Putting aside Hegseth’s lies about Russia, Charlottesville and Donald Trump’s insults of American military service members, the Trump administration confirmed that the unprotected conversation between Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others “appears to be authentic.”
In other words, even the most openly media-hating administration in American history backed up Goldberg’s incredible and incriminating reporting.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement.
“The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security.”
That prompted Fox News' Chief Political Analyst Brit Hume (and an former network colleague of Hegseth) to call out Hegseth’s lie and ridiculous attack on Goldberg in tweet: “Oh, for God’s sake, the administration has already confirmed the authenticity of the message.”
In the same media session, Hegseth insisted “nobody was texting war plans,” which, according to Goldberg and the administration, is another lie.
Goldberg reported that Hegseth and others were texting about time, date, place, details of targets, including people to be killed and sequencing of strikes against the Houthis.
Those are “the most closely held intel in military operations,” former CNN national security reporter Barbara Starr tweeted. “American pilots may be right over those targets.”
Asked Monday afternoon — hours after the reporting was made public — Trump said he “doesn’t know anything about it,” and later added that he was hearing about it for the first time from the reporter who asked the question.
Trump later appeared to mock the story, reposting on his Truth Social platform a post by DOGE head and Twitter/X owner Elon Musk that read, “Best place to hide a dead body is Page 2 of The Atlantic magazine, because no one ever goes there.”
The breach follows other recent Trump administration baffling goofs — like inadvertently divulging the names of CIA officers and revealing Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal identity information in the release of JFK assassination documents.
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