Hegseth Said to Have Shared Attack Details in Second Signal Chat

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35. 'Full-blown meltdown' at Trump's Pentagon as Hegseth faces fresh Signal chat allegations

As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faces new fallout from Signal chat, the Pentagon's former spokesperson said there's “total chaos” at the DOD.

As Hegseth's Pentagon reaches the "full-blown meltdown" stage, don't forget to blame the president and 50 Republican senators who thought it'd be a good idea to put a manifestly unqualified television personality in charge of the Defense Department. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-04-21T12:04:39.303Z

As Hegseth's Pentagon reaches the "full-blown meltdown" stage, don't forget to blame the president and 50 Republican senators who thought it'd be a good idea to put a manifestly unqualified television personality in charge of the Defense Department.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/full-blown-meltdown-trumps-pentagon-hegseth-faces-fresh-signal-chat-al-rcna202091

And just when it seemed things couldn’t get much worse, they got worse. NBC News reported:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used his personal phone to send information about U.S. military operations in Yemen to a 13-person Signal group chat, including his wife and his brother, two sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed to NBC News. He did so after an aide had warned him to be careful not to share sensitive information on an unsecure communications system before the Yemen operation, the sources said.

These allegations, of course, come on the heels of Hegseth’s prominent role in last month’s Signal chat scandal — the controversy some have labeled “Signalgate” — that’s currently under investigation by the Department of Defense’s inspector general’s office. (Hegseth continues to deny allegations that he shared classified information through unsecured channels. The White House echoed the denial.)

“You know, what a big surprise that a bunch of leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that pedaled the Russia hoax,” Hegseth told reporters at the White House on Monday when asked about the latest revelations. (The Russia scandal was quite real, no matter how many times Trump's allies pretend otherwise.)

He added: “This is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not going to work with me.”......

Hegseth’s tenure as the secretary of defense was already a disaster before the Signal chat scandal broke last month, but conditions are spectacularly worse now.

In a normal and healthy political environment, Hegseth would have no choice at this point but to start writing his resignation letter and putting his belongings in a cardboard box. Then again, in a normal and healthy political environment, a president wouldn’t have nominated a manifestly unqualified, scandal-plagued television personality to lead the Defense Department, and in a normal and healthy political environment, his nomination would’ve received zero confirmation votes in the Senate.

Indeed, as the chaos intensifies at the Pentagon, I find myself looking anew at the roll call on Hegseth’s confirmation, when 50 Republican senators put aside everything they knew about the nominee and put him in an incredibly important and challenging position. As the scandal mounts, they bear as much responsibility as anyone.