‘New telephone, Houthis’: Internet mocks Trump administration after Yemen war plans leaked to journalist

US President Donald Trump

“As soon as the news got out that Trump administration officials had added ‘The Atlantic’ editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat and discussed confidential plans for bombing the Houthis in Yemen, the internet didn’t miss a chance to mock them.
The security breach has caught everyone’s attention and netizens are all there to comment on the Trump administration. Although the Trump administration has said that “no person was texting war plan,” but still the incident provided ammunition for critics, who promptly ridiculed the administration’s incompetence.
“New telephone, Houthis,” chirped National Review columnist Christian Schneider on X.

“This has very Trump 1.0 fuck up vibes, truthfully kinda enjoyable,” posted Unpopular Front newsletter writer John Ganz.

The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein noted it was “very annoying they messaged ‘Jeff Goldberg’ and never, as an example, ‘Jeff Stein.'”

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who faced criticism for using a private email server during her tenure in the Obama administration, responded to Republican attempts to minimise the security breach: “You have gotten to be kidding me.”
The chat group, titled “Houthi PC small group”, comprised 18 senior officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Vice President JD Vance’s account expressed opposition to Trump’s plans, marking an unprecedented divergence from the MAGA agenda by questioning the urgency of the proposed bombing.
“Vice President texting the group, ‘chat are we cooked’,” posted independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.

“Looks like I’m altering my initials to DJT on Signal now. Hoping for some scoops!” posted NBC News’s Amanda Terkel.
US defence Secretary Pete Hegseth denied on Monday that any sensitive “war plans” were shared in a Signal chat group that mistakenly included a “deceitful and extremely discredited so-called” journalist.
When asked about the “war plans” against the Houthis in Yemen shared with the journalists in the Atlantic, Hegseth said, “So you are speaking a couple of deceitful and extremely discredited so known as journalist who’s made a career of peddling hoaxes time and time once more to embody the, I do not know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the wonderful folks on each side hoax suckers and losers. Hope so. This is the man that pedals in rubbish. This is what he does. I’d love to touch upon the Houthi marketing campaign due to the talent and braveness of our troops.”
” I’ve monitored it very intently from the start, and also you see we have been managing 4 years of deferred upkeep beneath the Trump administration. Our troops, our sailors have been getting shot at as targets our ships could not sail by. And after they did shoot again, it was purely defensively or at shacks in Yemen. President Trump mentioned, no extra. We will re set up deterrence, we are going to open freedom of navigation, and we are going to finally decimate the Houthis, which is precisely what we’re doing as we converse from the start, overwhelmingly,” he added.
At the last he said, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that is all I’ve to say about that.”