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Journalist Shares Texts from War Chat; Rep. Warren Davidson (R- OH) is Interviewed about the Released War Chat; Trump Administration Responds to War Chat. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired March 26, 2025 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:30:00]

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Why I said at the beginning, I could say that this might end up being Donald Trump's Waterloo because he is failing on the issue that's most important to Americans.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, very interesting. And Welington, of course, loves the fact that you gave ava credit for Waterloo and not him.

Thank you -

ENTEN: I try my best.

BERMAN: Very much for that.

All right, we are getting some breaking news. As I understand it, Jeffrey Goldberg, from "The Atlantic," is releasing some of the text messages on that Signal group chat about war plans. This comes after Pete Hegseth, Mike Waltz, President Trump have all said, oh, there was no classified information on there. There was nothing to see. Goldberg, we think, is putting some of that stuff out there. What's the truth?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:35:20]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we have breaking news. "The Atlantic" has just published a brand new piece by Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris, and it has the details and the text messages that the government says was not classified. And it tells you all about what is happening 31 minutes before they launched the planes that dropped the bombs in Yemen.

Brian Stelter joining us now with more details.

There are huge revelations in this, and they certainly - how would you describe what you're seeing in the text messages?

BRIAN STELTER, CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: These are shockingly detailed descriptions of the bombs that are about to fall in Yemen. And Jeffrey Goldberg is getting these details many minutes before the bombs fall. If this is not classified information, I would like the president to tell us what would count as classified information.

Now, "The Atlantic" is publishing this on theatlantic.com because Trump and his aides have said that none of this is classified. That has been the main defense from the Trump White House in the past two days, that these text messages were a mistake, Goldberg never should have seen them, but nothing was classified, nobody was in any danger. That's the argument we've heard advanced.

Because of that argument, Goldberg went back to his colleagues and talked with his lawyers at "The Atlantic" and they decided to go ahead and publish the text messages that they had originally withheld. Remember, Goldberg withheld some of this information because he thought it could risk national security, because it could have put U.S. military members in harm's way. So, now he's decided to go ahead and publish the full, unredacted text message chain with one - with one omission. He is still withholding the name of a CIA employee because the CIA has asked him to do so. So, that is notable. There still is something in these messages that is considered so sensitive that "The Atlantic" is choosing not to publish it.

But - but the headline here is that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did send detailed descriptions of the military strike in Yemen, to this group ahead of time. Goldberg was able to read this - these messages ahead of time. He looked at it and didn't know if it was real or not. But then he looked on social media and saw that the bombs were beginning to fall in Yemen.

People can read this for themselves on "The Atlantic" website. But what you see in Hegseth's message, the key message here is from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and he specifies the timing for the attack, the first wave, the second wave, which military fighters were going to be used, and exactly what would happen when. So again, if that's not classified information, honestly, I don't know what is.

SIDNER: Yes, I mean, it's really interesting. I just want to quickly read one of the things. It says, "time now. Weather is favorable. Just confirmed with CENTCOM. We are a go for mission launch." And then it describes in detail what they are about to do. So, clearly, this are - these are war plans, over and over and over again. Pete Hegseth has said these are not war plans. This is going to be a very difficult thing for the administration to deny at this point with this being published.

Thank you so much, Brian Stelter. Stick around with us for a second.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, and furiously going through these texts right now -

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BERMAN: To get a sense of what they are. I want to bring in our chief national security reporter, Alex

Marquardt.

And, Alex, what is striking is that some of the messages that were sent before the attack took place talked about which weapons, which aircraft would be used, and what time the bombs would be dropped.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And this will - this all goes to the question of - of what are war plans because the pushback that we have heard from the Trump administration and from Pete Hegseth specifically, who put the most detail in this chat, was, these are not war plans. So - so that's what they're quibbling with. These are certainly strike plans because this is an extraordinary amount of detail.

Now, "The Atlantic" is saying that they feel comfortable publishing this because of this repeated pushback from the administration that what we are looking at is not classified. But I just want to reiterate what our colleague Brian Stelter said. If this is not classified, we don't know what is. This is some of the most valuable information when it comes to carrying out strikes that, in fact, the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, said yesterday, this is the kind of stuff, these pre-strike deliberations should take place in classified channels. They did not.

