Pete Hegseth’s Defense for Disastrous Group Chat Blows up in His Face

Despite the evidence, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is still opting to attack and discredit the journalist who caught him red-handed in a seismic national security scandal.

“Can you share how your information about war plans against the Houthis in Yemen was shared with a journalist at The Atlantic? And were those details classified?” a reporter asked Hegseth as he disembarked from Air Force One in Hawaii Monday.

“So you are talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,” Hegseth said, referring to coverage of the Mueller investigation as a conspiracy, or when Donald Trump said, in the wake of the 2017 Charlottesville white supremacist rally, that there were “some very fine people” on both sides.

“This is the guy that peddles in garbage,” Hegseth said, continuing to evade the questions.

Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month. The monumental slipup was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.

Hours later, Goldberg told MSNBC that Hegseth’s response was “flummoxing” to him.

“I haven’t seen this kind of unserious behavior before,” he told the network. “The secretary of defense, with all due respect, seems like a person who is unserious and is trying to deflect from the fact that he participated in a conversation on an unclassified messaging app that he probably shouldn’t have participated in.”

Like Hegseth, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt similarly opted to run the administration’s favorite defense strategy of deny, deny, deny.

In a statement Tuesday morning, Leavitt claimed that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed in the group chat and that ‘no classified material was sent to the thread,’” while disparaging Goldberg as a journalist “well-known for his sensationalist spin.”

But that old Trumpian tactic won’t work here—particularly since a spokesperson for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, already confirmed to Goldberg that the chat was, indeed, real.

For all of the Trump administration’s “unseriousness” about the leak, though, some former government officials were taking it perfectly seriously.

“From an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of fuckup imaginable,” posted former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “These people cannot keep America safe.”

The White House has decided to lie its way out.

Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X on Tuesday to set the record straight on senior defense adviser Mike Waltz’s massive gaffe: adding Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, to a Signal group chat with himself, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and other high-ranking officials discussing the bombing of Yemen.

“Jeffrey Goldberg is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” Leavitt wrote, before going on to deny the story entirely

Much of Leavitt’s post is just false, and contradicts the National Security Council’s own prior statement. “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” NSC spokesperson Brian Hughes said Monday. “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 our servicemembers or our national security.”

Screenshots collected by Goldberg also clearly show the country’s top defense officials debating over how to carry out an attack on the Houthis—an attack that occurred days after the messages were sent.

​​”Team—establishing a principles [sic] group for coordination on Houthis, particularly for over the next 72 hours,” a message from Waltz reads, according to Goldberg. “My deputy Alex Wong is pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”

“Whether it’s now or several weeks from now, it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes,” Waltz said in another message.

Concerned citizens everywhere are calling BS.

“With all due respect to Karoline here (none), this is an obvious lie,” wrote Pod Save America’s Tommy Vietor. “They were discussing the names of specific individuals the US military was targeting with air strikes. That is absolutely, 100% guaranteed to have been classified information.”

“Thanks for confirming the Signal chat existed and that Cabinet members are so inept that they added Jeffrey Goldberg,” another reply to Leavitt’s statement read.

This comes after Defense Secretary Hegseth outright denied that any war plans were shared and Trump denied that he knew anything about the situation at all—ignorance that did unfortunately feel sincere.

Greenland flatly denied inviting members of Donald Trump’s administration to visit Monday, after the U.S. president claimed that the presence of White House officials had been requested. 

A group including second lady Usha Vance, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and national security adviser Mike Waltz of group chat fame, are expected to arrive Thursday on the massive island territory that the U.S. president longed to control before even entering the White House. 

Trump claimed Monday that officials from Greenland had “requested” to meet with a team from the U.S. government. 

“People from Greenland are asking us to go there,” Trump said. 

But, in a statement on Facebook Monday, Greenland’s government denied ever extending an invite to the White House.  

“Just for the record, Naalakkersuisut, the government of Greenland, has not extended any invitations for any visits, neither private nor official. The present government is a caretaker government awaiting the formation of a new government coalition and we have kindly requested all countries to respect this process,” the statement read. 

