The shock news that multiple senior Trump officials exchanged war plans in a civilian messaging app with a reporter has led to growing calls for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz to resign or be fired for what’s being called the “highest level of f**kup imaginable.”
In an op-ed Monday night, the National Review’s executive editor called for President Donald Trump to set an example and “hold someone accountable” for actions that if not criminal were in the very least “extraordinarily foolish” and “unbecoming of their offices.”
“The fact that these conversations happened outside of official government communications channels at all is a scandal in itself. It’s a total breach of protocol and operational security (despite the fact that Hegseth made sure to brag in the chat that ’we are currently clean on OPSEC’),” wrote Mark Antonio Wright. OPSEC stands for operational security.
“In my view, the most egregious behavior was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s. (The stupidest was National Security Adviser Mike Waltz’s adding of Goldberg to the conversation in the first place),” he said of Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote Monday of inadvertently witnessing the U.S.’s plans to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen on the app Signal.
Wright further stressed that the Trump administration has lost all credibility in criticizing “the past, present, and future mishandling of sensitive American national-security information,” including Hillary Clinton’s past use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.
New York Times columnist David French also called on Hegseth to resign in an op-ed Monday night that stressed that such “incompetence” and carelessness with security information is what gets people killed.
“He’s just blown his credibility as a military leader,” wrote French.
“There is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like that. It would normally result in instant consequences (relief from command, for example) followed by a comprehensive investigation and, potentially, criminal charges,” wrote French, who noted his own experience as a former Army lawyer who has investigated “numerous allegations of classified information spillages.”
“What example has Hegseth set? That he’s careless, and when you’re careless in the military, people can die. If he had any honor at all, he would resign,” he wrote.
Hegseth has dismissed the severity of such a security breach and instead attacked Goldberg’s credibility, telling reporters Monday: “Nobody was texting war plans.”
The National Security Council has confirmed that text thread reported by Goldberg was authentic, however. Some of the other Trump officials that Goldberg reported were included in the chat also confirmed before Congress Tuesday that they were part of the Signal discussion.
Several Democrats have also called for the Hegseth’s and Waltz’s resignation, with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg calling it the “highest level of f**kup imaginable” and DNC Chair Ken Martin stating, “Hegseth should resign, and if he doesn’t resign, he should be fired.”
“Pete Hegseth never should have been tapped for this job. It’s too important,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) also wrote of the former Fox News pundit.
Trump on Tuesday expressed a different view of the matter, telling NBC News that the leak was a “glitch” and that Waltz, who allegedly added Goldberg to the group chat, “has learned a lesson and he’s a good man.”
Though Republicans have also largely downplayed the scandal, behind the scenes, there’s reportedly talk of ousting Waltz.
“Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a fucking idiot,” a source only identified as close to the White House told Politico.
“Half of them saying he’s never going to survive or shouldn’t survive,” another senior administration official was quoted as saying of Waltz.