So, not only do we have all kinds of information about what was going to happen, we now also have information about what happened afterwards. Essentially, a post-strike assessment report, which is not something that we had seen in the original report from -- from Jeffrey Goldberg.

[08:40:05]

All he had said was that Pete Hegseth, in the hours prior to this strike on the Houthis on March 15th, laid out operational details, timing, weaponry, et cetera. So, a lot more details here.

We have, at 12:15, Pete Hegseth says the first - the first launch of F-18s. And then, in all caps, as he's laying out the timing of how this is going to go, he writes, this is when the first bombs will definitely drop. That is extraordinarily sensitive information.

And the point that we have been making, and that Jeffrey Goldberg and his colleague Shane Harris make in this report is, if it were not Goldberg in this chat, if it were someone else who could have shared this information with the Houthis, with other adversaries, they would have had access to an extraordinary level of detail about what was just going to happen.

But I really do want to highlight some of the new information that we got here about what happened in the wake of - of this strike, because what we had understood was that Pete Hegseth, and perhaps John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, that they had put the most sensitive information into this group chat.

Here we have Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, he's also adding some extraordinarily sensitive information into this chat because he gives the group a sense of what happened in the aftermath. He writes that a building collapsed. He actually said that specifically to J.D. Vance, the vice president. He talked - talks about this building collapsing. The fact that they were able to kill what he called the top missile guy who was walking to his girlfriend's building. And it has now collapsed. So, this - this is an after action report from the national security advisor. He praises the intelligence committee community. He praises Pete Carrillo, the head of Central Command.

So, this is just, again, a remarkable level of detail. We have heard in the past 24 hours, the Trump administration sticking to their guns, saying that none of this is classified information, but that they don't want it out there because they don't want, as Karoline Leavitt said, internal and private deliberations amongst high level senior staff to be put out there. They objected to this release, but we now have much fuller detail in terms of what was in these text messages on this Signal chat.

And, of course, guys, this comes just an hour and 15 minutes before these intelligence officials are supposed to sit down again in front of an intelligence committee on Capitol Hill.

BERMAN: This is when the first bombs will definitely drop. Again, an extraordinary level of detail on a text exchange before the actual bombs drop. At one point, I want to reiterate here, is that while Pete Hegseth and others say this was not classified information, that might be semantic only because Pete Hegseth himself can't even retroactively say information was not classified.

Alex Marquardt, thank you for that reporting.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely.

Let's - joining us right now is Republican congressman from Ohio, Warren Davidson, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Congressman, thank you very much for coming in.

You are hearing this really in real time as we are reading this in real time. So, thank you, because you were already standing by to come on the show to talk about some of the fallout from this.

When you hear the details of this text message, these text messages that have now been released, that at 12:15 Pete Hegseth writes, "F-18s launch. 13:45 is when the strike window starts. And the target terrorist is at his known location, so should be on time." And then later saying at 14:15, "this is when the first bombs will definitely drop."

Does that sound like war plans to you? What's your reaction to this?

REP. WARREN DAVIDSON (R-OH): Well, I don't think it's specific enough to be considered war plans. The administration is who defines what is classified. The leg branch certainly doesn't do it.

I - I do know Jeffrey Goldberg wasn't accidentally added to the text thread. The process was explained last night on Laura Ingraham's show by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. And he explained that, you know, this was listed under another name, but it turned out to be Jeffrey Goldberg's number.

So, there's a lot of interesting facts here. And it's interesting also that Jeffrey Goldberg held this information until the day before the Senate hearing. So, it starts to look like a coordinated effort at some level. And I trust that the right people will take the right actions right away.

BOLDUAN: Let me get to that in a second. But - because I - you had posted about that. I was going to ask you about kind of what seems to be, well, would - would be an idea of a conspiracy at works here. So, let's get to that in just one second, Congressman.

[08:45:00]

But on this news of what is coming out and now is revealed in these plans.

