While the Media Research Center worked to bury references to defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s screw-up in using the unencrypted Signal to discuss military plans, Newsmax was mostly giving space to various Trump sycophants to downplay the seriousness of the offense. It started off with a surprisingly straightforward March 24 article by Theodore Bunker about the incident. That was quickly followed by pro-Trump spin of the incident:
- Lawmakers Scurry to Protect Secret War Plan Talks
- WH: No ‘War Plans,’ Classified Info Discussed During Group Chat
- Hegseth Rebuts Magazine’s ‘War Plans’ Leak Report
- Trump Stands By NSA Waltz: He ‘Learned a Lesson’ (Trump fired Waltz a month later)
A March 25 article by Bunker let a White House official play victim over criticism of Hegseth without any pushback:
The White House on Tuesday pushed back on criticism of the administration over the handling of military messages after a journalist was mistakenly included in a group chat in which high-ranking government officials discussed potential military actions.
In a social media post on Tuesday, White House communications director Steven Cheung dismissed the controversy about the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic being accidentally added to a group chat using the messaging application Signal involving multiple Cabinet members and other top-ranking Trump administration officials during discussions about military operations in Yemen.
“The Atlantic story is nothing more than a section of the NatSec establishment community running the same tired gameplay from years past,” Cheung wrote.
An article the same day by Sandy Fitzgerald featured a sleazy right-wing operative trying to distract from the issue:
The left’s outcry over a magazine editor-in-chief being added to a Trump administration group chat about plans for military action against Houthi terrorists in Yemen shows they’re in “attack mode” because they “have no agenda” of their own, political strategist Roger Stone told Newsmax on Tuesday.
“I went back and looked,” Stone told “Newsline.” “Sen. [Mark] Warner [D-Va.] registered no outrage over Hillary Clinton’s use of an illegal private server and her use of classified information on that server. She denied that, but we know otherwise. This is partisan politics.”
Another article that day by Mark Swanson featured President Trump trying to bury the story by insisting that “he’s ‘very comfortable’ with the explanation and resolution of how an editor with a magazine ended up on a group thread with members of the White House national security team.”
A March 26 article by Eric Mack uncritically served up more White House pushback:
Jeffrey Goldberg’s release of excerpts from the Signal chat Wednesday morning was hailed in a victory lap by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, saying he proved his “hoax” by showing there were no “war plans” as he claimed.
“The Atlantic has conceded: These were NOT ‘war plans,'” Leavitt posted on X, sharing the paywalled story revealing the excerpts.
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
The Atlantic’s story showed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth provided times of warplane launches, strike packages, and targets.
Hegseth has adamantly rebutted the report, saying he did not reveal “war plans,” and senior Cabinet officials have been uniform in saying the information leaked was not classified.
Fitzgerald parroted the same narrative in another article that day, featuring Hegseth insisting that “he did not share classified plans through a Signal group chat of Trump administration officials, telling reporters that The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inadvertently added to the chat, released details that were not war plans.”
One more March 26 article, by Solange Reyner ,let former Trump security adviser KT McFarland baselessly claiming that Goldberg “flat out lied” and “is not a credible journalist,” insisting that the legacy media “cannot stand the fact that this was yet another [President] Donald Trump successful military operation.”
Michael Dorstewitz served up his own spin on the situation in his March 26 column, decaring that the situation was “unfortunate” but not a scandal, adding:
A distrusting person might believe that when the Biden administration loaded the Signal application into Waltz’s computer, they automatically included a journalist unfriendly to Trump into each conversation.
But however it happened, it turned out well.
No classified information was released, and the Houthi terrorists got a taste of extreme justice, courtesy of Uncle Sam.
A March 30 article by Mark Swanson touted a Newsmax host lashing out at a Fox News reporter for deviating from the Trump-approved narrative on the Signal story:
A Newsmax host chided a Fox News analyst over a post she made to social media last week regarding the Signal snafu at the White House.
In a segment on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” on Thursday, Newsmax2 host Rick Leventhal said Jennifer Griffin should be “very careful” what she posts on X.
At issue is Griffin’s post from Wednesday, writing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared information in the Signal chat that “may have been far more sensitive” than the so-called war plans that were discussed with Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who was inadvertently added to the group chat with Hegseth and national security adviser Mike Waltz.
[…]Further, Griffin’s reporting spurred a new rift with the White House, which took umbrage with Griffin siding with Democrats in exaggerating the severity of the Signal breach, Schmitt said.
Schmitt didn’t explain why it was “siding with Democrats” to not mindlessly parrot pro-Trump talking points like he does.
(This post has been updated.)