'The View' hosts gleeful over Trump officials' texting debacle, suggest some should face jail time
"The View" hosts were gleeful Tuesday as they reacted to a journalist being accidentally included in a private chat with senior Trump officials about military operations in Yemen, with Whoopi Goldberg wondering if they should be jailed.
The show, which consists solely of anti-Trump hosts, opened with two segments discussing the news that The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently put on a Signal group chat that delved into the decision to strike Houthi targets in the Middle East. The chat included top officials like Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, among others.
Critics have called the situation a scandalous security breach, while President Donald Trump and others have downplayed the incident as insignificant and leveled criticism at the reporter himself.
Whoopi Goldberg — no relation to the writer — played a montage of Trump and other administration members discussing the sanctity of classified information in the past.
"Should we be saying, ‘Lock them up’?" Goldberg said to cheers from the audience.
Fellow host Sunny Hostin said officials "may have violated" provisions of the Espionage Act, including laws about retention of records and related to classified information.
"A security breach this significant requires a thorough investigation," she said. "People can go to jail for something like this."
Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in his first-person account of the saga that he would not print some of what he witnessed in the chat because of the sensitivity of the information with regard to national security. Hostin said he had handled classified material better than the people in the Trump administration.
Whoopi Goldberg jokingly called the reporter "her cousin."
Fellow co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, an ex-Trump aide who did a stint at the Pentagon, was also critical of how the officials used Signal, an encrypted messaging app popular with journalists, to discuss a military operation.
"We were talking about top administration officials using a group chat to discuss secret war plans," Goldberg said, laughing, adding, "I don't know why it's cracking me up."
Co-host Joy Behar called it "sick," while Hostin added, "It's so deeply unserious and scary."
Behar listed off what she considered a series of early "glitches" by the Trump administration, saying, "This guy has to go. I’m sorry."
Trump is not planning to fire Waltz in the wake of The Atlantic's reporting of the apparent national security breach, Fox News has learned. Goldberg wrote that Waltz was who had apparently accidentally included him in the thread.
TRUMP NOT PLANNING TO FIRE WALTZ AFTER NATIONAL SECURITY TEXT CHAIN LEAK
"He’s not getting fired," Trump told Fox News. The president said the incident was a "mistake," though there was "nothing important" in the Signal text thread.
The president said the "attack was a success," referring to the U.S. operation against the Houthis in Yemen that was discussed on the text chain between senior Cabinet officials.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt released a new statement on Tuesday. The National Security Council earlier said The Atlantic's report referenced what appeared to be an "authentic message chain."
"Jeffrey Goldberg is well-known for his sensationalist spin," Leavitt wrote, before offering three "facts about his latest story." Leavitt said no "war plans" were discussed, no classified material was sent to the thread and that the White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for the president's top officials to communicate "as safely and efficiently as possible."
Fox News' Peter Doocy and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.