| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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For Republicans, they need to find, specifically Senate Republicans, is they need to find a way to have a compromise offer to the budget resolution that House Republicans sent over last month. | |
| This is the biggest thing in front of Republicans. | ||
| This is the path through which they will pass trillions in tax cuts and they will slash federal spending by trillions as well. | ||
| But the House and the Senate at this junction are on different pages about just how to accomplish that. | ||
| So Senate minor Majority Leader John Thune and his Senate leadership have got to find a way this week to come up with some sort of counter proposal because the timeline that's been laid out in front of us is they want to have this on the president's desk by Memorial Day. | ||
| So they really need to get this process kicked into high gear. | ||
| Stephen Newcomb and his colleagues at Axios cover it all. | ||
| It's axius.com. | ||
| The Hill Leaders Newsletter is the one that Stephen Newcomb is a co-author of, and we always do appreciate your time on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks, John. | |
| That Atlantic story on the text chain that was accidentally set to a reporter from the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg is his name. | ||
| We're expecting to hear more on that at today's congressional hearings. | ||
| I want to hear more on it this morning right now from Tara Kopp, Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press, joining us via Zoom this morning. | ||
| Tara Kopp, what's been the reaction to that report? | ||
| I know the Secretary of Defense was in Hawaii yesterday, but what are you hearing here at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.? | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Well, I was at the Pentagon when the news broke, and I have never experienced a day like that in the 10 years that I've been covering the building. | ||
| Every hallway I went through, every person I talked to, defense civilians were saying, you know, if this were me, security would have come to my desk. | ||
| They would have taken away my access to my computer, potentially immediately taken away my security clearance, and probably escorted them out of the building. | ||
| For our military personnel, they could have been facing military justice, you know, actions under the military justice system. | ||
| You know, the fact that this has been kind of downplayed by both the Secretary of Defense and the president is pretty troubling. | ||
| You say downplayed. | ||
| He said nobody was texting war plans, was his quote when he was asked about it when he landed in Hawaii yesterday. | ||
| I wonder if what the response has been from the folks that you've talked to at the Pentagon. | ||
| It seems like from the Goldberg story, there were specific war plans and timing and weapons being discussed on this text chain ahead of this attack in Yemen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And when Secretary Hagseth was asked that and got so defensive, he didn't actually answer the question. | ||
| You know, according to the Atlantic article, he was giving a minute-by-minute description of the targets of the sequencing of what people were going to be hit and kind of relaying even the weather reports to everybody on this unsecured commercial app. | ||
| We've never heard of anything like it before. | ||
| It's clearly going to come up at the Worldwide Threats hearing at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that's coming up in about half an hour. | ||
| And there's still a lot of questions to be answered. | ||
| You know, Secretary Hagseth will be talking to media again during his trip. | ||
| He's going on to Japan, Guam, the Philippines. | ||
| And at each stop, there's some media touches. | ||
| And we'll see how long he addresses this and whether he actually starts to say whether he too will face accountability or responsibility for texting to a reporter the exact sequence of events that was going to happen that could potentially put service members at risk. | ||
| The White House has said that they're going to have an inquiry on how this happened. | ||
| Is there a separate inquiry that you know about happening at the Pentagon DOD internally? | ||
|
unidentified
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Not so far, but there was a similar incident in 2021 where DODIG got involved, where there's some communications put on over Signal. | |
| We'll see if DODIG gets involved again this time, but you also have to think that the IGs, not only at DOD and other agencies, have been removed. | ||
| And so there's a question of whether or not they would proceed forward with an investigation. | ||
| As a reporter, what do you know about Signal, the use of Signal, how often it's used both in reporting and then on the other side of what you cover on the national intelligence side? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| You know, I think that basically everybody is migrating to Signal. | ||
| It's considered a fairly secure encrypted app, but it's not classified and it's not intended to hold classified material in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| It can be hacked. | ||
| As journalists, we are very careful. | ||
