President Donald Trump supports U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, following accusations that he communicated specifics of a March raid on Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in a chat group with his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.
The revelations of a second Signal chat raise more questions about Hegseth’s use of an unclassified messaging system to share highly sensitive security details, and they come at a particularly sensitive time for him, with senior officials removed from the Pentagon last week as part of an internal leak probe, Newsmax noted.
This is the second time recently that Trump has clarified that he’s standing by Hegseth, as some Democrats have called for him to resign because of a leaked Signal chat that contained information about a military strike in Yemen.
Last month, the president discussed the controversy following Hegseth’s accidental transmission of details about the strike to members of the administration in a Signal chat, which also included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Goldberg published the full messages.
After several Democrats in Congress called for Hegseth to step down because of the scandal, reporters asked Trump if he thought Hegseth might want to resign.
“Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this. Hegseth. How do you bring Hegseth into this?” Trump replied.
Trump also acknowledged that his White House national security advisor, Mike Waltz, took responsibility for mistakenly adding Goldberg to the Signal chat.
“Mike Waltz … he claimed responsibility, I would imagine. It had nothing to do with anyone else. It was Mike, I guess, I don’t know, I was told it was Mike,” Trump said when asked about the investigation.
Trump again played down the controversy over whether or not Hegseth shared secret information that could have put the operation at risk by focusing on the mission’s success.
“There was no harm done because the attack was unbelievably successful that night,” Trump said.
Trump asked Democrats why they were calling for Hegseth to step down and questioned whether the Signal app was even working right.
“Look, it’s all a witch hunt … you wanna ask about whether or not Signal works, I don’t know if Signal works, I think that Signal could be defective to be honest with you,” Trump said.
The encrypted app that deletes messages after they have been received is popular in Washington, DC, for communications.
“You use Signal, we use Signal, and everybody uses Signal, but it could be a defective platform, and we’re going to have to find that out,” Trump said.
Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly called for Hegseth’s resignation for sharing details of the operation on the platform.
“The Signal incident is what happens when you have the most unqualified Secretary of Defense we’ve ever seen. We’re lucky it didn’t cost any servicemembers their lives, but for the safety of our military and our country, Secretary Hegseth needs to resign,” Kelly wrote on X.
“This could have gotten our men and women killed!” Gallego wrote on social media. “The Secretary of Defense needs to resign. The incompetence and cover up is embarrassing.”
Hegseth fired back on X, insisting that he did not share any classified information in the chat and criticized The Atlantic for mischaracterizing his texts as “war plans” on Tuesday.
“The Atlantic released the so-called ‘war plans’ and those ‘plans’ include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information. Those are some really sh***y war plans,” Hegseth wrote on X.
Hegseth sent a message called “Team Update” to a group of top Trump administration officials on March 15 that included information about the planned military strikes, including when they would happen and what weapons would be used.
Hegseth argued he was only providing a “team update,” repeating that he did not share any ‘war plans.’
“My job – team update, to provide updates in real time. General updates in real time keep everybody informed. That is what I did. That’s my job,” Hegseth added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also responded to questions about the incident.
“Obviously, someone made a mistake, someone made a big mistake and added a journalist. Nothing against journalists but you ain’t supposed to be on that thing. None of the information on there at any point threatened the operation or the lives of our servicemen,” Rubio said, adding that there was no classified information on the chat.