Trump Gives National Security Team a Mulligan for Now

The populist reformer had arrived in Washington vowing to drain the swamp. His battles with an ineffective bureaucracy were a constant theme of his first term, and he promised to deliver more of the same if given four more years. The only difference: Trump would be more experienced this time, and he would surround himself with better, more loyal people.

His second term has been as advertised. With the help of Elon Musk, Trump has mercilessly marched through federal agencies, firing bureaucrats and, in some cases, shuttering entire government departments. The drama that plagued his first administration has been practically nonexistent. Instead, he and his people have been ruthlessly efficient. That is, until real-time details of an imminent strike on Houthis were accidentally leaked to a reporter who was inadvertently included on a Signal text thread.

But the president famous for firing people is standing by the national security team that delivered him the first major scandal of his second term in office. At least for now.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt did not rule out the possibility of firings in the wake of the leaked Signal chat that revealed sensitive information about airstrikes in Yemen and roiled Washington. Dodging the question, Leavitt told reporters that the president “continues to have confidence in his national security team.” The night prior, during an interview with NBC News, Trump said of his national security advisor, “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”

By Wednesday evening, the president was calling Democratic demands for accountability “a witch hunt,” though he told reporters in the Oval Office that he welcomed an inspector general investigation into exactly how reporter Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic had been added to the chat in the first place.

Waltz has already owned up to the mistake. “I take full responsibility. I built the group,” Waltz told Laura Ingraham of Fox News Tuesday. “My job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”

Strict rules govern the handling of sensitive information. Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and retired Air Force brigadier general, told RealClearPolitics that if an enlisted service member had inadvertently leaked similar information, they would likely lose their security clearance and face swift discipline.

Asked by RCP why members of the president’s national security team should be any different, Leavitt bristled that she had already been asked and answered the question, though she had not addressed the apparent double standard.

For his part, Bacon does not believe that Waltz should resign, as some Democrats have demanded. “He made the mistake of adding the reporter,” he said. “The real error was when SECDEF put the times and aircraft mission data on an unclassified system two hours before the operation.”

The administration insists the leaked message, which included the exact timing of when air strikes would occur and real-time updates on the status of the attack, were not classified. “This is when the first bombs will definitely drop,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth texted the group at one point. He had previously messaged, “We are currently clean on OPSEC,” an abbreviation for operational security and an indication that he recognized the sensitivity of the information. 

The Pentagon determines what is and isn’t classified with regard to military operations, and Hegseth told reporters Wednesday that there had been “no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information” included in the Signal chat.

Congressional Democrats who had served in the military scoffed at that explanation. “This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat and combat veteran who lost her legs in Iraq when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the Black Hawk helicopter she was piloting. “He needs to resign in disgrace immediately.” Sen. Mark Kelly reached the same conclusion. “We’re lucky it didn’t cost any servicemembers their lives,” said the Arizona Democrat and former Navy aviator, “but for the safety of our military and our country, Secretary Hegseth needs to resign.”

Accountability has different definitions between administrations. For instance, James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, denied lying to Congress when he falsely testified during the Obama administration in 2013 that the government does “not wittingly” collect the telephone records of millions of Americans. He later said he misunderstood the question but remained in the Obama administration until its end. 

An encrypted messaging application, Signal is popular among journalists and government officials who are fearful of prying eyes and require additional security. A recent memo obtained by CBS News from the National Security Agency, which focuses on cyber security, warned that the application was vulnerable to foreign hackers. The agency warned its employees that Signal could be used for what it called “unclassified accountability/recall exercises,” not sensitive information.

A suite of other options to communicate sensitive and classified information is available to Cabinet officials, including Hegseth. The defense secretary, who has promised to restore “high, uncompromising, and clear” standards and revive what he calls “the warrior ethos” in the military, has recorded numerous social media videos from his Pentagon office. Visible in one January video are green, yellow, and red telephones marked for unclassified, sensitive, and top-secret conversations.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, former national security officials told RCP they were at a loss as to why Hegseth did not use those phones, or an encrypted email, to communicate. For his part, Wednesday, even the president was casting doubt on the texting app favored by his national security team. “I don’t know that Signal works,” Trump told reporters. “I think that Signal could be defective, to be honest with you.”

But while Trump has insisted that his commitment to making government accountable is ironclad, so too is his refusal to admit fault in the face of a media firestorm. “Waltz gets a mulligan because you never back down and never cave,” a longtime GOP operative with ties to Trump World told RCP.

“You fight,” they added. “That’s MAGA.”