Like the Media Research Center and Newsmax, WorldNetDaily did its Trump Regime Media duty by downplaying defense secretary Pete Hegseth inappropriately using an unencrypted Signal chat to discuss war plans. Its first story on the scandal was an article it stole from right-wing Fox News. That was followed by a March 26 article by Joe Kovacs helping Hegseth play defense:
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched fiercely into the Atlantic on Wednesday for continuing to claim war plans were mistakenly shared on Signal with the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
“So, let’s me get this straight,” Hegseth posted on X.
“The Atlantic released the so-called ‘war plans’ and those ‘plans’ include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information.
“Those are some really sh*tty war plans.
“This only proves one thing: Jeff Goldberg has never seen a war plan or an ‘attack plan’ (as he now calls it). Not even close.
“As I type this, my team and I are traveling the INDOPACOM region, meeting w/ Commanders (the guys who make REAL ‘war plans’) and talking to troops.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also jumped into the fray Wednesday, saying: “The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans.’
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
WND then published a column by Ben Shapiro downplaying the scandal, followed by an anonymously written March 28 article uncritically serving up more White House spin, this time from Vice President J.D. Vance, who “hammered the media for suggestions that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should be fired over the so-called ‘Signalgate’ scandal, highlighting how reporters ‘ran cover’ for President Biden after the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.”
Bob Unruh played Hillary whataboutism in a March 28 article:
Hillary Clinton is scolding the administration of President Donald Trump for allowing a scandal to happen.
It developed when an executive at the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to a Signal chat group that the administration was using to chat about its dealings, including possible attacks, regarding terrorists in Yemen.
The administration has said there was no classified information shared, while Trump’s critics say there was.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Clinton claimed.
Exactly what she meant isn’t clear, but her experience with scandals in government runs long and deep.
Even leftists online noted, “Clinton’s use of a private email server at the State Department and accusations she mishandled classified information dogged her unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign.”
In fact, that campaign was the second time voters had rejected her agenda to install herself in the White House as president. Years earlier, even Democrats had picked upstart Barack Obama over Clinton.
But Clinton’s history also includes the Whitewater scandal in Arkansas, the followup to a real estate investment scandal that saw Hillary Clinton the first spouse of a U.S. president to be subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury.
And that’s pretty much it. Of course, if Hegseth had been a Democrat, you would never hear the end of it from WND.