Fox News' spin on Signal 'war plans' scandal sparks ridicule

Since The Atlanticfirst reported that its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, gained access to a Signal group chat detailing plans for US strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, Donald Trump’s administration has offered up a range of bizarre responses in its attempt to wriggle its way out of the story – from suggesting Goldberg somehow hacked his way into the conversation, to arguing they were discussing attack plans rather than war plans (as if there was any real difference between the two).

Now, right-wing news channel Fox News’ attempt to downplay the seriousness of the scandal has been mocked and met with disbelief online, after presenter Jesse Watters argued “accidentally adding someone to a group text” is something “we’ve all done”.

In a monologue broadcast on Monday evening, not long after The Atlantic broke the story, Watters said: “You ever tried to start a group text, you’re adding people, and you accidentally add the wrong person? All of a sudden, your aunt Mary knows all your raunchy plans for the bachelor party?

“Well that kinda happened today with the Trump administration.”

Watters went on to suggest the whole thing “could have been a wee bit of a security breach”.

We’d argue that it’s in close contention with Trump calling the scandal a “glitch” as the biggest understatement of the year so far…

The chyron which appeared under Watters at this moment was just as wild, claiming “we’ve all texted the wrong person before”.

As one Twitter/X user tweeted sarcastically in response to Watters’ remarks, when it comes to texting “likely classified war plans to a random reporter” on a mobile app, “we’ve all been there before”:

“No one would be able to write satire as good as this,” commented another:

And a third made the point that if they were in a group chat “speaking on bombing countries, I don’t think I’d ever ‘text the wrong person’”:

Watters continued to dismiss the report on Wednesday, when he claimed “no one outside of DC and in the news business really cares about this story”.

“There’s no video, there’s no sex, there’s no fraud. No one even knows what a Houthi is,” he added.

Why not read…

• Marjorie Taylor Greene backlash after telling UK reporter 'go back to your country' over Signal question
• What were the war plans shared on the Signal group chat?

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