As a former Army Ranger, would you be comfortable if a tick tock like this was released 30 minutes before a strike was about to take place?

DAVIDSON: Well, I haven't seen it. I heard what you reported. And I - I don't know how you would say you know exactly what the target is going to be, or even who the target is going to be. It's like the - the named terrorist. Well, I think that could be a lot of people in the entire Middle East, frankly. So, I don't think that's very precision information.

BOLDUAN: The way Jeffrey Goldberg writes in "The Atlantic," I'll just read this is, "if this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests, or someone merely indiscreet with access to social media, the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences of American pilots could have been catastrophic."

You - you do not agree that this is problematic?

DAVIDSON: Well, let's play this out. Let's say that the - the leak to Goldberg was even intentional, and he was intentionally added. If the level of information is what you're describing to me, and what I've heard you guys report, great. All the terrorists in Hezbollah, HST, Hamas, al Qaeda and their affiliates, every terrorist anywhere would think, oh crap, they're coming for me. That would be beautiful. I hope it would flush out even more of them.

BOLDUAN: But it was supposed to be a surprise attack. That was the intention of it.

DAVIDSON: I think it was a surprise. And the results show that it was, in fact, a surprise. And it seemed to be some - pretty effective.

BOLDUAN: One of the things - let's get back to -

DAVIDSON: And mission accomplished. BOLDUAN: OK, so you're - you're comfortable - you're comfortable if

this would have been released even in real time?

DAVIDSON: There could be a case that it was intentionally released anyway. I mean, frankly, it's possible that this information making it out sent the right messages to all sorts of people and you're on notice. I don't know precisely, but I do believe that the right people will take the right actions.

BOLDUAN: Well, let me ask you about this, because I've seen you post about it and suggesting that this was a coordinated effort in terms of release.

Republican Senator Kevin Cramer says that - that talking about and attacking the journalists involved is completely missing the point. What he says is that the substance of this discussion should never have occurred on this app in the first place because of the security concerns.

Do you hear what he's saying?

DAVIDSON: I do hear what he's saying. And, you know, when he's the national security advisor, the secretary of defense, the director of national intelligence, then he can be in a position to decide that. But he's not.

BOLDUAN: Republican Congressman Don Bacon has said that he would have lost his security clearance for a whole lot less than what he's seen play out, specifically that this conversation happened on a commercial app - messaging app. Why is a double standard OK here then?

DAVIDSON: Look, I can't explain the double standard. I do know the Signal app was approved for communications by the Biden administration. The app was pre-installed on the devices that the Trump administration came in with. New - new information, presumably.

But this was a protocol that was done under the previous administration. It's a continuity of the way that the team had been operating together, although with different people, clearly, because the results of the election we had different people in place. But what's been communicated so far is the IT infrastructure is the same thing that the Biden administration was using.

BOLDUAN: Republican Congressman - Republican Senator Kevin Cramer, again, he said this on CNN last night, "any member of Congress, particularly ones that are on important committees of sensitive - of - or sensitive committees like Armed Services, Intelligence or Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs," which you are on, "knows that it is not OK to do what they've done. So, we know better than to do that."

Do you communicate classified and sensitive information on - on Signal?

DAVIDSON: I don't communicate classified information outside of a SCIF personally, but I don't have that same kind of role that they have. So, I think they coordinated it. The national security adviser intentionally set up the Signal chat. He invited others to participate. And they named who should be your key point of contact for the more classified information. And so, the - the more detailed information was shared. And he asked the participants of the chat, who from your office should we coordinate for the real details with? And that's where the really sensitive stuff was shared.

I don't think that the things that were shared on Signal were accidentally shared. It was thought out and they intended to do it. And I trust those people to be leading our national security far more than I trust anyone who was in a position under the previous administration, even though they apparently used the same kinds of communication devices.

[08:50:11]

BOLDUAN: So, do you think there should be any congressional investigation into what has played out in this - this information, which, if you don't want to call it war plans, you can definitely call it attack plans, and you can definitely call it sensitive because I know that you think that it would be fine to scare terrorists by - by public - by publishing it, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to put - I know you wouldn't want to put any - anyone in our military at risk by publishing the times that F-18s are launching, the times that the bombs will begin dropping in any mission.

