Dear Jeffrey Goldberg,

Excellent scoop, my man, though as a journo friend of mine just said to me, “Sometimes the universe tosses you one underhand.” But still. You hit that fat sucker out of the park, over the light stanchions, and out into Big-Time Boulevard. Even low-hanging fruit can be pretty succulent.

I have one small suggestion for you. (This will be a very short Gene Pool.)

As you know, the Trump regime has so far been ludicrously dishonest and obfuscatory about how serious is this breach of security. They’re not even trying to be partially honest or marginally forthright. Consider Pete Hegseth’s full response to a question about how disastrous this all is, and how it could possibly have happened — it’s the video that is linked to above. The whole world knows that the entirety of the conversation you unintentionally overheard involved war plans. Donald Trump’s people are flat-out lying, inoculated from responsibility because their boss long ago created a safe template for exactly this sort of thing.

At a committee hearing yesterday both Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, also claimed that no classified material was contained in the group chat. When called out on it by Democrats, they weaseled like stoats.

So here’s my idea. Just spitballing here.

Like a good journalist, and a good citizen, you did not include in your story several things that you said you felt were too sensitive and might compromise national security. You acted with restraint and professionalism, revealing just enough so that the enormity of the error was obvious. For your troubles, you have been smeared by the regime, and by Donald Trump himself, as a sleazeball peddler of garbage. Trump even made fun of you for leaving the conversation early, which is, under the circumstances, hilarious. You were apparently committing a journalistic felony, and you had the unspeakable effrontery to leave early. (In fact, you left because you didn’t really want, or need, to hear more. You had your story and you knew you didn’t belong there.)

Well, here’s my idea. I suspect you’ve already considered it. Others may well have suggested it.

Since apparently nothing of significance was in that conversation, nothing classified, declare publicly that clearly you had been overcautious, that you are embarrassed by this unbecoming and unnecessary timidity, and so tomorrow you will publish the entirety of what you saw. You will not do so only if the regime publicly admits that the information WAS deeply confidential and potentially threatening to national security. In fact, insist that the person to say this has to be Trump himself, or you won’t consider it authoritative.

Lordy, he’d hate to do that because, you know, this is what he said at a news conference about your world-class magazine:

So, that’s it.

At the least, they’d have to hem and haw and harrumph and equivocate, and everyone would Know. If they totally stonewall … should you actually do it? Your call. You’re better at this than I am.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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THIS IS GENE WITH AN EMERGENCY AWESOME UPDATE. THEY JUST DID IT! EVEN MORE FORCEFULLY THAN I SUGGESTED.

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