The noose is tightening for Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth: pressure for dismissals in the Trump administration
The noose is tightening around Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth, two of the key figures among dozens of men and women close to the US president involved in the latest internal communications scandal. According to sources close to the White House, pressure is growing significantly from Donald Trump’s own allies for him to fire the national security adviser, who is accused of “mistakenly” including The Atlantic magazine’s director, Jeffrey Goldberg, in a group message on the Signal application, where plans for attacks in Yemen were discussed. A growing number of associates close to the president believe that “responsibility has to fall on someone, to defuse the situation. And the best person for this is Waltz”. On the other hand, pressure is also increasing on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is under increased scrutiny after the publication of some footage of group conversations, published by The Atlantic. Many Democratic representatives have called for his resignation, stressing that Hegseth violated long-established procedures for protecting sensitive military information.
The scandal continues to rattle the Trump administration, with calls for accountability and transparency coming from across the political spectrum. “If this highly detailed plan had fallen into the wrong hands, we would have dead Americans today,” Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost, a member of the Democratic Party leadership, said in a post on the X platform (formerly Twitter). He said the two senior officials should be “fired immediately.”
The scandal has sparked a wave of reactions and uncertainty within the administration, increasing tensions between the White House and Congress. There is also a bipartisan initiative, promoted by the Republican chairman of the Senate Defense Committee, Roger Wicker, and the Democratic group leader, Jack Reed. Both have sent a letter to the Pentagon inspector general, requesting an investigation into the use of the Signal application. It is said that this chat contained classified information related to sensitive military activities. “These disturbing news raise questions about the use of unauthorized networks to discuss sensitive and classified information,” the letter to inspector general Steven Stebbins says.
In addition to assessing the facts and circumstances, the senators are asking to know “what measures have been taken in response,” as well as to provide data on the policies followed by the Pentagon and other departments to prevent the leakage of information through Signal, considered an insecure channel.
The situation is further aggravated by another shameful security blunder, revealed within the ranks of the Trump administration, where the personal data of Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth and the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has ended up online. It is the German magazine Der Spiegel that, through its investigation, has discovered that the mobile phone numbers, email addresses – most of which are still active – and even some passwords of senior US officials can be found through commercial data search services and hacked information circulating on the Internet. Gabbard and Waltz’s numbers turn out to be linked to accounts on messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal, and according to the German newspaper’s report, this has exposed them to the installation of spyware on their devices. It is even possible that foreign agents may have been eavesdropping on them during the period when the incident that got them into trouble occurred. Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to minimize the event, calling it a “witch hunt”. He stressed that “Mike has taken responsibility” and that “Pete has nothing to do with this, he is doing a great job.” According to him, “it could be a problem with the Signal platform.”
The White House offices are also in the same line: “We have never denied that there was a mistake, and the National Security Advisor has taken responsibility.” “We have said that we are making some changes and reviewing the issue to ensure that this never happens again,” stressed spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt. She also added that Trump “has built a team and we will continue to focus on that. I think the arrest of an MS-13 gang leader this morning clearly demonstrates the confidence that the president and his team have.”