DAVIDSON: No, I certainly wouldn't want any mission to be compromised by anyone, and certainly wouldn't want to participate in that. But I do think that, look, Senate Intelligence will look into it. The House Intelligence Committee will look into it. And I'm positive that the administration is going to be very thorough about what they're doing here and - and understand how did this come to happen and what kind of protocols do they need to take from here based on it.

So, I think the right actions are going to happen. And I have full confidence that the administration will make this right if it's not already what they intended to do.

BOLDUAN: When you say they - if you - when you say make it right, do you - do you leave open the possibility, in your mind at all, that you think someone should lose their job over - over this?

DAVIDSON: Well, I mean, if someone shared this information with Goldberg maliciously, I think there has to be accountability for that. And when they find somebody who intended to share this with Goldberg -

BOLDUAN: Again, it's the sharing with the journalist thing that again is - is missing the point. It's having a conversation on an unsecure app that, as John Bolton points out, the - this country, the federal government, has spent billions of dollars to build up what he calls one of the most secure telecommunications systems.

DAVIDSON: It - it's the same thing, everybody's mad at Elon Musk for sharing the information. The reality is, you want to go after the wrong root cause. This was a private conversation. They're saying it wasn't classified. They're the people that determine what's classified and not. They clearly shared a plan to communicate in a more detailed way with other members of the same staff. So, they were sharing top level information that they felt comfortable on.

It may be that after this they reassess it and say, well, maybe we shared more on that than we should have. Let's change our practices. And then maybe that will be one of the lessons learned. Maybe they'll say, hey, let's make sure that we don't add people like Jonah Goldberg or Jeffrey Goldberg to this - any of our messaging apps. How did that happen? And I think that - no matter what you say about the classification, the idea that you added Jeffrey Goldberg, there's only two things. Either we wanted Jeffrey Goldberg in the conversation or he was added by someone with malicious intent. I don't think Hanlon's razor applies here, that you - you say that it was an accident instead of malice. I think you have to say, given the stakes, that there was - there was an intent to add him and we wanted Goldberg in the conversation or there wasn't an intent to add him and someone needs to be held accountable for that.

BOLDUAN: Well, then, I mean, we will leave it there. But then you are in direct dispute with the national security adviser that you say you trust on all of this, which he says it was a mistake and it's all in his - it's his full responsibility.

So, there's a lot going on here.

Congressman -

DAVIDSON: Well, he - he - he explained it with Laura Ingraham, and I think he gave the - the accurate explanation that he plans to share.

BOLDUAN: Got it.

Congressman, thank you for your time.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, Representative Davidson had said, who did this? Why did it - it's very clear in what was published by "The Atlantic" that it says Mike Waltz added you to the group. And that person that was added was Jeffrey Goldberg, who got the text. So, clearly we know who actually added Jeffrey Goldberg.

I do want to get you right now, because we now have a look at what these text messages looked like that were published in "The Atlantic." After Goldberg listened yesterday to the committee saying that, you know, the DNI said it, Hegseth said it, that this was not classified. So, I want to get you a look at the very first thing that they published.

It says "team update," and it has Pete Hegseth at the top of it and it says, "time now, 11:44 Eastern, weather is favorable, just confirmed with CENTCOM, we are a go for the mission." It goes on. "F-18s launch, first strike package. Trigger based, F-18s, first strike window starts." I mean, these are extremely, extremely detailed pieces of information. And at the end of that first text, it says, "this is when the first bombs will definitely drop." It has a time 14:15. That is military time for 2:15. So, clearly, these are plans for a strike, i.e. war plans. Let's get to Jeff Zeleny, who is at the White House for us.

Jeff, these are extraordinary text messages that a reporter was added into this group.

[08:55:00]

The - the - the - Mike Waltz saying it was a mistake. How is the Trump administration and the Trump White House going to explain this? And are you hearing anything from them because they have been standing by all of the members of this group, including the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, Sara, as you were just saying there, we're getting an extraordinary minute by minute look at some of those messages now that "The Atlantic" has published in the wake of the president's and others insistence yesterday that there was no classified information in these.

