The White House came out swinging in a tense press briefing on Wednesday, stepping up its defense of President Donald Trump’s national security team.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sparred with reporters for the first time since The Atlantic published screenshots that appeared to contradict the White House’s downplaying of a reporter being added to a Signal group chat where sensitive, potentially classified, information was relayed.
“We are not going to bend in the face of this insincere outrage,” Leavitt said in her opening remarks. “The national security adviser has taken responsibility for this matter, and the National Security Council immediately said, alongside the White House Counsel’s Office, that they are looking into how a reporter’s number was inadvertently added to this messaging thread.”
The administration has relied on semantics to argue that no “war plans” or classified information was shared in the group chat, which was created by national security adviser Michael Waltz and included top officials like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — alongside, mistakenly, Jeff Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic.
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“Why did The Atlantic downgrade their allegation about ‘war plans’ to ‘attack plans’?” Leavitt asked, referring to different headlines on two stories published this week. “They’re now playing word games because they know this was sensationalist spin from a reporter who was well known for doing this.”
When asked why they would not consider specific details in the chat about military operations — like “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” per The Atlantic — as confidential, despite similar language being listed as classified in classification guidelines from the Defense Department and the Department of National Intelligence, Leavitt referred reporters to DOD.
“I would characterize this as a policy discussion, a sensitive policy discussion,” she added.
Reporters continued to ask if, since being briefed on the screenshots and reviewing them, Trump had changed his mind on whether he still has confidence in his national security team, or felt “misled” by the presence of seemingly classified information.
“The president’s view on all of this remains the same today as it did yesterday,” she said, adding that it was his choice to address the press on Tuesday.
Leavitt did leave some wiggle room when asked if she could definitively say that nobody would lose their job over the leak. Trump, she said, “continues to have confidence in his national security team.”
Leavitt unleashed a tirade against Goldberg from the podium, accusing him of being a Democrat and discredited reporter.
“Goldberg is an anti-Trump hater,” she said.
Leavitt appeared visibly vexed by the number of questions focused on the Signal chat from “the mainstream media” reporters, particularly after the announcement that the president would be unveiling long anticipated tariffs on automobiles, which no one asked about.
“I have now been asked and answered the same question using different language multiple times,” she said. “If anybody has another question, we have tariffs possibly being implemented later today. The president is going to talk about that at 4 o’clock.”
Ultimately, the White House continued to downplay the chat, and took umbrage with the focus on the article and not on the successful mission itself.
“We are not going to be lectured about national security and American troops by Democrats in the mainstream media who turned the other cheek when the Biden administration, because of their incompetence, left 13 service members dead in Afghanistan,” Leavitt said.
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Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS.
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