Earlier this month, Greenland held a parliamentary election that saw the pro-independence center-right party Demokraatit come into power, as well as other sizable shifts in the island’s representative government. The new leadership seems equally uninterested in Trump’s bids to claim the autonomous territory from Denmark. 

Outgoing Prime Minister Múte B. Egede called Trump’s fake invite part of his “very aggressive” bid for the territory. “We are now at a level where this cannot in any way be characterized as a harmless visit from a politician’s wife,” Egede said, referring to Vance. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Greenlanders want to be Americans, despite multiple statements from officials and citizens to the contrary. Ahead of his inauguration, Trump sent his son Donald Trump Jr. on a futile mission to create the impression that there was a MAGA movement there. It seems something similar may be intended for Vance’s unbidden mini-break.

Trump hopes to acquire the Arctic island that is home to roughly 56,000 people because of its rich mineral resources and geopolitically strategic location.

A U.S. permanent resident and Columbia University student is suing the Trump administration over its attempts to deport her for participating in pro-Palestinian protests at the institution.

Yunseo Chung, 21, has lived in the U.S. since her family moved from South Korea at the age of 7, and her lawsuit not only seeks to stop deportation efforts from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but also to stop the “pattern and practice of targeting individuals associated with protests for Palestinian rights for immigration enforcement.”

Chung is a model student, maintaining a 3.99 grade point average and making it onto the dean’s list every semester. She is also part of the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review. But that’s not enough for the Trump administration, which is targeting noncitizen students who support Palestinian human rights, including Mahmoud Khalil, Ranjani Srinivasan, Momodou Taal, and Badar Khan Suri.

The lawsuit names President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, ICE acting Director Todd M. Lyons, and New York ICE acting Field Office Director William P. Joyce. It states that the administration’s policy appears to be to “retaliate against and punish noncitizens, including Ms. Chung, for their actual or perceived advocacy for Palestinian rights.”

Earlier this month, Chung was involved in a sit-in at the university to protest “excessive punishments meted out by the Columbia administration,” and was arrested by the New York Police Department and given a desk appearance ticket for “obstruction of government administration.” Since then, Columbia has put her on “interim suspension due to the arrest and restricted her campus access.”

On March 8, an ICE official signed an administrative arrest warrant and has been looking for Chung ever since, going to her parents’ house and searching two residences at Columbia, including her dorm. On March 10, ICE told Chung’s attorneys that her permanent residence status was being “revoked.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN that Chung “is being sought for removal proceedings under the immigration laws.”

“Yunseo Chung has engaged in concerning conduct, including when she was arrested by NYPD during a pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College,” the spokesperson said. “Chung will have an opportunity to present her case before an immigration judge.”

Chung’s attorneys say in their lawsuit that the Trump administration’s actions are unconstitutional. It’s also interesting that Chung is getting the opportunity to present her case before a judge, when Khalil, a fellow permanent resident, was sent from New York to a detention facility in Louisiana before he could even be charged or speak to his counsel.

“The government’s actions are an unprecedented and unjustifiable assault on First Amendment and other rights, one that cannot stand basic legal scrutiny. Simply put, immigration enforcement—here, immigration detention and threatened deportation—may not be used as a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express political views disfavored by the current administration,” the lawsuit states.

The Trump administration has identified its newest scapegoat. 

Politico is reporting that national security adviser Mike Waltz may be the first head on the chopping block after the disastrous Signal scandal, in which Waltz added The Atlantic’s editor in chief to a war-planning group chat with all of the highest-ranking defense Cabinet members and Vice President JD Vance. 

“Half of them [are] saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive,” an anonymous official close to the situation told Politico. “It was reckless not to check who was on the thread. It was reckless to be having that conversation on Signal. You can’t have recklessness as the national security adviser.”

“Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a f—king idiot,” said another. 

While the breach is unprecedented, most within the administration believe Waltz’s political future depends on how badly Trump feels about the situation. 

“I don’t think there are any longterm political consequences for Trump or the Administration, outside of this potentially costing Waltz his job,” said the same source who called Waltz a “f—king idiot.” 

