Panicked White House Has Desperate New Defense for War Plans Chat
Donald Trump’s administration is desperately trying to spin the release of classified information by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by pretending like there is any meaningful difference between “war plans” and “attack plans.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich leapt on a new report from The Atlantic Wednesday, detailing sensitive information Hegseth sent in the now infamous group chat that Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg had previously omitted from his initial reporting on the high-level conversation to which he was accidentally privy.
But Budowich wasn’t concerned about the obvious threat to national security—he was mad about The Atlantic’s headline: “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.”
“The Atlantic has already abandoned their bullshit ‘war plans’ narrative, and in releasing the full chat, they concede they LIED to perpetuate yet ANOTHER hoax on the American people,” Budowich wrote on X Wednesday. “What scumbags!”
It seems that The Atlantic’s first headline had used the phrase “war plans” to describe the sensitive discussion about when bombs would drop on a foreign country, instead of “attack plans.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also attempted to make a mountain out of a molehill in a post on X.
“The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans.’ This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” she said.
Leavitt is in a bit of trouble now, because she had insisted that there had been no discussion of war plans and no classified information shared in the Signal group chat. The Atlantic’s reporting Wednesday confirmed that this was not true. According to the office of the director of national intelligence’s guidance on classification, “information providing indication or advance warning that the U.S. or its allies are preparing an attack,” is considered top secret.
Hegseth inadvertently provided information on the strikes to a journalist a full two hours before the strikes took place because he—like the other members of the chat—was too sloppy to check the list of chat members before spouting off about the plans.
The clear messaging pivot to focus on “war plans” versus “attack plans” suggests that the Trump administration can no longer back up its central, arguably more important, claim that no classified information was shared in the group chat. A claim that has since proven resoundingly false.
Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who was reportedly the administrator of the Signal chat and added Goldberg to the discussion, also posted on X Wednesday.
“No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS,” he wrote. “Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests.”