Fox News’ political commentator Brit Hume scolded President Trump’s administration for “making a mess” in response to the Signal group chat revelation where top national security officials were discussing the plan to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Hume said there are a “couple” of “iron” rules when responding to a “scandal.”
“One: get the facts out as fast as possible and don’t be afraid to take responsibility. Two: Once rule one is taken care of, don’t feed the story,” Hume wrote in a Wednesday post on social media platform X.
In his view, the administration is not following rule number two.
“With regard to the Signal message case, the administration is making a mess of rule two by getting bogged down in a dispute over whether the details of Yemen bombing raids were a war plan and whether those details were, or should have been, classified. All that has done is prolong the story,” Hume said.
“The same goes for attacking the reporter who, through no fault or action of his own, received the Signal conversation. All attacking him did was give him a reason to release further details from the Signal chat, which appeared to contradict the administration’s claim that no ‘war plans’ were discussed,” Fox’s chief political analyst wrote. “That gave the story at least another day of life.”
The White House has argued repeatedly that classified information was not shared in the Signal group chat – a thread that included CIA director John Ratcliffe and national security adviser Mike Waltz – after The Atlantic published additional messages Wednesday, outlining that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared specific information about the weapons used in the attack on the Houthis earlier this month.
On Wednesday, Trump told reporters in the White House that he will ask Hegseth to review if the flight times of U.S. planes and drones during the attack on the Houthi rebels should be classified.
“Sure. I’ll ask him. Sure. I would,” Trump said. “You can view that two ways, frankly — there’s a lot of ways to answer that question, but I’d certainly ask him to take a look.”
The commander-in-chief said that Waltz, who inadvertently added Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat – allowing the magazine’s editor-in-chief to access the discussion and publish the explosive report on Monday – “claimed responsibility” for the incident.
“It was Mike, I guess. I don’t know. I was told it was Mike,” Trump said. “Mike — he took responsibility for it.”
After Goldberg’s Monday article came out, Hegseth claimed that “nobody was texting war plans” in the Signal chat. That afternoon, Hume pushed back on the defense secretary’s claim, writing on X, “Oh for God’s sake, the administration has already confirmed the authenticity of the message.”
