves, which is this crew — and I will start with the FOX News host who was tapped to be the defense secretary — is not ready for prime time.
If they were ready for prime time, they would not be discussing secrets like this on an open channel. And, finally, the counterpunching. You can get away with a lot. We have all made mistakes, and some of us who’ve over the years have learned even to apologize for them.
If they had just said, we messed up and moved on, I think they would have served themselves better than doing what they have done now, which is to attack Jeffrey Goldberg, who was a — the only responsible participant in this whole event.
And people don’t — are not going to treat this — this is going to be remembered as a bad moment for this administration.
