If there’s one thing Democrats do with impressive consistency, it’s overplaying their hand, and the latest meltdown over the so-called “Signal chat scandal” is a textbook example. After the Atlantic published snippets of messages from a Signal group that included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the left went into full hair-on-fire mode. Predictably, they’ve jumped to the only conclusion their outrage script ever seems to allow: fire him, impeach him, exile him—whatever it takes to get a Republican’s head on a political spike.
Unfortunately for them, that’s not going to happen. And spoiler alert: it shouldn’t.
Let’s start with the Atlantic’s resident anti-Trump hype man, Jeffrey Goldberg. He kicked things off by breathlessly claiming there were war plans discussed in private messages. Big, scary words that sound like Tom Clancy novels, but the full message thread was released, and—brace yourselves—it turns out “war plans” is about as accurate as calling a lunch order a tactical operation.
When the Atlantic was caught with its narrative pants down, they didn’t walk it back; they just quietly changed “war plans” to “attack plans,” which somehow sounds more serious while still meaning nothing in context. Classic move: if the facts don’t back you up, just adjust the headline and pray your readers don’t notice.
The Democrats, of course, noticed—but only the fake part. On Wednesday, they lit up a House Intelligence Committee hearing with dramatic condemnations, citing the Atlantic’s original portrayal like it was gospel. Never mind that Hegseth himself clarified the obvious: there was no classified info, no locations, no units, no methods, no nothing.
Just updates. You know, the thing he’s literally supposed to be doing. Kind of hard to run the world’s most powerful military without communicating in real time, but let’s not let practicality get in the way of political theater.
Hegseth didn’t mince words. Standing on a tarmac in Hawaii, he laid it out: “Nobody’s texting war plans.” He even pointed out the actual generals and admirals who draw up the real strategies, the ones that do contain sensitive information and who don’t share it in Signal chats like it’s a fantasy football league.
But the media and their Democratic allies don’t care about that. They’re too busy trying to generate scandal where none exists, because that’s what you do when your policy ideas are floundering and your frontrunner can’t finish a sentence without wandering into word salad.
Let’s not gloss over the hilarious part of all this: Goldberg, a known anti-Trumper with a history of “anonymous source” journalism that falls apart under scrutiny, somehow wound up in the same Signal group. You’d think someone, somewhere in this administration might consider double-checking who’s included in classified-adjacent chats.
There’s your real problem—not that Hegseth sent a team update, but that a professional leaker was sitting in the digital room the whole time. That’s not on Hegseth, that’s a systems failure that needs fixing, and the sooner, the better.
As for the lawsuit filed this week—alleging Federal Records Act violations and tossing around “criminal conduct” like it’s candy on Halloween—it’s more of the same: sound and fury, signifying nothing. It’s the latest attempt to weaponize the bureaucracy and use lawfare to drain time and energy from effective leaders.
Democrats can’t stand that Hegseth is a no-nonsense, unapologetically America-first defense secretary with a spine. That’s the real offense here—not Signal messages, not some ambiguous legal question about records, but the fact that a guy who actually supports the troops and backs a strong national defense isn’t playing by D.C.’s polite cocktail party rules.
They want Hegseth to resign. They want him humiliated. But what they’re going to get is a guy who’s not backing down, because he didn’t do anything wrong. And while the media flails and Democrats grandstand, Hegseth is out there actually doing his job—visiting allies in the Indo-Pacific, keeping our military informed, and helping make sure our enemies don’t get too comfortable.
🚨Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sets the record STRAIGHT on this mornings reporting from The Atlantic:
“I noticed this morning, out came something that doesn’t look like ‘war plans.’ They even CHANGED THE TITLE to ‘attack plans,’ because THEY KNOW it’s not ‘war plans.'”… pic.twitter.com/PwZweM3L1p
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 26, 2025
This story is a nothingburger with a side of media gaslighting, served cold by Democrats still trying to find a villain in every corner of the Trump administration. Sorry to disappoint, but Pete Hegseth isn’t going anywhere. The adults are still in charge at the Pentagon—and for once, they’re not apologizing for it.
