"Desperate lack of experience": White House faces increasing pressure to oust Defense Secretary

White House officials and Trump’s inner circle are attempting to minimize an embarrassing incident in which Defense Secretary Hegseth blundered by allegedly exposing classified materials to a senior journalist about U.S. military strikes in Yemen, via a private Signal chat with administration officials.

American media continues to echo the affair, with growing calls to replace the Defense Secretary due to claims of his desperate lack of experience and unsuitability for the role.

The highly publicized political pressure on the White House is intensifying, and according to journalists, it affected White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who was unusually agitated during a press briefing.

Facing accusations of negligence by senior national security team members, she instead blamed the media and the journalist who exposed the affair, Jeffrey Goldberg.

Last night (Tuesday), the U.S. President announced he has no intention of firing National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who created and managed the group. "He’s learned his lesson," the president said.

In response to the embarrassing exposure, Vice President Vance wrote on X that The Atlantic blew the matter out of proportion, and shortly after, Defense Secretary Hegseth himself claimed that the new Atlantic publication proves no classified information was included in the chat: "The Atlantic published the so-called ‘war plans,’ and those ‘plans’ include: no names, no targets, no locations, no units, no routes, no sources, no methods. This proves only one thing: Jeffrey Goldberg has never seen a war plan or ‘strike plan’ (as he calls it), not even close. We’ll keep doing our job while the media does what it does best: peddling hoaxes."

According to a report on the Ynet site, the Defense Secretary received public support from Trump’s circle, including the new U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who argued that while including sensitive information in the chat was a "mistake," she believes it did not contain classified data.

The Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a close ally of President Trump, claimed the matter was "blown out of proportion" by the media and clarified that he sees no need for hearings on the issue in the House of Representatives, over which he presides.

Trump himself, in a phone interview with the media, said: "There was nothing there that harmed the strike or affected it; it was very successful." He later added that the whole story is "not a big deal."

The Atlantic magazine, where Goldberg serves as editor-in-chief, revealed the unusual correspondence between Defense Secretary Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Vice President J.D. Vance, and other senior officials, to which senior journalist Goldberg was mistakenly added by Waltz or his staff without their noticing.

Among the sensitive details exposed were precise timings of the strike events, such as the hour F-18 jets would depart for the first wave of attacks (12:15 PM), when the "strike window" would open (1:45 PM), and when the first bombs would drop (2:15 PM).

Also, Adviser Waltz updated participants in the supposedly private chat with real-time intelligence, including the apparent elimination of one of the attack’s targets.

Further correspondence between U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz after the strike was also exposed in the newspaper. The revealed messages, written minutes after the attack, offer a rare glimpse into how administration officials regarded the operation.

Vance wrote initially: "I’ll pray for victory," minutes before the strike. Afterward, Waltz updated: "The structure collapsed. There was positive identification of the target. Pete, Kurilla, intelligence community: amazing work."

Later, when Vance asked "What?", Waltz explained that the primary target was "their senior missile guy," and they had "positive ID of him entering his buddy’s building, and it’s now collapsed." In response, Vice President Vance replied: "Excellent."

The journalist said he initially refrained from publishing the information in his possession to avoid endangering American soldiers, but after what he calls false denials, Goldberg felt compelled to release the materials.

The Atlantic publication raises serious questions about the level of security and oversight of sensitive national security information in the U.S.