'Wasn't a complete plan!' GOP lawmaker faces CNN pushback for downplaying Hegseth's gaffe
CNN's John Berman pushed back against a Republican lawmaker who tried to downplay the gravity of the scandal swirling around Donald Trump's national security team.
The Atlantic's editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported new details from the war plans disclosed by defense secretary Pete Hegseth in a group chat to which he had been added, apparently by mistake, and Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) told CNN those deliberations should not have occurred on a commercially available encrypted app.
"I would describe that information as highly sensitive and shouldn't have gone out on a Signal chat, that's things that should be discussed one on one or in a [sensitive compartmented information facility]," Gimenez said. "That's not something that should go out on a Signal chat, at least that's what we've been told here. That's what I was taught here when I became a congressman. Those things are discussed in the SCIF and only in the SCIF, or I don't know what the rules are for the administration. I mean, they're the ones that classify stuff, so I would assume that in the White House or there's some other places that that information can be shared."
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The lawmaker faulted Hegseth and others involved should own up to their mistake and pledge to clean up their operational security, but he echoed the administration defense and split rhetorical hairs to minimize the error.
"Well, this, you know, it's an outline of what is about to happen," Gimenez said. "I don't know, I'm not in the Defense Department, so I don't know what they consider a war plan, but it certainly is a strike plan. Now, you know, it doesn't say where they're going to hit. It just says, this is this is the package that's going to go out, but from what I read, they didn't identify specific target locations, and so in that sense, you know, it wasn't a complete plan."
Berman pointed out that Goldberg's new reporting showed exact times for when bombs would drop in Yemen, and some of the targets were identified.
"Excuse me, I said that, but it didn't give you specific places that are going to be bombed, at least what I read," Gimenez said, as Berman tried to cut in. "So, I agree, it gave you the strike package, but yeah."
Berman said the plans revealed Houthi rebels as the target, which could have allowed them to quickly prepare a defense if those communications had been intercepted by a foreign adversary instead of a U.S. journalist.
"No, no, yeah – they're all over Yemen, okay, it narrows it down to a country, okay," Gimenez said. "It doesn't tell you, hey, we're going to hit this particular village, this particular city, this particular target, this is a particular individual. That's what I was trying to get to. Does it say, here's the strike package and it's going to go out and that, you know, bombs are going to fall at this time, but does it really tell you where exactly? You're talking about Yemen, which is a country, it's not, you know, not not tied to any one specific location."
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