It is absolutely illegal for this type of senior-level political planning to occur on a commercial messaging platform like Signal. Waltz has yet to comment. 

Trump administration officials accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month.

The monumental slipup was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.

It was, however, incredible fodder for the administration’s critics, who didn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity to mock the stunning level of incompetence.

“This has very Trump 1.0 fuck up vibes, honestly kinda fun,” posted Unpopular Front newsletter writer John Ganz.

“New phone, Houthis,” chirped National Review columnist Christian Schneider on X.

The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein noted it was “very annoying they messaged ‘Jeff Goldberg’ and not, for instance, ‘Jeff Stein.’”

At least one former government official couldn’t help but highlight the enormous hypocrisy of Republican attempts to sidestep the national security scandal.

“You have got to be kidding me,” posted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was excoriated for using a private email server to receive official government communications during her time serving the Obama administration.

The “Houthi PC small group” included 18 members who appeared to represent senior officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

Another account labeled as Vice President JD Vance actively criticized Trump’s plans—in what would be the first known instance of Vance refuting the MAGA agenda—arguing that the planned bombing was not imminently needed.

“Vice President texting the group, ‘chat are we cooked’,” posted independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.

“Looks like I’m changing my initials to DJT on Signal now. Hoping for some scoops!” posted NBC News’s Amanda Terkel.

Trump, however, was apparently not invited to the Signal exchange.

“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic, to me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business, I think it’s not much of a magazine,” Trump said during a press conference Monday, noting that a reporter’s question regarding the group chat was the first he had heard of it. “But I know nothing about it, you’re saying that they had what?”

President Donald Trump isn’t even denying that his administration has been influenced by Russia.

During a Cabinet meeting Monday, Trump was asked to respond to statements made by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Time magazine, where he suggested that members of Trump’s White House had been influenced by Moscow.

Rather than outright deny it, Trump dodged the question.

“Well, probably they have been influenced to get this thing settled because Ukraine wants to see it settled, I think they have to have it settled, and Russia wants to see it settled. And I think if I weren’t president this would never happen,” Trump said.

In his interview with Time, Zelenskiy recounted how, in the midst of the U.S. withholding crucial military and intelligence aid from Kyiv earlier this month, Trump had repeated a story from Russian President Vladimir Putin claiming that Russian forces had surrounded thousands of Ukrainian troops in Kursk.

“That was a lie,” Zelenskiy said, but it was one that Trump had readily amplified.

Zelenskiy suggested that it was part of a pattern among U.S. officials to parrot Putin rather than trust their own intelligence. “I believe Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information,” Zelenskiy told Time. “Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them.”

Last week, after agreeing to a partial ceasefire with Russia, Zelenskiy shared several photographs of Russia’s continuing strikes on Ukraine. “Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, despite its propaganda statements, do not stop,” he wrote.

As Russian and U.S. officials sat down for a new round of negotiations for a partial ceasefire on Monday, Russia launched a series of strikes on the Ukrainian city of Sumy, injuring 74 people including 13 children.

One of the four directors of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, Palestinian Hamdan Ballal, was allegedly beaten by Israeli settlers, then removed from an ambulance he called by Israeli soldiers, his Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham posted on X Monday.

There’s no word on whether Ballal is receiving medical treatment for his head and stomach injuries, Abraham noted. Abraham also posted video footage of the Israeli settler mob that attacked Hamdan’s village, showing them attacking Jewish American activists by throwing stones and causing damage to their car.

According to activists from the Center for Jewish nonviolence, a group of 10 to 20 Israeli settlers attacked them and Hamdan in the Palestinian village of Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area south of Hebron.

“We don’t know where Hamdan is because he was taken away in a blindfold,” said Josh Kimelman, one of the activists, to the Associated Press.

No Other Land won the Academy Award for best documentary feature film earlier this month but has still struggled to find a distributor in the United States. The film, which chronicles the destruction of a Palestinian community in the occupied West Bank, was directed by four activists: Hamdan, Abraham, Palestinian Basel Arda, and Israeli Rachel Szor.

