U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth continues to defend his team’s actions in the SignalGate scandal, in which Hegseth inadvertently shared plans for a military attack in Yemen with a journalist on a commercial chat app.
Part of the Pentagon boss’s deflection strategy is to move attention away from the security breach — which even Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are calling “sloppy” — and shift the focus to the “lethality” of the attack, asserting that the Houthi airstrikes in Yemen were a resounding success. “Stunningly devastating,” Hegseth has called the military action.
But that very lethality and the process leading up to it has U.S. Representative Thomas Massie (R-WV) warning that the attacks were perhaps not in America’s best interest, nor were they subjected to the appropriate protocol.
Massie said the airstrikes are “not America First” and that the Signal chats proved there was “no urgency” and therefore Congress should have been notified. Massie contended that the group of top defense and intelligence leaders (JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Waltz, et al) who were privy to the attack and involved in the Signal chat “had time to come to Congress, but they chose not to.”
Massie told the publication Responsible Statecraft: “Long term, our meddling in the Middle East makes more enemies for us, whether it’s, you know, supplying all the bombs that are being dropped on Gaza, or whether it’s being in Afghanistan for over two decades, we’re creating new enemies that we don’t need to have.”
He added, “And so if there is some element of deterrence, you have to balance it against the motivation that you’re generating for another 9/11.” Massie added: “I don’t think the way they’re waging this war in Gaza is the best thing for Israel.”
Massie’s interview is being criticized by some conservatives on X including one who asked, “Are you doing anything to help America?” to which Massie replied sharply, “Trying to keep us out of another stupid war.”
Trying to keep us out of another stupid war.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 27, 2025