America's Talking - White House Playing Defense Amid Fallout of Signal Blunder

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

(The Center Square) – Nearly two weeks after a reporter was erroneously looped into a Signal messaging chat between top national security officials, the White House said it is "making changes" to address the issue. “We have never denied that this was a mistake, and the national security adviser took responsibility for that and we have said we are making changes," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday morning. "We are looking into the matter to ensure it can never happen again." On Monday, The Atlantic broke the news of how its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had mistakenly been included on a text thread between a number of cabinet members and administration higher-ups in the encrypted Signal messaging app.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_0a2e4eee-d6c2-4bee-af6c-1e6474da3a41.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. A journalist for the Atlantic was mistakenly added to a group chat with national security officials about a planned airstrike on the rebel Houthis in Yemen, raising concerns that sensitive information about U.S. military activities was not being treated as securely as it should. joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, let's start with what happened and how the Trump administration is handling the fallout.

Sure. So just the facts quickly are, you know, a couple weeks ago. The Trump administration launched a series of airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen. Houthis are basically a terrorist militant group, very, very likely backed by Iran that has closed down one of the most important shipping corridors in the world. going through the Red Sea up into the Suez Canal, and they've been firing on ships. They really kicked these attacks into gear. The Houthis did after the Israel-Hamas war began. There's kind of these regional Muslim nations and militant groups. And this is kind of weird collection of radical Islamists who are very upset about what Israel is doing and causing a lot of trouble because of it.

And so they've shut down this really important shipping corridor. And you can imagine, instead of going up through the Suez Canal, through Egypt, into the Mediterranean, they're going all the way around the southern tip of Africa to do trade now. And this is pretty much, this has been going on since the Biden administration. And Trump came in. He says, all right, we need to hit these guys hard. He warned them, I believe, online before he did it. And then, you know, they did these airstrikes. And a few Democrats, you know, made a lot of noise about how we shouldn't be doing this. But, you know, he did it. And he's trying to open up shipping really for the world. They've been firing on U.S. ships, to be clear.

He's also moved aircraft carriers into that area. So that's happened. That's the national security thing that happened. Now, it came out recently in the Atlantic in the last week that incredibly, in just an epic foe paw bad night for a bunch of staffers and Trump administration officials. It came out that there was a Signal group chat. Now, Signal is a messaging app like WhatsApp or I'm. message, but it's considered much more secure encrypted. It's considered, you know, the most secure messaging app so you can't get hacked and all that. And there was a group chat with some of the top

U.S. officials like Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The CIA director is in there. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was in there and a few others. And Mike Waltz added in a journalist from the Atlantic. And so now the question is, you know, aside from the bad PR of the Atlantic, screenshot at all these texts and put them online and made the Trump administration look bad, kind of looking competent. The other question is now, was there classified information shared in that chat, which is really not an approved channel normally for classified information?

Should there be an investigation, Cash Patel, the FBI director is facing pressure. Trump has had to respond. Pete Hagseth. Waltz are under a lot of scrutiny and this has not gone away yet. So those are the effects in what has been not a great week for the Trump administration. And in the chat, just to give a few details, Pete Hegseth was essentially saying this is what's going to happen with these air strikes on the Houthis. It got out to a private individual who happens to be a journalist at the Atlantic. Now, the Trump administration has downplayed this event saying no classified information was shared

that it didn't impact the operation over there in Yemen, et cetera. Is that enough, Casey? That, you know, it's a good question. And I'll read you. Pete Haguesteth this week shared his defense on Twitter because the Atlantic first called these war plans, quote unquote, war plans. You know, the Trump administration shared its war plans with me. So in the defense, the Trump administration is trying to pick apart the language and say these weren't war plans. So here's what Hegg says said.

So let me get this straight. 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. I won't use this language, but he said those are some really terrible war plans. This only improves one thing. Jeff Goldberg, that's the Atlantic journalist, has never seen a war plan or an attack plan, as he now calls it, not even close. and so he goes on, but he's basically saying, these are not real war plans.

So they're trying to downplay how important these messages were. If you read the messages, you can see them online. They, you know, it's basically a group chat where they're talking about how they're going to hit the hoot these. And there are some details about kind of the equipment, it appears, being used, uh, to do this. But it's not like there's like a hundred page in, in excess defense, there's not a hundred page PDF that says classified on it with all the,

names of sources. And, you know, it's not like that. It's not like some big, bad document was uncovered. But there definitely was details in here that should not have gone out to the public, should not have someone who's not approved for classified information. So the Democrats are really using this to squeeze Hegg Seth. But, you know, politically, Dan, I find it so fascinating that Trump, who's one of the most polarizing political figures of my lifetime, our lifetimes, all the scandals in his administration, all the attacks so far are not on him. He's been pretty disciplined. He's, you know, he's signing executive orders and for the most part, been pretty disciplined. It's Hegg Seth who's getting into trouble. It is, you know, some of his people that work for him that are saying things that are getting them under scrutiny. So I think it's Elon Musk is the one getting all attention, Heg Seth. And so politically it's really interesting that in a way, you know, these are distractions. They slow down the momentum of the Trump administration. But I think a lot of ways Trump is able to still to retain his mandate because despite these, you know, hiccups for him politically, he himself has not

made too many big blunders that have heard his approval rating. In fact, his approve rating is up and the Democratic Party's approval rating is down below 30% now and at an all-time low. Well, thankfully, what was shared with this journalist did not compromise the mission, did not put any American soldiers in danger, but they do have to clean this up. So you find a work. Definitely. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, there's a question of whether they broke the law. And I think there's a good chance that they did. You know, Hegseth may have broken the law. Others now, the classified law, you know, documents laws are kind of funny because people, I think, break them all the time, but they just kind of don't get investigated. It's very easy to break these laws. And so ultimately, I guess Trump could pardon them or Patel could choose not to investigate. But they are going to have to clean this up. They're going to have to ride out the storm. It may even get to where. they have to pardon someone. And I believe that Goldberg said there was actually a CIA officer who's undercover who was in that group chat. But he chose not to reveal that officer's identity.

And so there were some real stakes here. Thankfully, it did not derail the attack or cost any American lives. But I guess we all can hope it's a teaching lesson that they tighten things up over there at the White House. And we'll see what the legal fallout ends up being. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with his story and more at thecentersquare.com.