At a press conference on Tuesday, President Trump weighed in on one of the worst scandals of his second term: his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, having accidentally shared war plans with the top editor at The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, via a rogue invite to a group Signal chat.
Trump spoke about the incident with about the same tone you’d talk about getting a parking ticket: “It’s just something that can happen,” he said, referring to the Secretary of Defense sending secret war plans to a journalist without knowing it. “It can happen. You can even prepare for it, it can happen,” he said again.
Later, Trump extrapolated a little more on his understanding what had taken place: “Sometimes people are hooked in and you don’t know they’re hooked in,” he said, before venturing into a more abstract commentary about the nature of modernity: “It’s not a perfect technology, there is no perfect technology,” he said. “We always want to use the best technology. This was the best technology for the moment,” he offered, while failing to clarify what he was talking about. Particularly as Signal is not approved for discussing sensitive matters due to the potential for hacking by foreign actors.
Frankly, from his comments, it isn’t even clear that Trump really knows what Signal is. “They used an app—if you want to call it an app,” Trump said, at one point. Later, the President said: “Well I don’t what—I don’t know anything about Signal, I wasn’t involved with this, I just heard about it.” He added: “I hear it’s used by a lot of groups.”
Trump also reiterated the claim that no secret information was shared in the text message thread: “Again, it wasn’t classified so they probably viewed it as being something that wasn’t that important,” he said.
Top Trump administration officials have insisted that the information included in the leaked conversation was not classified material. Hegseth has claimed that he was not texting war plans, and has referred to Goldberg as a “deceitful, so-called journalist.” Goldberg has characterized Hegseth’s denial as “a lie,”. After top officials—including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—told Congress that no classified information was shared in the chat. The Atlantic has since released nearly the entire chat including the specific time a strike was expected to hit a target.
When Trump was asked whether Hegseth should apologize or not, Trump defending the Secretary of Defense: “No, I don’t think he should apologize. I think he’s doing his best. It’s equipment and technology that’s not perfect and probably he won’t be using it again.” I think it’s safe to say that Hegseth’s “best” is not very good. I’d hate to see what his worst looks like, and I’m sure America’s foreign adversaries can’t wait to see it either.
