On Friday, President Trump denounced critics for raising concerns over the use of signaling by Secretary Defense Secretary Pete Hegses, a discrete messaging app, to spread sensitive military intelligence.
After a second chat controversy brought him to the spotlight earlier this week, when asked if his confidence had changed in Hegses, Trump dispelled his emotions. Instead, he again denounced the media.
“I don’t think the signal is important,” he told reporters on Air Force 1 on Friday that he headed to Pope Francis’ funeral on his way to Rome. “I think it’s fake news. So I don’t think it’s important.”
His remarks came days after the New York Times reported in mid-March that the defense chief had revealed sensitive information about a military attack plan in the signal chain with his wife, brothers and personal lawyers. Hegseth claimed the included messages and “unofficial” and “unclassified” information.
Using the same argument, when top journalists were inadvertently added to the signal chain, the top Trump administration officials were then conducted with information about Yemen’s planned strike. The president met with the aforementioned reporter Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic earlier this week.
Trump and his allies claim that the media has made it a bigger problem than that. Following the initial signal controversy, Trump has added a post about the true society, “taking articles on an endless signal story and saying, “They don’t stop – they’ll go over and over!”
The White House and presidential allies gathered around Hegses to defeat the defence chief’s resignation of fallout. During the annual Easter Egg Roll, Trump doubled his support for his secretary.
“He’s doing a great job… Trump told reporters Monday, pointing his finger at a Pentagon official who was recently fired.
“It’s just fake news,” he said. “They just nurture stories. I think they sound like a disgruntled employee. He was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people.”
Hegseth, in the wake of the Times Report, denounced a former employee who was expelled after an internal investigation into leaks within the Department of Defense, according to the administration.
“What a huge surprise to see some leaks fired and so many hit pieces coming out of the same media that suddenly pitched the Russian hoax,” the defence chief said Monday.