The documentary premiered on just one screen in the United States on February 2, grossing $26,000 before drawing $1.2 million in the following weeks, eventually expanding to 120 screens and drawing a backlash. Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner even tried to block the film from being shown in the Florida city by attempting to evict a theater hosting it from a city-owned building, only to relent after a public outcry.

Meanwhile, Israel’s ongoing military campaign in the West Bank has displaced 40,000 Palestinians, the largest number in more than 50 years, and has killed 55 Palestinians, including five children, according to the United Nations and Israeli military. In Gaza, Israel’s brutal war against the territory has resumed after a brief “ceasefire” ended last week, killing 634 people, including at least 183 children, 94 women, 34 elderly people, and 125 men since March 18, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Among those killed on Monday in Gaza include two journalists, Hossam Shabat of Al Jazeera and Mohammad Mansour of Palestine Today. Israel has faced criticism for targeting journalists in the past and has killed 170 journalists and media workers since its war on Gaza began in October 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Was the attack on Ballal, and his subsequent detention by the Israeli military, part of a campaign to silence Palestinian voices, journalists, and filmmakers alike?

The Trump administration is treating immigrants worse than prior presidents treated real Nazis, according to a federal judge.

The stunning observation by U.S. Circuit Judge for the D.C. appeals court Patricia Millett came during a hearing Monday over the White House’s spontaneous decision to deport more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador by invoking a Japanese internment-era wartime policy, the Alien Enemies Act.

Five of the men sued the Trump administration in response, attempting to prevent their “imminent removal.” But even after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered that the immigrants should remain in the U.S. as they await trial, Trump officials thwarted the law and sent them to Honduras. Donald Trump justified the infraction by claiming that immigration into the country constituted an “invasion,” and described the current era as a “time of war.”

But Judge Millett argued that such an act was wildly unprecedented—even during the wartime tribulations of World War II.

“There were planeloads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people,” she said. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien [Enemies] Act than has happened here where the proclamation requires the promulgation of regulation.”

“They had hearing boards before people were removed, and yet here there’s nothing in there about hearing boards, no regulations, and nothing was adopted by the agency officials administrating this,” Millett continued.

“Those people on those planes on that Saturday had no opportunity to file habeas or any type of action to challenge” their deportation, she added.

Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign disputed the “Nazi analogy,” and instead compared Boasberg’s decision to block the deportation to a judge redirecting a carrier group from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf.

“Hang on. Hang on,” Millett rebuked. “Asserting a power to do that is not ordering ships to relocate in foreign waters, right? That is a straight up judicial process that’s allowed by the Supreme Court and Circuit precedent.”

Trump is claiming complete ignorance after his defense secretary accidentally leaked war plans to The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief after adding him to a Signal chat. In fact, he only has three words on the matter: “I don’t know.”

Jeffrey Goldberg reported that earlier this month, he received an offer to join a group chat on the encrypted messaging app from Trump national security adviser Michael Waltz. Goldberg accepted the invite, and saw multiple text exchanges between Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, among other Cabinet officials. Then, they discussed a planned attack on the Houthis in Yemen.

The president was asked about all this at a press conference in the White House’s Roosevelt Room on Monday.

“Your reaction to the story in The Atlantic that said some of your top Cabinet officials and aides had been discussing very sensitive material through Signal and included an Atlantic reporter for that,” a reporter asked Trump. “What is your response to that?”

“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic, to me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business, I think it’s not much of a magazine. But I know nothing about it, you’re saying that they had what?”

“They were using Signal to coordinate on sensitive materials,” the reporter responded.

“Having to do with what? … What were they talking about?”

“The Houthis.”

“The Houthis, you mean the attack on the Houthis?”

“Correct.”

“Well it couldn’t have been very effective, because the attack was very effective I can tell you that. I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time.”

It’s shocking—even from this administration—that Trump’s team allowed him to take the podium without at least briefing him on the slip up. The group chat had the potential to be a massive national security crisis and raises serious questions about the care and qualifications of Trump’s inner circle.