Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lashed out at the media and \u201cdisgruntled former employees\u201d on Monday as the media doubled down on the Signal controversy.Hegseth stood firm in statements to reporters at the White House for the traditional Easter Egg Roll. He refuted recent reports of a second Signal app discussion in which he disclosed intelligence about Yemen attacks. He assured reporters that he and President Donald Trump are in complete agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax,\u201d Hegseth said, responding to new reporting from The New York Times.\u201cThis is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations,\u201d Hegseth continued. \u201cNot going to work with me, because we\u2019re changing the Defense Department, putting the Pentagon back in the hands of war-fighters. And anonymous smears from disgruntled former employees on old news doesn\u2019t matter. So I\u2019m happy to be here at the Easter Egg Roll with my dad and my kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he had spoken to the president, Hegseth said he had.\u201cAnd we are going to continue fighting. On the same page all the way,\u201d Hegseth said.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied a report from NPR that Trump is looking to replace Hegseth as Secretary of Defense.The White House has been embroiled in a dispute about information security when The Atlantic\u2019s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, seemed to be inadvertently added to a group chat with multiple key Trump officials planning a strike on the Houthis on Signal.In April, a similar scandal occurred when Hegseth, according to the New York Times, allegedly discussed specifics of a March military operation against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen in another Signal messaging conversation with his wife and brother.On Monday, NPR reported that despite these concerns, \u201cThe White House has begun the process of looking for a new secretary of defense, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly.\u201dThe NPR story was revised to reflect that Leavitt had called it \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis @NPR story is total FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about,\u201d the White House spokeswoman wrote. \u201cAs the President said this morning, he stands strongly behind @SecDef.\u201dThe White House\u2019s official \u201cRapid Response\u201d account on X shared a post slamming the report as well, claiming, \u201cLies from NPR \u2014 which, as we all know, is a Fake News propaganda machine.\u201dThis is the second time recently that Trump has clarified that he\u2019s standing by Hegseth, as some Democrats have called for him to resign because of a leaked Signal chat that contained\u00a0information about a military strike in Yemen.Last month, the president discussed the controversy following Hegseth\u2019s accidental transmission of details about the strike to members of the administration in a Signal chat, which also included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Goldberg published the full messages.<\/p>\n
After several Democrats in Congress called for Hegseth to step down because of the scandal, reporters asked Trump if he thought Hegseth might want to resign.\u201cHegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this. Hegseth. How do you bring Hegseth into this?\u201d Trump replied.Trump also acknowledged that his White House national security advisor, Mike Waltz, took responsibility for mistakenly adding Goldberg to the Signal chat.\u201cMike Waltz \u2026 he claimed responsibility, I would imagine. It had nothing to do with anyone else. It was Mike, I guess, I don\u2019t know, I was told it was Mike,\u201d Trump said when asked about the investigation.<\/p>\n
Trump again played down the controversy over whether or not Hegseth shared secret information that could have put the operation at risk by focusing on the mission\u2019s success.\u201cThere was no harm done because the attack was unbelievably successful that night,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth lashed out at the media and \u201cdisgruntled former employees\u201d on Monday as the media doubled down on the Signal controversy.Hegseth stood firm in statements to reporters at the White House for the traditional Easter Egg Roll. He refuted recent reports of a second Signal app discussion in which he disclosed intelligence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-daily-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8517,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8515\/revisions\/8517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailynewsintime.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}