Even a top Fox News analyst thinks the Trump administration’s response to a massive intelligence leak makes them look “pretty bad.”
Brit Hume, the network’s chief political analyst, laid out a two-step game plan for the administration to mitigate the fallout during a Wednesday night interview on Special Report With Bret Baier.
“There’s some fairly well-established rules, if you can call them that, for how to deal with a situation like this,” he said. “The first is: Get the facts out as fast as you can and don’t be afraid to take responsibility.”
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Hume said the administration “did pretty well on that score,” noting that National Security Adviser Mike Waltz owned up to his mistake of inadvertently adding The Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat of high-ranking administration officials who were discussing a military strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“But then the second rule is: Don’t feed the story,” the analyst went on. “Once you’ve made your case about what happened and you’re maybe waiting for further information to service, just stop talking about it.”
Hume said top officials got “bogged down” by debates about whether the group chat discussed “war plans” or not and whether any of the information shared in the thread was classified.
After The Atlantic published the full transcript of the text thread, officials who were part of the group chat—including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance—tried to downplay the importance of the operational details they discussed.
“It’s very clear Goldberg oversold what he had,” Vance wrote on X.
The Fox News analyst chided the administration for attacking Goldberg over his release of the messages. Hume pointed out that The Atlantic only released the full transcript after officials attempted to paint Goldberg as a liar.
“I’m not a particular fan of Goldberg or his magazine, but he didn’t do anything wrong here,” Hume said. “He got that thing sent to him passively. He didn’t do anything to get it.”
Hume agreed that discussions about the leak have overshadowed the “success” of the March 15 attack that killed 53 people, but said it was only because officials, including President Donald Trump himself, keep talking about that group chat.
“Stop talking about it, Mr. President. It will work better,” he said. “The answer is: ‘I have said what I have to say about that for now and when we know more later on, we’ve fully investigated this, we will get back to you.‘”
Earlier Wednesday, Trump appeared to flip-flop on his earlier statements about the group chat by stating that he was unsure whether any of the information discussed was classified.
Still, Hume said it wouldn’t be hard to understand why no heads would roll over the incident.
“The fact of the matter is that, although this looks pretty bad… the mission went off successfully,” he said. “It did not turn out to be harmful in any meaningful way. It just looks bad. So I can see why the president wouldn’t fire anybody over this.”
Hume isn’t the only conservative pundit unhappy with the administration’s handling of the leak. Other right-wing commentators, including Laura Loomer, Tomi Lahren, and even Piers Morgan, all separately flamed Trump officials.
“Trying to wordsmith the hell outta this signal debacle is making it worse,” Lahren wrote on X. “It was bad. And I’m honestly getting sick of the whataboutisms from my own side. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Admit the F up and move on.”
