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In one of the dumbest national security breaches in recent memory, top Trump administration officials discussed war plans in a group chat on the messaging app Signal—in the presence of a reporter mistakenly added to the conversation.
You’d think at least one big-name person would lose their job over a blunder this colossal. Instead, there have been crickets, with the Trump administration largely shrugging off the embarrassing leak, which threatened to damage its credibility with foreign allies.
Voters aren’t very forgiving, though. According to the latest Civiqs poll for Daily Kos, 51% of registered voters say the person responsible for sharing the classified information should be fired. Another 24% say that person should face disciplinary action. Just 17% think there should be no consequences.
That tracks with a Quinnipiac University poll from last week, in which 61% of registered voters said someone should be fired over the breach. And it wasn’t just the leak that rattled people—74% called the use of Signal for sensitive Cabinet communications a serious problem.
So far, no one in Trump’s inner circle has paid a price. One participant in the group chat, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, had to face hard questioning during a Senate hearing. Another, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, responded by launching into a tirade against The Atlantic, accusing Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who had been added to the chat, of making “a profession of peddling hoaxes.”
That’s especially rich coming from Hegseth, who suggested no one in the chat should face consequences—even as lower-level staffers under his command are punished for far less.
The public, meanwhile, is clearly paying attention. A fairly large majority of voters (62%) have heard “a lot” about the leak, and another 27% have heard “some” about it, according to the Civiqs/Daily Kos poll. Only 4% have heard nothing at all. That suggests this scandal has broken through the usual political noise.
Still, Democrats (74%) are far more likely than Republicans (49%) to say they’ve heard a lot about the leak—likely because many GOP voters have tuned it out or stuck to Fox News, where anchors either downplayed the breach or flat-out excused it.
As expected, Democrats are also more eager to see heads roll over the leak. Eighty-three percent say someone should be fired over the incident, compared with just 18% of Republicans who say the same. Meanwhile, 35% of GOP voters say the responsible parties should merely be disciplined.
It’s striking that more Republican voters aren’t demanding accountability for a national security lapse involving war plans. After all, Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency have laid off tens of thousands of federal workers who have done nothing wrong—all in the name of “cutting waste.” And yet 74% Republicans say those mass firings are “a very good thing,” according to the Civiqs/Daily Kos poll.
The person most directly responsible for the leak appears to be national security adviser Mike Waltz, who added Goldberg to the chat and then claimed not to really know the guy, despite having his number saved in his phone. Waltz is still on the job, and Trump is standing by his man. That said, Waltz has faced skepticism from MAGA hard-liners, so if someone eventually gets thrown under the bus, he’d be the obvious choice.
But don’t hold your breath. In true Trump fashion, the administration has chosen to punish the press, not the people who caused the screwup. In this White House, leaking war plans might get you a high-five—but reporting on it will get you Trump’s wrath.
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