Should Trump’s top officials responsible for national security step down after their irresponsible handling of sensitive information on live chat? This is a story that has rapidly flared up into a national scandal. This question rides atop the fierce criticism from the left, with some conservatives also choosing not to defend Trump’s national security leadership against the outrage.
It started with a shocking article on Monday (March 24) by Jeffrey Goldberg of the leftist news platform The Atlantic. Goldberg wrote that Trump’s intel/defense team texted him the administration’s war plans for Yemen shortly before those plans were put into action. His article said:
U.S. national security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
Goldberg specifically named Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the person who texted him the attack plan two hours before it was executed in Yemen on March 15. The texts came to him on the instant messaging app Signal over which a group of 18 Trump admin officials was holding a live chat. Among them, they included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Goldberg’s article sent shockwaves through the country, raising serious concerns about the competence and sense of responsibility of these officials. How was a journalist added to such an online meeting where an actual military action plan against a foreign adversary was being discussed in live time? Is it not an act of national security breach? These are only a few of the many questions haunting the nation in the wake of the Signal leak. An urgent hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee was held on Tuesday (March 25), where Democrat senators grilled a few of the top officials involved in the Signal group chat.
The officials appeared shaken and struggled to answer the critical questions regarding the sensitivity of the information accidentally shared with the newsman and their respective roles in ensuring confidentiality for national security. The Republican senators on the committee asked the officials to focus on external threats and intelligence sharing while avoiding the Signal chat leak issue, thus giving the officials intervals of relief.
Many in conservative media, however, did not spare the trump administration officials involved in the Signal group chat. Mark Antonio Wright of National Review opined that President Trump should Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth because of the seriousness of the lapse. He argued that doing so was needed to demonstrate that his administration is different from the Biden administration where such lapses were shrugged off by the White House.
On Tuesday, Mike Waltz told Fox News that he takes responsibility for the lapse while maintaining that he has no idea how Goldberg ended up in that live group chat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmEH2PLNVhc
Following Waltz’s statement, The Gateway Pundit (TGP) wrote that Goldberg has claimed that he was added to the chat by Waltz. Amid these conflicting claims by both sides, the responsibility seems to lie on Waltz and TGP wondered whether it would be the end of Waltz’s political career in the Trump cabinet.
For his part, President Trump has come to defend Waltz. On Tuesday, the President told NBC:
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”
Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma downplayed the Signal leak and instead fired back at the Democrats by reminding them of how Hillary Clinton mishandled sensitive information. On his X page, the senator wrote:
“Signal contained no classified information. For years, Hillary Clinton shared classified national security secrets from her personal email.”