We all know that old adage: when caught sending plans for American military operations through a platform you got off the app store, deny deny deny.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revived the era of alternative facts on Monday, outright refusing to admit that he had leaked plans for U.S. airstrikes on Yemen in a group chat that accidentally included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
Jeffrey Goldberg shared the wild story of the extreme breach in national security on Monday, along with screenshots of the conversations on the encrypted messaging app Signal. In addition to Hegseth, the group chat included Trump administration officials ranging from Secretary of State Marco Rubio up to Vice President JD Vance. When asked about the slip, Hegseth accused Goldberg of “peddling hoaxes.”
“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,” he said. “This is a guy that peddles in garbage. This is what he does.”
When pressed on the story, Hegseth flatly denied that any information was shared outside of official channels.
“I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that,” he said.
On MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki,” Goldberg pushed back on Hegseth’s denial. He called Hegseth’s messages “a minute-by-minute accounting” of the attack as it happened.
The defense secretary’s outright “nuh-uh” was slightly more composed than the response from President Donald Trump. When asked about the bombshell report, Trump said the reporter was “telling [him] about it for the first time” before attacking the magazine.
“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic,” he said. “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.”
Shortly after that press conference, Trump shared a screenshot of an Elon Musk post on social media. In the post, Musk was repeating a joke shared by the satirical conservative outlet The Babylon Bee.
“Best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of The Atlantic magazine because no one ever goes there,” Musk said.
At least a few people inside the Beltway have read the story, as Politico reports that National Security Adviser Mike Waltz might be on the outs for his role in cobbling together the group chat. Anonymous White House officials said that Trump would base Waltz’s future in his administration on the “coverage of the embarrassing episode.”
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