'C-Y-A politics': Senator deploys colorful phrase to slam scandal-plagued Trump officials

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) was completely unimpressed by the Trump administration's answers on the growing scandal surrounding a highly classified war plan being leaked by top administration officials in an unsecured group Signal chat to a reporter — and he expressed ongoing anger over the issue to CNN's Kasie Hunt on Tuesday.

This followed a heated intelligence hearing in the Senate, where top officials on the chat were pressed by lawmakers on the details of how this happened and what the policies in place are — and got no consistent or meaningful answers on who would take responsibility for the incident.

"You, of course, just heard [CIA Director John] Ratcliffe say there that it seems the buck stops with the Secretary of Defense," said Hunt. "You have called on Secretary Hegseth to step down. If he refuses, do you think he should be impeached over this?"

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"Look, I think first of all, before we jump to that conclusion, we should at least have an open, transparent investigation," said Gallego. "What you just heard is C-Y-A politics, cover-your-a-- politics that Ratcliffe is involved in."

"The fact that the secretary has determined that this is not classified, therefore it's not classified, doesn't actually end the story here," Gallego continued. "This is a very dangerous thing that that Secretary of Defense did. He compromised the mission to begin with ... and also not disclosing exactly to Congress what is, what was said or what was not said on these chats."

"Let's at least have an open, transparent investigation," he added. "This is what we would do under any Democrat if this had occurred to them. And the fact that the Secretary of Defense is not taking leadership, it's a horrible example to all the men and women that are, that are under his leadership right now, that all you have to do is lie, lie, lie and not take ownership of this as a leader. And that's a horrible example for them."

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