Trump wants to move on after the text-chain disaster. Pete Hegseth could end up being his scapegoat

Analysis: Trump may have to pay a political price to move on from a shocking breach of security by his most senior officials, writes John Bowden

Donald Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, at the White House. (Getty Images)

Donald Trump’s irritation over the wall-to-wall coverage of a shocking breach of security at his administration’s highest levels was apparent on Tuesday, as was his desire to push past the narrative.

Congress, under unified Republican control, could do little to help him.

The president was hounded by questions at a meeting of his ambassadors in the White House Cabinet room on Tuesday as Washington reels in response to the news that the nation’s highest-ranking officials — the national security adviser, the vice president and the director of national intelligence, among others — discussed detailed plans for an imminent U.S. strike on an encrypted public messaging app in full view of a journalist accidentally included in the group chat.

The humiliation for the Trump administration could not be overstated this week after The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had been shockingly, embarrassingly, added to the text chain by none other than Michael Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser. Drop Site’s Ryan Grim reported a source “familiar” with the situation confirming Tuesday that the obvious explanation for the erroneous inclusion of the journalist was in fact true: Goldberg had counted Waltz among his own confidential sources.

Meanwhile, the White House and broader administration sputtered into half-hearted damage control mode. Hours after confirming the authenticity of the texts published in The Atlantic on Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (who was on the text chain) and others premiered their new line of attack tarring Goldberg, a respected Washington veteran, of being a “deceitful and highly discredited” reporter.

“Another question, please,” a frustrated Trump told reporters at his meeting on Tuesday when asked about the text chain.

Donald Trump and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, at the White House. (Getty Images)

Trump also spoke with NBC’s Garrett Haake by phone in the morning, a break from his usual Fox News refuge. On the call, he assured Haake that Waltz’s future in the White House was safe. Administration officials, he added, would cease using Signal.

The smear campaign against Goldberg and Trump’s own response couldn’t prevent Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe from being hauled before the Senate Intelligence Committee. In front of the cameras, the two insisted repeatedly that the text chain was not classified, though Ratcliffe then appeared to contradict himself by also saying that pre-strike deliberations should occur in classified channels.

Predictably, Democratic lawmakers aimed their most vitriolic criticism at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a key figure in the chain who was personally “texting war plans,” including details of specific U.S. assets and timing, according to Goldberg. Vulnerable Republicans may also privately press the administration to respond formally.

Hegseth, unlike Waltz, is seen as unserious by many on the Hill, especially on the left, and as a former right-wing Fox News host, has fewer allies overall. The Daily Beast reported Tuesday that the Defense secretary had, along with other agency employees, been warned about messaging on the Signal app in a recent bureau-wide email.

"Now the debate among national security professionals is over whether the secretary was just incompetent or whether he was drunk,” centrist Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton said Tuesday at a press conference.

Magaworld, meanwhile, tried to direct the blame to Waltz — seen as a neoconservative by many. An editorial in The American Conservative, which has published essays from Vice President JD Vance in the past, declared that the national security adviser must resign.

“I hope there is an FBI investigation. We need to know how reckless the use of Signal was in this context, how easy or not easy it was for foreign intelligence to access the ruminations of Trump’s national security decision-making. And we need to know how often Waltz used Signal to communicate, and leak, to Goldberg,” wrote the magazine’s Scott McConnell.

The text-chain bombshell is a major distraction for Republicans at a time when the administration is pursuing its first real push for legislative priorities through the congressional budget reconciliation process, an effort made more difficult by slim majorities in both chambers and disagreements over strategy. Sapping the White House’s political capital now, especially with the Senate, makes the job of passing House Speaker Mike Johnson’s staunchly conservative budget proposal forward that much harder.

Loyal though he may be, Donald Trump is never afraid to cut loose his allies when they become political liabilities. If the calls for atonement from Capitol Hill do not cease over the next week, the former Fox host and/or the “neocon” Waltz could find themselves looking for their next gigs.