Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Doesn't Seem Like He's Going to Resign

There was a time not so long ago when people inside of Donald Trump's orbit were really concerned about using proper communication channels for confidential government secrets. These days, though, it's apparently not that big a deal.

Following the news that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was one of several senior Trump administration officials on a Signal chain that also inadvertently included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, many wondered whether Hegseth might resign. Goldberg claims that Hegseth shared war plans in the group Signal chat that likely should never have been communicated out through that kind of text channel. Here's what we know about whether Hegseth will resign.

There has been no indication that Hegseth is planning to resign, even though there was clearly a major breach. When asked about the allegation, Hegseth said that “nobody was texting war plans,” even though Goldberg's reporting suggests that that's exactly what was happening. Goldberg's reporting said that Hegseth sent information on “targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

Thus far, though, the administration has suggested that Goldberg's reporting is false and that he is not just mistaken, but wrong. She said that "no classified material was sent to the thread," and further added that the National Security Council was looking into how Goldberg was mistakenly added. Trump, meanwhile, has suggested that the whole thing was just a big mistake.

"Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said in an interview with NBC.

It's worth noting that, although Hegseth sent the most sensitive material to the group, he was not the one who mistakenly added Goldberg. That was National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.

Adding Goldberg was just one of several problems with the Signal chain, though. The much more serious issue was its existence, which suggests that the administration is discussing foreign policy outside of secure channels.

The ordinary rules of politics would dictate that someone must be held accountable for this kind of breach. These kinds of hypotheticals aren't always useful, but if this had happened in a Kamala Harris administration, it's probably safe to assume that Republicans would have been calling for Harris to be impeached and certainly wouldn't have been satisfied even if several cabinet officials resigned.

That's not the state of play, though, and it seems clear that Hegseth has no plans to resign. The only way that would happen was if Trump decided it was time for him to go, but Trump's values do not tend to align cleanly with the law. He might have Hegseth fired for something he finds embarrassing, but he doesn't seem to think this qualifies.

For now, it seems highly unlikely that Hegseth is going anywhere. He might resign at some point, but this Signal scandal is unlikely to be the reason.