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After spending much of the last decade hyperventilating over Hillary Clinton’s private email server and how it placed America’s national security in peril, the loyal MAGA acolytes at Fox News are suddenly singing a very different tune now that the Trump administration accidentally included a journalist in a group chat discussing war plans.
“After years of secrecy and incompetence, if you read the content of these messages, I think you will come away proud that these are the leaders making these decisions in America,” Fox News host Will Cain insisted on Monday afternoon.
Of course, Cain was hardly alone among his cohorts at the right-wing network, which serves as a staffing agency for the White House, its primary communications arm, and a landing spot for Trump officials and family members.
In the immediate aftermath of The Atlantic’s bombshell report that revealed Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been inadvertently added to a Signal text group that detailed recent airstrikes in Yemen, the network’s top Trump-boosting stars have desperately attempted to downplay the news.
While national defense experts call for President Donald Trump to fire the officials responsible for the unclassified group chat and buzz grows on Capitol Hill that national security adviser Michael Waltz could soon be forced out, the conservative cable giant’s hosts and pundits have largely shrugged off the explosive scandal.
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In the network’s first on-air report of the incident, Fox News anchor John Roberts did acknowledge that it was a “BFD” that will “likely be looked into quite thoroughly.” At the same time, though, he reassured viewers that “nothing else untoward happened” outside of inviting “an outsider who doesn't have top-secret security clearance into the group” chat.
“Now, I would think that there probably are worse people that you could text your secret plans to, but it appears that Goldberg has acted responsibly here in writing this article,” Roberts stated. “And while he outs a lot of the process of what happened, he did not specifically publish the war plans as they apparently were transmitted to him by Pete Hegseth the morning of the attacks against the Houthis.”
Cain —who helped rally the Fox News troops behind Hegseth when reports of excessive drinking and sexual assault threatened to derail his Pentagon confirmation — found the silver lining in the “incredibly concerning” security breach.
“But the bigger take away from me is it is an insight, a transparent insight, into the thought process and dialog of our national leaders,” he gushed. “If you look at the actual content of what was reported, if you look at how they discuss potential strikes on Houthis in Yemen, what you will see is dialogue between Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Stephen Miller, Tulsi Gabbard, and many more in a very collaborative, open, honest, team-based attempt to come to the right decision.”
The network’s primetime stars, who also serve as Trump’s informal advisers, reacted to the news the best way they know how — by brushing it off as “feigned outrage” spun by a dishonest liberal media who hate Trump and are supporting a “hoax-peddling” journalist like Goldberg.
After Hegseth raged about the “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist” who received the classified airstrike details, Laura Ingraham doubled down on Hegseth’s attacks on Goldberg.
“But, of course, the story of the day, at least on the left-wing networks was how in a Signal, which is an encrypted app, exchange, allegedly, among various administration officials, some plans were discussed in that chain of messages that included some information about possible plans for bombing the Houthis,” she said on Monday night. “Jeffrey Goldberg, who the secretary of defense was referencing there, is a long-time journalistic adversary of President Trump's and has certainly drawn the ire of conservatives for his reporting about the various hoaxes that Hegseth was referencing there.”
While largely ignoring the story on his primetime broadcast, Jesse Watters did take a moment to dismiss the controversy fully, chalking it up to an innocent mistake that happens all the time among a group of pals.
“Did you ever try to start a group text? You’re adding people and you accidentally add the wrong person? All of a sudden your Aunt Mary knows all your raunchy plans for the bachelor party? Well, that kind of happened today with the Trump administration,” the MAGA sycophant declared.
With a chyron blaring “We’ve All Texted The Wrong Person Before” underneath Watters, the Fox News host praised the administration’s strike on Yemen while blasting Goldberg as “one of the biggest hoax artists around.” And, just for good measure, he made sure to mention the Clinton emails and former President Joe Biden’s sloppy handling of classified documents.
