Hegseth Blasts Media, ‘Disgruntled Former Employees’ Over Signal Controversy – Soulfy

“This @NPR story is total FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about,” the White House spokeswoman wrote. “As the President said this morning, he stands strongly behind @SecDef.”The White House’s official “Rapid Response” account on X shared a post slamming the report as well, claiming, “Lies from NPR — which, as we all know, is a Fake News propaganda machine.”This is the second time recently that Trump has clarified that he’s standing by Hegseth, as some Democrats have called for him to resign because of a leaked Signal chat that contained information about a military strike in Yemen.Last month, the president discussed the controversy following Hegseth’s 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.

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.“Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this. Hegseth. How do you bring Hegseth into this?” Trump replied.Trump also acknowledged that his White House national security advisor, Mike Waltz, took responsibility for mistakenly adding Goldberg to the Signal chat.“Mike Waltz … he claimed responsibility, I would imagine. It had nothing to do with anyone else. It was Mike, I guess, I don’t know, I was told it was Mike,” Trump said when asked about the investigation.

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’s success.“There was no harm done because the attack was unbelievably successful that night,” Trump said.