Takes incoherent turn..........

With ‘hoax’ claim, White House’s response to Signal scandal takes incoherent turn

Is Team Trump's Signal chat scandal a legitimate incident, worthy of investigation, or a "hoax"? According to the White House, it's both.

By Steve Benen

At first blush, the headline seemed to strike an encouraging note. Referring to Donald Trump’s hapless White House national security adviser, NBC News’ headline read, “Mike Waltz says he takes ‘full responsibility’ for putting together text group that included a journalist.” The lede told readers:

National security adviser Mike Waltz said in a Fox News interview tonight that he takes “full responsibility” for organizing a text group on the messaging app Signal that accidentally leaked plans for U.S. airstrikes on Houthi militants in Yemen to the editor of The Atlantic. “I take full responsibility. I built the — I built the group,” Waltz told host Laura Ingraham. “My job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”

If we were to stop here, we’d have a nice, tidy story. The White House’s national security team chatted in a Signal group over the sensitive details of a military strike in Yemen — potentially in violation of some federal laws — and they accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, in their chat.

Waltz, who apparently sent an invitation to the journalist by accident, took “full responsibility.” He made the comments hours after the president effectively acknowledged Waltz’s mistake, telling NBC News that his national security advisor “has learned a lesson.”

Alas, this is not the end of the story.

I’ve spent much of the last 48 hours trying to get a handle on what, exactly, the White House’s line is on this controversy, and it’s been difficult because Team Trump’s position is a moving target.

On Monday, for example, the White House confirmed the legitimacy of The Atlantic’s report, and a day later, the president told reporters that his administration would investigate an incident. The National Security Council also confirmed that an internal review was underway.

A day later, however, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung rejected the legitimacy of the story, accused “Fake News outlets” of peddling “misinformation,” and accused unnamed critics of being “enemies of America.” That was followed by a related item from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who wrote via social media that the “entire story” is “another hoax.”

Why would the president approve an internal review of an incident that’s a “hoax”? Team Trump hasn’t said, though I’m eager to hear an explanation.

What’s more, it doesn’t help that both the president and top members of his national security team insisted that the Signal group chat did not include classified information, despite new revelations suggesting that the chat absolutely included classified information.

As for Waltz — the one who told Fox News that he takes “full responsibility” for the debacle — he had a variety of related comments during his on-air appearance that undermined his apparent interest in accountability.

For example, the national security adviser raised the possibility that Goldberg — whom Waltz invited to the White House Signal chat — might’ve “deliberately” worked his way into the group chat.

Of course, if Waltz organized an online meeting that was hackable by a journalist without technical expertise, that would raise fresh questions about his competence.

He went on to tell Ingraham that he and his team “made a mistake,” which is the opposite message of Leavitt’s line about the “entire story” being a “hoax.”

All the while, Waltz tried to slander Goldberg as “scum“ and a “liar,” suggesting the lesson that he learned from this fiasco is that the smart move is smear a journalist — again, whom he apparently invited to the group chat — instead of taking responsibility for the generation’s most scandalous White House security breach.