CNN’s Scott Jennings praised the Trump administration for the way it responded to its own colossal national security leak in which a journalist was added to a secret group chat containing sensitive military information.
The White House was sent into a frenzy this week after Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffery Goldberg revealed he had been mistakenly added to a group on the Signal messaging app by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz in which senior government officials discussed plans for military action in Yemen.
After Goldberg published an article on the blunder, Waltz eventually took “full responsibility” for the mistake. Trump meanwhile downplayed the error as “not a serious one” and voiced his continued support for Waltz, dismissing the matter as “the only glitch in two months” of his administration.
Discussing the issue on CNN Newsnight, host John Berman criticized the administration’s attempts to play down the astonishing national security leak.
“The main thrust of the White House argument all day seemed to be, ‘Jeffrey Goldberg’s still a bad guy, which explains how we managed to invite him on this group chat,‘” Berman said. “And secondly, it maybe wasn’t classified because Pete Hegseth sent it.‘”
Turning to Jennings, Berman asked: “Is that satisfying? I mean, that really was the message today from the White House.”
Jennings, a pro-Trump voice on the otherwise left-leaning network, responded: “None of us have seen what was supposedly war plans and there’s still a dispute over just how sensitive it really was.”
“But I do think it’s noteworthy that the White House is able to acknowledge a mistake, say they’re gonna learn from it, say they’re trying to figure out the technical issues that led to it,” he added.
“I mean, they did own up to it,” Jennings said. He also praised Goldberg for having “acted responsibly in this particular case.”
“I think that’s actually kind of a refreshing thing for the government to say, ‘OK, yes, effed up, we’ll fix it, this won’t happen again,” Jennings said.
“Especially when you contrast it with previous military and national security snafus in our recent history in which no one was held accountable, no one was fired, no mistakes were admitted,” he continued. “Until the very end, Joe Biden was saying Afghanistan was a success. I like it here that Donald Trump, the president, said: ‘He’s a good man but he learned a lesson.’ That tells me he and the president, with Waltz, had a hard talk.”
Other members of the Signal chat, which also reportedly included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, have been more evasive.
A grilling before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday saw Gabbard refusing to confirm whether she was the “TG” mentioned in the chat and insisting she would not “get into specifics.”
When pressed, she eventually claimed: “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal chat,” but nevertheless refused to share its contents with the Senate.
On Wednesday, the Atlantic published details of messages concerning the attacks in Yemen which the magazine had initially held back. Statements from Trump and other officials in his administration that downplayed the significance of the messages motivated the decision to publish them unredacted, the magazine said.
