MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts had only two words to say while reading a new slate of text messages sent by some of the Trump administration’s top national security officials: “Good lord!”
During a Wednesday segment, hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezeznski and co-host Jonathan Lemire invited Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)—a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee—on air to look through text messages sent by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to a Signal group chat that also inadvertently included the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.
The hosts took Warner line-by-line through the messages to determine if any of the information he provided appeared to be classified.
After reading aloud one bullet point in Hegseth’s detailed play-by-play of an airstrike attack on Houthi targets in Yemen, Lemire paused for analysis from Warner, who swiftly noted: “Obviously classified, if the bad guys knew, that would be harmful to the mission.”
Another detail shared prompted Warner to declare that if the situation was a test anyone involved would get a “failing grade” and would “not be admitted into the intelligence community or military.”
“Just a couple more,” Lemire continued before reading another note from Hegseth which said: “‘1415 strike drones on target.’ This is again, this is all caps. ‘This is when the first bombs will definitely drop pending earlier trigger-based targets.‘”
“Good lord!” Scarborough could immediately be heard lamenting on a hot mic. “Good lord,” he said again for appropriate measure.
“The old Russian KGB would give their arm and a leg to try to get that information in real-time,” Warner then proclaimed.
Earlier this week, Goldberg revealed that he had inadvertently been added to a group chat with top Trump security officials, made to discuss sensitive attack plans regarding a March 15 airstrike on Houthi militants in Yemen.
Members of the group chat, hosted on commercial messaging app Signal, included Vice President JD Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz (who added Goldberg in the first place), CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Hegseth, and a number of others.
Since the leak, the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that no classified information or war plans were discussed on the message chain.
Goldberg took that rhetoric as an apparent green light to post all the messages he received while on the chat, labeling it an “attack plan” in a second headline.
The Trump team have since latched onto the change of terminology as proof that the allegations of carelessness were meritless.
Still, defense sources and experts have argued the opposite, with one source telling CNN that the information could be considered classified as the attack still had not started at the time the texts were sent.
“It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court-martialed for this,” the official said. “We don’t provide that level of information on unclassified systems, in order to protect the lives and safety of the service members carrying out these strikes. If we did, it would be wholly irresponsible. My most junior analysts know not to do this.”
