President Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters in the right-wing media have begun to offer a stunning list of excuses after a reporter revealed he had been inadvertently added to a group chat that included top Cabinet officials discussing potentially classified war plans against the Houthi rebel group in Yemen.
Many seemed to suggest that despite the officials’ stunning break in protocol, their supposed eloquence while discussing matters of state was worth the security risk—because it gave the American people a rare view of the competence of those in charge.
Fox News host Will Cain was one of the first to defend the administration, claiming that strong American leadership should be the story’s upshot—not the humiliating security breach.
“The biggest takeaway on the Signal story …(yes there are concerns about this all going down on Signal and accidentally adding Jeffrey Goldberg instead of most probably Jameson Greer)...is how thoughtful, collaborative and honest all of these people were in their deliberation."
He also defended the move on his Fox News show Monday afternoon.
“It is insight into the thought process and dialog of our national leaders,” he said. “I think you will come away proud these are the leaders making these decisions in America.”
Another Fox News host, Kevin Corke, pushed a conspiracy that Goldberg’s addition to the group chat of top Trump officials wasn’t actually a mistake at all.
“People keep saying it was ‘accidental,’” he wrote to X. “I don’t buy it.” Many in the comments supported the claim of an intentional leak—though the officials’ motivations to do such a thing remain unclear.
The saga began Monday when The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg claimed that he had been added to a Signal messaging group alongside some of the highest officials in the country.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Vice President JD Vance and others were all included, using the chat to discuss messaging—and later, to devise their plan for bombing Houthi targets in Yemen, an attack that ultimately claimed the lives of 53 people last week after it was carried out.
The messages, which included information so sensitive that The Atlantic chose to forgo publishing certain texts, received mixed reactions from politicians on Monday, as Democrats decried the leak and Republicans mostly remained silent.
Some MAGA fans, however, have continued to make similar defenses for the leak.
The Gateway Pundit, a far-right news outlet, wrote that the texts revealed “a masterclass in leadership.”
“Instead of simply excusing himself from the conversation, Goldberg did what elitist far-left journalists do best,” wrote Jim Hoft, founder of the outlet. “He took screenshots of the conversation and ran to his keyboard to try to leak the military operation.”
Goldberg claimed in his article that he left the chat once he realized that it was likely authentic—a realization that dawned on him when he saw a play-by-play of the war plans acted out in real time.
Billionaire Elon Musk took a completely different route altogether: questioning The Atlantic’s readership.
“Best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of The Atlantic magazine, because no one ever goes there,” he quote-tweeted a post on X from the Babylon Bee, a conservative satire outlet.
When asked by a reporter, Donald Trump claimed it was the first time he was hearing of the incident—while also dragging the outlet.
“I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic," Trump said. “To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business.”
The White House, for its part, did not claim that the chat was fake—and instead parroted the defenses being made across the right-wing media ecosystem.
“We are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” the White House National Security Council spokesperson said. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson also attempted to defend the officials, claiming that “they’ll tighten up to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
