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Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has ripped into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “bull****” over his response to a second Signalnate scandal.
In a Tuesday night segment on his show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, the TV host segued into a critique of Hegseth after talking about Pope Francis’ death on Monday.
“So we have a new pope on the way and maybe a new Secretary of Defense soon,” he teased. “If you see white smoke coming from the Pentagon, it means they fired Pete Hegseth.
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“He’s getting hammered, not the way he used to. This time he’s getting hammered over new bombshell revelations literally about bombshell revelations,” he said about the Signalgate 2.0 revelation thatThe New York Times broke Sunday.
In The Times report, Hegseth was said to have disclosed more sensitive information regarding forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat. This time it reportedly involved his wife, brother, and personal lawyer, according to four people who knew of the chat.
“His brother, turns out, is his senior advisor. In case you were worried that there was only one unqualified Hegseth running the military, there are two,” Kimmel continued.
Hegseth appeared on Fox News to defend himself against the fresh allegations, stating: “What was shared over Signal – then and now, however you characterize it – was informal, unclassified, coordinations, from media coordination, other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.”
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But Kimmel was not convinced, saying: “Right, but it was bull**** from the beginning too!”
“You texted the exact time and place the secret bombing would begin before the secret bombing happened to your wife on an easily hackable phone, and his defense for this is ‘Who told you?’ and ‘How dare they tell you?’
The talk show host then compared Hegseth’s defense to “your wife catching you in bed with another woman [and] your response is ‘Well, why did you come home so early?’”
Kimmel went on to condemn Hegseth’s blame on “leakers”, adding: “You don’t have time for leakers, you are the leaker! You’re the one who leaked this.”
President Trump has brushed off the new allegations and appeared to be unaware of The Times’ report Sunday, while continuing to declare his unwavering support for Hegseth.
“Are you bringing up Signal again? I thought they gave that up two weeks ago […] It’s all just the same old stuff from the media. That’s an old one,” the President said. He urged the media to “try finding something new.”