| We know how to monitor our Signal devices to see if anyone has tried to link in there, which they can do. | ||
| There's all sorts of instructions on the web on how you can kind of piggyback your way onto someone's signal account. | ||
| Google's intelligence branch just put out a report about a month ago on how Russia was looking to get into Signal and be able to monitor basic intelligence conversations, VIPs, maybe not journalists, but maybe the decision makers for getting a sense of what the administration was thinking. | ||
| So that's why they have these super expensive, exquisite systems to allow secure communications, even when the secretary's on the road, so that he can get messaging and information in real time securely from the White House, from NSA, from the CIA. | ||
| And the fact that they just were kind of cavalierly exchanging this information on signal instead of in secure communications, and that nobody on that chat, which included all of the heads of all of the Intel branches, didn't stop and say, hey, maybe we should move this to a secure high-side channel, is a little bit mind-boggling. | ||
| Is it interesting to you that Jeffrey Goldberg was added by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz of why he would have the signal number of the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in his phone or whoever added him in? | ||
| I guess it hasn't been confirmed that it was definitely Mike Waltz, but he was the original number that started this text chain. | ||
| What's your read on Jeffrey Goldberg and these folks in this chain? | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, Mr. Goldberg has been around for forever and has had relationships with some of the most senior members of not only this administration, but previous administrations. | |
| So it doesn't surprise me that someone like Mike Waltz would have Jeffrey Goldberg's number. | ||
| I'm sure he's not the only senior official that has Jeffrey Goldberg's number or other senior reporters at things like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press. | ||
| This is how we understand how policy is made. | ||
| We sometimes get to have off-record conversations with some of the senior most officials in either a Republican or Democrat administration. | ||
| The question is, how did Mr. Goldberg's number get added to this chain? | ||
| Was it on purpose? | ||
| Was it an accident? | ||
| Did they think they were adding someone else? | ||
| But again, the real question is, why did they discuss this on signal, period? | ||
| It's unclassified, and these were clearly attack plans. | ||
| Secretary Hagseth has just said they're not war plans, but if you're saying when and where you're going to strike a target, who you're going to strike before you've actually sent the aircraft over the target, that puts service members' lives at risk. | ||
| And then finally, we have this Senate hearing today that we're covering on C-SPAN 3 at 10 a.m. | ||
| Again, for viewers, there's the House hearing tomorrow where this topic is likely going to come up as well. | ||
| We'll be covering that on C-SPAN as well. | ||
| Who are you most interested in hearing from at these hearings? | ||
| What will you be watching for? | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, I want to know what Tulsi Gabbard thinks. | |
| I want to know what Kash Patel thinks. | ||
| I want to know what our DIA head thinks. | ||
| Why were these conversations happening on signal? | ||
| You know, administrations do use the device to communicate, but it's usually for logistics and planning. | ||
| And here's where you go. | ||
| It's not at all an appropriate place to put attack plans and may be a violation of the Espionage Act. | ||
| Tara Kopp covers the defense issues, the Pentagon for the Associated Press, AP.org. | ||
| Of course, is where you can find her work on X. | ||
| It's at Tara Copp, easy enough to find. | ||
| And we always appreciate you joining us on the Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Here's a look at some live coverage coming up Wednesday on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| First, on C-SPAN, the House is back in session at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Members will be working on legislation to repeal Biden-era energy conservation standards for freezers and fridges. | ||
| Over on C-SPAN 2 at 8 a.m., British Prime Minister Kier Starmer will be fielding questions from the House of Commons as part of his weekly question session. | ||
| And then at 10 a.m., the Senate will be back to continue work on the Trump administration's cabinet nominees. | ||
| And over on C-SPAN 3 at 10, the heads of the FBI, CIA, and the Director of National Intelligence will testify before the House Select Intelligence Committee, where they're expected to field questions on the recent report of a leak of the Trump administration's plans to attack Yemen. | ||
| You can also watch live coverage on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| There are many ways to listen to C-SPAN radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM. | ||
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| Or maybe a better question is: how far do you want to go? | ||
| And how fast do you want to get there? | ||
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