Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deflected when asked about the leak of a sensitive chat between Trump administration officials and attacked the character of the journalist who published the revelation.
Hegseth was on the Signal chat with national security adviser Mike Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, was added to the chat, apparently by accident. He went on to witness the group discuss sensitive matters surrounding U.S. plans to strike the Yemen-based Houthis.
Hegseth dismissed concerns over the incident and targeted Goldberg, a vocal critic of Trump.
“So you’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,” Hegseth said when asked about the story, going on to list a series of disputable stories he wrote. “This is a guy that pedals in garbage. This is what he does.”
The defense secretary then shifted to praise the air and naval campaign against the Houthis.
“I would love to comment on the Houthi campaign because of the skill and courage of our troops. I’ve monitored it very closely from the beginning, and you see, we’ve been managing four years of deferred maintenance under the Trump administration,” Hegseth continued, criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict.
When pressed on the matter, he challenged the severity of what the national security team was doing.
“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth concluded.
National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes confirmed the leak’s authenticity on Monday. He told the Washington Examiner, “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
“The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security,” he added.
