‘Try To Keep Up’: Chris Hayes Cannot Believe ‘Profoundly Confused’ Trump Insisted Hegseth ‘Had Nothing To Do With’ Security Leak
President Donald Trump gave a puzzling response on Wednesday when asked whether Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth should resign, stating that Hegseth “had nothing to do with” the airstrike plans that Hegseth laid out in a compromised group chat in Signal, an encrypted messaging app.
Hours later, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes expressed utter disbelief at the president’s response.
On Monday, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic published a jaw-dropping story explaining that he was added to a group chat with top Trump officials by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. In the chat, Hegseth detailed plans for airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, which were ultimately carried out.
“I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts,” Goldberg wrote. “What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”
On Wednesday’s All In, Hayes teed up Trump’s answer to a question from a reporter in the Oval Office hours earlier.
“Donald Trump, once again, really seems to be just profoundly confused about the whole thing – what Signal is, who’s involved, what happened, and particularly, as to why Hegseth was being criticized at all,” he said, teasing the clip.
“Should Secretary Hegseth consider his position over the Signal–?” a reporter asked Trump.
“Hegseth is doing a great job,” Trump interrupted. “He had nothing to do with this. Hegseth? How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do. Look, look, it’s all a witch hunt.”
The snippet ended and Hayes opted to answer Trump’s question.
“Well, I’ll tell you how you bring Hegseth into it,” the host said. “Hegseth was on the group chat and he texted classified attack plans to a bunch of people on an unsecured channel that included a reporter at The Atlantic using a private messaging app that leaves his communications vulnerable to foreign adversaries. So that’s why, Sir, Pete Hegseth is involved. Just try to keep up. Everybody but the president of the United States does seem to understand the stakes here.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