But we're also getting a peek behind what led to the publishing of these. "The Atlantic," we're told, as they're writing in the magazine this morning, that they alerted the White House and other national security agencies and said that they did plan to publish and ask if there were any objections.

So, the White House press secretary is pushing back again this morning, a very familiar page from the Trump playbook. And again, attacking "The Atlantic," calling it a hoax, going after some long- held grievances that the president has held with Jeffrey Goldberg, who's been the author of several pieces over the years that the president has not liked.

But the White House press secretary is also going after a "Wall Street Journal" editorial this morning, that is taking a specific look at Steve Witkoff. He, of course, is one of the president's close friends, who's a Middle East envoy. He was meeting with Vladimir Putin on March 13th at the time that all these - these conversations and Signal messages were going on. But the White House is pushing back and saying he was not using his personal phone while he was in Moscow. He was using a government phone when he returned back.

But the actual substance of this, so this is what certainly will be shined a light on at the House hearing that is now scheduled to begin in just a little over an hour. The very specific details of these wartime plans, from the weather conditions for the bombs are about to drop. So again, as we saw yesterday, the light was shining on the defense secretary. We saw the director of national intelligence and the CIA director saying it was up to the defense secretary to answer questions if these were indeed the classified war plans. And now we can see for ourselves very operational details there that certainly are now giving new fodder for more questions.

So, the White House was thinking yesterday, was hoping that they were going to put this behind them, at least the political fallout from this. And they're trying to make it into a political scandal, not a national security controversy. We shall see how successful they are in doing that.

But now having all of these plans in front of us, it certainly looks like minute by minute by minute what was about to happen certainly seems like war plans and war planning to anyone who's reading it.

Sara.

SIDNER: Even though over and over and over again Pete Hegseth has said these are not war plans and this is not classified information. We will have to look through this because it certainly looks like that's what it is.

Thank you so much. It is always a pleasure to see you, Jeff Zeleny, out there at the White House with great reporting.

John.

ZELENY: Sure.

SIDNER: John.

BERMAN: All right, let's get back to Brian Stelter now, because, Brian, what we are seeing in real time, like at this very moment, is the release of these text exchanges, which give incredible detail into the timing of strikes, the weapons used on strikes, and when the bombs will fall, in like exact detail before it all happens. And now we're all seeing the response in real time from the White House, from allies of the White House, like Warren Davidson to Kate just seconds ago.

Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, saying, this just shows they're not war plans, that Jeffrey Goldberg is admitting they're not war plans. And Warren Davidson to Kate somehow saying they aren't specific.

STELTER: Right. On the MAGA right, the scandal here is Jeffrey Goldberg. They're trying to say the scandal is actually in the messenger, and they're very obviously attacking the messenger. I've lost count of the number of times Goldberg has been derided as a Trump hater by right wing media in the past 24 hours. All of the chatter in pro-Trump media is about whether some mysterious undermining figure somehow added Goldberg to the Signal chat in order to hurt the president. That's the conspiracy theory that's emerging on the right.

But, of course, that does not have any relationship to reality. Goldberg did not try to get on to this Signal chat. He was not trying to listen in or eavesdrop on these Trump officials. There would be no way for him to add himself. He had to be invited. And it does appear he was added - he was invited by Mike Waltz.

You know, Waltz has been trying to appeal to President Trump through television interviews, trying to attack Goldberg and act as if he's investigating what went wrong here, when it does seem like this might be an Occam's razor situation where the simple explanation is the obvious explanation. Waltz says he doesn't know who Goldberg is. I asked Goldberg this morning, what's your relationship with Waltz? Do you know him? Have you met him? Have you talked to him before? Has he been a source? And Goldberg's answer is, I'm not commenting on any relationship with Mike Waltz. So, there's, obviously, scrutiny of Waltz.

[09:00:01]

And I think this morning a lot of scrutiny on Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, because his messages are the key messages here.