President Donald Trump bills himself as a straight shooter who tells it like it is.
But as the imbroglio over the administration’s accidental leak of military strike plans to a journalist spilled into its third day, even some allies were calling BS.
The White House on Wednesday maintained its assertion that there was no problem with national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally including a journalist from The Atlantic magazine in a group chat in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details about an impending attack on Houthi fighters in Yemen. But their arguments were quickly unraveling around them.
Some staunch Trump loyalists are frustrated at being spun by an administration they have long heralded for its commonsense, no-holds-barred approach, with some inside and outside of the White House agitating for Waltz to take the fall for his mistake.
While Trump rarely admits mistakes, many of his allies said Wednesday that’s exactly what the White House needed to do and that it was undermining trust by refusing to acknowledge reality.
“The White House is in denial that this was not classified or sensitive data,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and former Air Force officer. “They should just own up to it and preserve credibility.”
Presidents typically look for someone to fire in the wake of a crisis, but Trump allies have stressed they see such bloodletting as an admission of failure and have sought to appear more unified than during his first term. That commitment to unity has left little for top Trump lieutenants to do but to put forward awkward, and at times conflicting, excuses.
Those include declaring that a successful missile strike on Houthis invalidated concerns about the security breach, disputing that the plans for attack were actually “war plans,” and disparaging the character and politics of Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic who was accidentally included in the chat.
Trump blamed a Waltz staffer for including Goldberg, only to see Waltz contradict that assertion on national television. Waltz at another point claimed he had never met Goldberg, hours before a reporter unearthed a picture on social media of the two men standing next to each other during a 2021 event at the French Embassy.
“Do you trust the secretary of Defense, who was nominated for this role, voted by the United States Senate into this role, who has served in combat, honorably served our nation in uniform? Or do you trust Jeffrey Goldberg, who is a registered Democrat and an anti-Trump sensationalist reporter?” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a Wednesday afternoon briefing.
Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon, appeared to place the sole blame for the incident — which he called a “witch hunt” — on Waltz, for including Goldberg in the group chat, not Hegseth, for sharing sensitive information.
“It had nothing to do with anyone else. It was Mike, I guess. I don’t know. I always thought it was Mike,” Trump said. “Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do with this.”
The White House’s response to the accidental leak has reminded many conservatives of the anger they cast at the Biden administration, which they blamed for deceiving the public about the president’s health and other important issues. And in an uncharacteristically frank call to an administration that is obsessed with loyalty and unity to the MAGA cause, they are urging the White House to do better.
“‘A lot of people’s BS meters are going to go off, and rightfully so when you tell them that Casper the Friendly Ghost added [Goldberg]. Like, come on, don’t insult our intelligence,” said Tomi Lahren, a Trump loyalist and conservative commentator on OutKick, the conservative, pro-Trump website that offers sports and political commentary. “Tell us it was a big mess up. Tell us you take full responsibility and accountability.”
Some Trump boosters, such as Barstool Sports President Dave Portnoy, have taken those calls a step further. In a video posted on X, Portnoy called on the president to remove Waltz from office, saying that he understood the president was trying to be loyal to his people but that it was a “fuck-up of epic proportions.”
The specific calls for the White House to take responsibility are notable, given that many of Trump’s allies have pushed back against previous calls for accountability when Trump faced impeachments, indictments and continuing questions over his false assertion that he won the 2020 election.
Inside the White House, Waltz has been taking the brunt of the blame for apparently adding Goldberg to the chat, reflective of the precarious position he occupies within an “America First” administration that remains suspicious of his neoconservative credentials. While Hegseth has been criticized for his role in sharing the details of the strike, no one within the White House is calling for his head, unlike Waltz, whose continued employment appeared uncertain as of Wednesday afternoon.
Leavitt, during the Wednesday briefing, did not rule out the possibility that Waltz could be removed from office.
White House staff and the president’s allies were particularly exasperated by Waltz’s Tuesday evening appearance on Fox News, in which he appeared to stumble, backtrack and double down on his claims that he doesn’t know how Goldberg’s number ended up in his phone and was added to the discussion.
“People are mad that Waltz didn’t just admit a mistake and move on,” said a senior administration official, who like others in this story was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. Waltz’s response has raised concerns that he’s only digging a deeper hole for the White House.
Administration officials and others close to the White House are worried that Waltz’s decision to ask tech mogul Elon Musk to investigate the leak will lead to more political damage. “Waltz just opened the door for the FBI to investigate the compromise of his text chain,” one wrote in a message shared with POLITICO.
Another person close to the White House said Waltz’s claims about Goldberg are “bullshit and he risks somebody else calling bullshit on it.”
But Waltz’s explanation is only one aspect of what has emerged as a disjointed messaging strategy that has included White House communications staffers, top officials going before Congress and even the president weighing in directly. Just after Waltz appeared on Fox News saying that he took “full responsibility” for Goldberg’s number ending up in his phone, Trump appeared on Newsmax to lay the blame on a Waltz staffer.
Publicly, the White House has remained unified in its message that it was The Atlantic report itself — not the content — that was at issue. Leavitt called The Atlantic story a “hoax.” Communications director Steven Cheung claimed the magazine “falsely alleged” there was war planning in the chat. And deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich claimed The Atlantic “LIED.”
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell — traveling with Hegseth in the Indo-Pacific this week — also called the story a “hoax” Wednesday, writing in a statement that Hegseth “was merely updating the group on a plan that was underway.”
The person close to the White House called this strategy “stupid,” adding, “own it, fire Waltz, move on.”
Current and former Pentagon officials expressed disbelief about the sensitivity of the information that had been disclosed in the group chat. A former military official with experience coordinating military strikes was shocked that Hegseth had sent a timeline of the operation on the personal phones of administration officials just hours before the attacks — a time when American troops were most vulnerable.
“Telegraphing the timing is so shockingly irresponsible,” the former military official said. “[I]t’s criminal for everyone who isn’t protected by MAGA and Fox News.”
And there was frustration within the rank-and-file at the Pentagon about the White House downplaying the significance of the breach and the Trump administration’s refusal to hold anyone accountable.
“Members of the group chat actually believe they didn’t do anything wrong,” said a military official. “So I think [Hegseth will] work to continue ‘business as usual.’”
The response from Republican lawmakers Wednesday was slightly more divided. Lawmakers, during a House intelligence panel hearing, peppered top national security officials — including national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, both of whom were participants in the chat — about the administration’s assertions that the information shared over Signal was not classified.
In a similar hearing before the Senate intelligence panel on Tuesday, Ratcliffe acknowledged during the hearing that any “predecisional strike deliberations should be conducted through classified channels.”
Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) told reporters he and ranking Democrat Jack Reed are requesting an expedited Pentagon inspector general review of the Signal chat and are seeking a classified briefing on the episode. But he repeated the administration talking point that the conversation about the Signal chat leak was “distracting” from a military operation that he said was “hugely” successful.
“I make a lot of mistakes in my life, and I’ve found that it’s best when I just own up to them and say, ‘I’m human. I made a mistake,’” he said “And I’m glad, in this case, no real damage was done. I think that’s probably going to be the approach of the administration right up to the President.”
Meredith Lee Hill, Connor O’Brien, Paul McLeary, Amy Mackinnon, Maggie Miller and Jake Traylor contributed to this report.
