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5 American voters weigh in the signal leak

    The White House has spent the week to trivialize the revelation that top officials of national security problems for American strikes in Yemen on Houthi militants have discussed Signal, an app for commercial messages.

    In a stunning violation of national security, the Minister of Defense, Pete Hegseeth, unveiled specific operational details before the attacks in the group chat – which unintentionally editor -in -chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, included. Michael Waltz, the national security adviser who added Mr Goldberg to the chat, said that he took “full responsibility” for the leak.

    Various Democrats called Mr. Hegseeth to resign. But the Trump government has tried to divert the problems or to stimulate. (Mr. Trump said the scandal was a “witch hunt.”)

    As part of a regular check-in in the course of the first 100 days of Mr Trump, the New York Times asked five voters what they thought of the response from the administration.

    Dave Abdallah was not happy with the way Mr. Trump and the people around him continued to play down the infringement of Signal Chat Security.

    They “are completely wrong,” said Mr. Adballah.

    The infringement, he added, could have cost us soldiers their lives. “This is a serious, serious mistake,” he said about the entire affair.

    Mr. Abdallah, a real estate broker who emigrated as a child from Lebanon to the United States, voted for the candidate of the Green Party Jill Stein in the 2024 elections. It was a protest about dealing with the war in Gaza by the Biden and concern that Mr. Trump would not help the situation. Yet Mr. Abdallah hoped that Mr. Trump's foreign policy could bring peace and stability to the region.

    He has been disappointed so far.

    Fighting recently resumed between Israel and Hamas. Now Mr. Abdallah believes that Mr Trump, his administration and backers prove to be hypocritical because they are confronted with a recoil for the signal affair.

    He remembered that he saw a recent tick video that showed old clips from Republicans who criticized Hillary Clinton for using a private computer server when she was the State Secretary during the Obama administration. The video then showed images of the same critics, now backers from Mr. Trump, who brought up the signal chat shoulders as no problem and apologies.

    Such apologies met Mr. Abdallah as insincere. “I just can't understand,” he said about the signal chat. “So it should definitely be on the table to get rid of someone.”

    – Kurt Streeter

    When Perry Hunter first heard that Trump officials accidentally recorded a journalist in the signal chat, he thought it was an important error of the administration and that there should be consequences.

    But, just as he had done in response to many Trump-related news events since the inauguration, De Heer Hunter said he took the time to learn the details before he decided what he thought of the situation. This time he thought that the scandal was not really a scandal at all, and said the chat contained no specific war plans and reflected the description of the White House. That made the messages benign against his eye. (Defense experts are shocked by the level of detail in the chat.)

    “Someone certainly made a mistake,” he said, and added, “I don't think someone should be fired about this because it is not as serious as many people think it is.”

    Mr. Hunter, a high school teacher, would have thought differently, he said, if Americans had been killed for information that was shared in the chat. In that case he said, “Then, yes, someone should lose his job and someone has to go to prison.” He added: “I think it's one of those things they have been lucky and they can learn better.”

    When he criticizes Democrats about the infringement, he said it was hypocritical of them to be upset. He compared the infringement of errors made by civil servants involved in the withdrawal of the Biden administration from Afghanistan, or in the use of a private -mail server by Mrs Clinton for official communication.

    “Nobody we know was held responsible in those situations,” said Mr. Hunter. “And there was failure, large failure, in all those situations.”

    – Juliet Macur

    “I have to tell you, I was in shock,” said Tali Jackont, an educator. “There are things that can't happen, and it happened.”

    Mrs. Jackont compared it to how closely military secrets are stored in Israel, her home country. When Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, performs an operation, no one claims responsibility, even if it seems obvious, she said. “Nobody will tell you until they tell you,” she said.

    She was not enthusiastic that someone involved was fired at this point, “but there must be better attention,” she said.

    Did the administration learn its lesson? “Time will learn it,” said Mrs. Jackont. For now it seemed that they usually brush this under the carpet, she said, but mused about which conversations were going on behind closed doors.

    “If it happens again, even in one or two or three years, then nobody learned anything,” she said. “And it will be, I don't want to use the word disaster, but a great shame.”

    – Campbell Robertson

    As mayor of a small border city, Jaime Escobar Jr. How important it was to protect sensitive government information. So when he read the news about the signal chat, he was worried that the officials in question tried to repel the issue too quickly.

    “That's just whole, it's a difficult pill to swallow,” he said about the issue. “There must be a strong message. We cannot allow this. Imagine someone from another country with malignant intentions, they take that information and hurt us and our army.”

    Mr Escobar, who, after years, voted like a Democrat on Mr Trump, remained unrest that the officials did not control nothing like who received the information, such as a journalist.

    “That's a big mistake, and they just have to be extra careful about it,” he said. “It is a lesson that needs to be learned very quickly and simply cannot be repeated.”

    At the same time, he was satisfied that Mr Waltz, who admitted that he had made the group chat, accepted responsibility.

    “He assumed whether it was his fault or not, he is:” Well, I am the man who is in charge of national security, “he said. As far as further consequences are?” Well, that will have to be up to the president. “

    – Edgar Sandoval

    When Isaiah Thompson heard that Trump's senior officials shared sensitive war details about signal, he immediately wondered how a member of the federal government could make such a mistake. Then he wondered how Democrats – instead of Republicans – would react.

    “The left does not have much to fight or defend. It seems that this can give them a foot on the ground or something to push back,” he said. “I don't know how the federal government could have gotten something like that wrong.”

    Mr Thompson, a student who voted in Kamala Harris, but supports the Green Party, said that the signal chat was simply another example of the lack of accountability of checks and balances in the Trump administration. Yet he hesitates for the resignation of Mr. Hegseeth or Mr. To support Waltz about their role in the signal scandal – at least not yet.

    “There must be a deep investigation before someone is fired or asked to resign,” said Mr Thompson. “But the president does not treat this seriously enough. This was a violation of national security.”

    – Audra DS Burch