Pete Buttigieg suggested that President Donald Trump should fire officials involved in the Signal leak hours after the former Transport Secretary called it the “highest level of f***up imaginable.”
The Democrat appeared on CNN’s The Source on Monday evening after reports emerged that The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeff Goldberg was invited to an encrypted chat days before the wave of air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
Buttigieg reflected on his time serving in Afghanistan as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve when probed by host Kaitlan Collins about whether Trump administration officials in the “Houthi PC small group” channel deserve to be fired.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “I mean, if I made a mistake like this as lieutenant, I would be probably not just fired, but probably indicted and tried and maybe in prison.”
Buttigieg said that Trump’s previous career as a reality TV star on The Apprentice means he’s well placed to dismiss those involved in the breach.
“And, if there’s no accountability for a screw-up like this, especially from a president who used to fire people every day on television for sport, what are we even doing here?” he added,
Buttigieg also questioned the credentials possessed by Hegseth, who disclosed the war plans in the Signal chat, to run the Department of Defense.
“Our current secretary of Defense hadn’t shown a lot of evidence of running a large organization or, let alone running a large organization well, and he got put in charge of the largest organization in the United States of America and the most important organization in the world – which is the U.S. Department of Defense,” he told Collins.
Just hours after Goldberg’s explosive report dropped for The Atlantic, Buttigieg condemned the national security leak, tweeting that “from an operational security perspective, this is the highest level of f***up imaginable.”
“These people cannot keep America safe,” he added.
Goldberg wrote that he was invited to connect on Signal by White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz on March 11. The journalist, who uses the encrypted messaging platform under his initials “JG,” said he was added to a group called the “Houthi PC small group,” where the war plans were disclosed two days later.
Signal is not an official communications channel available to top government officials.
Along with Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, are among officials in the chat who had previously condemned former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server while in office.
National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump’s Middle East and Ukraine negotiator Steve Witkoff, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller were among others who appeared to be included in the Signal group.
No one seemed to have spotted Goldberg in the group, even when he left the chat – which would have notified members.
Vance appeared to disagree with Trump's wisdom on the strikes, noting: “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.”
Alongside leaking details of U.S. war plans, the vice president and defense secretary also shared their disdain for what Hegseth called “European free-loading.”
When probed by a reporter in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said he didn’t know “anything about” the reports.
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