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'War Plans'? What War Plans? Trump Press Secretary Tries To Clean Up Group Chat Mess

'War Plans'? What War Plans? Trump Press Secretary Tries To Clean Up Group Chat Mess

Yahoo25-03-2025

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt boldly denied there being any discussion of 'war plans' going on in a group chat between government officials which was accidentally infiltrated by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg earlier this month.
Though the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic plainly detailed how he ended up in the highly sensitive national security conversation in a bombshell exposé published Monday, Leavitt still tried her hardest to rewrite the situation in a post on X Tuesday morning.
After first claiming that Goldberg was 'well-known for his sensationalist spin,' she laid out a list of dubious 'facts' about the fiasco.
1. No 'war plans' were discussed.
2. No classified material was sent to the thread.
3. The White House Counsel's Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump's top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible.
Leavitt went on to note that the White House is investigating how Goldberg's number was 'inadvertently added to the thread' and commended President Donald Trump for following through on the March 15 military offensive against Yemen's Houthi rebels which was discussed in emoji-peppered texts on the encrypted messaging app Signal.
'Terrorists were killed and that's what matters most to President Trump,' she concluded.
While Leavitt maintained that 'war plans' were not part of the conversation, Goldberg had a very different account of what went down in the chat, which included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and a list of other prominent White House officials.
According to Goldberg, the texts 'included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.'
Hegseth used the same lines as Leavitt while addressing the ordeal on Monday after Goldberg's account was published.
'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 told the press while touching down in Hawaii.
'Nobody was texting war plans,' Hegseth went on. 'That's all I have to say about that.'
Mike Johnson Downplays Group Chat Leaks As 'Officials Doing Their Job,' Gets Torched On X
Atlantic Editor Slams Pete Hegseth's Defense Of War Plan Group Text: 'That's A Lie'
Pete Hegseth And Mike Waltz Ripped As 'Careless,' 'Incompetent' Amid Calls To Resign

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What we know about Israel's attacks on Iran's nuclear sites − and Iran's drone response

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