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The White House has faced pushback for its insistence on trying to shift blame away from the administration after Yemen attack plans were shared with a journalist in a Signal group chat.
The withering criticism even came from their own side of the political spectrum as right-wing commentators urged the administration to admit the mistake and move on instead of trying to litigate the issue.
“Trying to wordsmith the hell outta this signal debacle is making it worse,” rightwing pundit Tomi Lahren wrote on X on Wednesday. “It was bad. And I’m honestly getting sick of the whatabout isms from my own side. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Admit the F up and move on.”
The White House appears to still be coming to terms with the national security breach and how to deal with it. The administration has been defending the members of the group chat, which included, among others, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and, inadvertently, the editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg.
Allies of the president have called for Waltz, who added Goldberg to the chat, to be fired. The administration is also denying that any classified information was shared in the chat, even as Hegseth posted detailed information regarding the attack plans against the Houthis in Yemen.
Far-right Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene simply refused to answer a question about the leak when asked by Sky News on Wednesday.
Greene asked Sky News’s Martha Kelner what country she was from, and when she learned she was from the U.K., Greene launched into a rant.
“We don’t give a crap about your opinion and your reporting,” she said. “Why don’t you go back to your country, where you have a major migrant problem? You should care about your own borders.”
“Do you care about people from your country? What about all the women that are raped by migrants? Do you care? Okay, you’re done,” said Greene.
“I don’t care about your fake news,” the congresswoman added when asked about the lives of U.S. servicemembers possibly being put at risk.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took on a softer approach on Thursday, telling reporters, “Well, we have never denied that this was a mistake, and the national security adviser took responsibility for that, and we have said we are making changes. We are looking into the matter to ensure it can never happen again.”
This comes as a YouGov poll conducted on Tuesday found that 53 percent of all respondents said it‘s a “very serious” problem that The Atlantic editor in chief was included in the conversation regarding the sensitive attack plans, while 21 percent said it’s a “somewhat serious” problem, for a total 74 percent viewing it as an issue.
Meanwhile, a majority of Republicans have said that it’s a problem that Goldberg was included in the Signal group chat alongside numerous senior administration officials as they discussed the airstrikes, the survey shows.
Among Republicans, 60 percent said it was either a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem, according to the poll of nearly 6,000 U.S. adults. The same was true for 89 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Independents.