“Well, he heard some things he probably shouldn’t have, but could have been a wee bit of a security breach,’ Watters concluded. “But it’s not like they home brewed a server and then bleached it, or kept classified documents in their garages next to their corvette. I’m sure it won’t happen again.”
In the following hour, Sean Hannity — the Trump confidant who has been described as the White House shadow chief of staff — also spent much of his program utterly ignoring the story. When he did mention it in his opening monologue, though, it was just to attack the media and Democrats for even giving it oxygen.
“They are obsessed with an accidentally leaked text — a chain from Trump cabinet officials who are debating the merits of military strikes in Yemen,” Hannity huffed. “So, the very people that covered up their president's severe cognitive decline, lied about wide open borders — both of which are clear and present dangers to our country — now want you to believe that they actually give a damn and care about national security. More feigned phony outrage. This is now the scandal of the week that you will see nonstop, 24/7, that nobody will care about.”
But not everyone at Fox was completely dismissive of the breach or the expected fallout. Fox News analyst Brit Hume, for instance, didn’t buy Hegseth’s spin that war plans were never shared in the group chat. “The administration has already confirmed the authenticity of the message,” he said.
During Monday’s broadcast of Fox News’ most-watched show The Five, liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov brought up the Signal chat before exclaiming: “I don’t want to ever hear, ‘But her emails!’ again.” Still, even as she noted that this episode proves that “folks were getting these jobs that didn’t deserve them,” Watters and co-host Greg Gutfeld mocked her and moved on to other topics. Tarlov’s remarks were the only time the story was referenced during the broadcast.
By Friday morning, Fox & Friends — the president’s favorite morning show — seemed to be in lockstep with the White House on its talking points.
While cyber security experts have sounded the alarm on the administration's use of Signal to share highly sensitive information, saying it is “a few steps above leaving a copy of your war plan at the Chinese Embassy,” co-host Lawrence Jones defended the Trump officials sending out war plans via the app.
“They all use it — they’re not supposed to, but they use it,” Jones said, conflating reporters using it with sources with government agencies discussing top secret information. “CIA, every single intelligence agency uses Signal. I know that for a fact. I talk to them on Signal — they’re sources of mine — they all use Signal. Uh, it is the best way and the most secure way to get information out and that’s why a lot of journalists use it as well.”
Guest host Kayleigh McEnany — a former Trump press secretary — spent much of the show taking shots at Goldberg, whom she described as “not credible” and the “most horrific of all reporters” in D.C. due to his previous “suckers and losers” story about Trump’s comments on Americans who died in war.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, while the program was still on the air, tweeted that “Jeffrey Goldberg is well-known for his sensationalist spin” before claiming that “no war plans were discussed” on the thread and “no classified material was sent.”
Co-host Brian Kilmeade, meanwhile, defended Waltz and suggested he shouldn’t be on the chopping block despite the stunning security breach.
“Obviously, to me, it was a mistake. But when I’m reading in Politico that Mike Waltz in trouble, I think that there’s not a chance in heck,” he said, adding: The thing that gets you in trouble with President Trump is disloyalty and duplicity, not mistakes — in my view… if something was gonna happen, they would have brought it up already.”
Throughout the rest of the program, White House correspondent Peter Doocy reported that “Mike Waltz is telling people that he has no idea how this happened” and that the national security adviser appeared to be on safe ground with the president.
By the time Fox & Friends wrapped up for the day, Trump told NBC News’ Garrett Haake in a brief interview that he was completely unconcerned about the “glitch” that occurred with the Signal group chat and that Waltz was not in danger of losing his job.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he's a good man,” the president said, claiming that the story was a non-issue since the Houthi attacks were “perfectly successful.”
“As I said yesterday, the President continues to have confidence in his national security team, including Mike Waltz,” Leavitt added in another tweet. “Stories claiming otherwise are driven by anonymous sources who clearly do not speak to the President, and written by reporters who are thirsty for a ‘scoop.’”
