A majority of Americans, including the largest share of Republican voters, say in a new survey that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should resign after the revelation that he shared details of a forthcoming U.S. airstrike in an unsecured Signal group chat whose members included The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief.
The J.L. Partners-Daily Mail national poll, which was shared with The Hill on Friday, found that 54 percent of all registered voters think that Hegseth should resign as head of the Pentagon. Some 22 percent said he should remain in his role, while another 24 were not sure.
Nearly four-in-10 GOP voters, 38 percent, think Hegseth, who in the Signal thread shared information regarding the weapons used and the timing of attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, should abandon his post. Approximately one-third of Republicans disagreed, while 29 percent were unsure, according to the survey.
A majority of independents, 54 percent, also agree that Hegseth, a former Fox News host, should step down. Around two out of 10 independents had the opposite view, while a quarter of respondents did not know.
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg set off a firestorm in Washington on Monday when he revealed he’d been added to a Signal group chat with top Trump administration officials, including Hegseth, Vice President Vance and national security adviser Mike Waltz. Before Goldberg left the chat, Hegseth had shared details on the forthcoming strike, sensitive information that defense experts say could have put American service members’ lives at risk.
The administration responded defensively, attacking Goldberg while insisting that no classified information was shared, despite the journalist later sharing screenshots that included specific launch times and other attack details.
Multiple congressional Democrats have called for Hegseth or Waltz, who originally added Goldberg to the chat, to resign, while some have also called for criminal investigations, pointing out that Signal’s message-deleting feature runs counter to laws requiring the retention of White House records.
So far, no Republicans on Capitol Hill have publicly called on Hegseth to step down.
“I think they should make sure it never happens again. I wish they’d tell us, ‘It will never happen again.’ It’s the first strike in the early stages of an administration,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. “Don’t let it ever happen again.”
Nearly half of Americans, 47 percent, also think that Waltz should go. Around 21 percent of respondents disagreed, while 32 percent were unsure.
Thirty-three percent of Republicans think Waltz should resign, 32 percent think he should stay where he is and the largest share, 35, are unsure.
Trump has stood by both Hegseth and Waltz. The president said he will ask the Defense secretary to review if the flight times, included in the Signal exchange, should have been classified.
“Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with it,” Trump said this week.
The survey was conducted from March 25-27 among 1,001 registered voters. Its margin of error was plus or minus 3.4 percent.
