Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy joined other conservatives to bash President Donald Trump's administration over "Signalgate" on Wednesday.
The Trump administration is under fire after The Atlantic revealed Monday that its top editor was inadvertently included in a group text on messaging app Signal with senior national security officials. The Atlantic reported that it was National Security Adviser Michael Waltz who appeared to have added editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the group earlier this month.
Portnoy, who endorsed Trump last year, criticized his administration over its defense of the texting scandal in a six-minute video posted to social media on Wednesday. He called on Trump to fire Waltz over the mistake and emphasized that Goldberg is "telling the truth."
"In this new administration, you want to take accountability. Trump, you may love Michael Waltz. You love Pete Hegseth. You may love these guys. Somebody has to go down. To me, it's Michael Waltz. He's the one who added him to this conversation. But you can't have the top of the top security people in the United States, with the most sensitive information in the world, adding random editors of a magazine that hates Trump's guts, to a group chat talking about an attack before it happens on a terrorist group," Portnoy said.
"You can't poo-poo it. You can't downplay it. You have to sit up there and be like, 'Holy shit, this is a fuck-up of epic proportions. There will be accountability. I will get to the bottom of this.'"
Portnoy told Waltz that he should "step down."
"It's obvious we gave away the strike information two hours before it happened. We are lucky it didn't cause the death of American military members. Somebody has to go down for this. This is a mistake," Portnoy said, adding it "is a mistake that can't happen twice."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked to respond to Portnoy's call to have Waltz fired. She responded with that she has "great respect" for Portnoy before noting that the National Security Council, the White House counsel's office and tech billionaire Elon Musk's team was looking into the group chat.
The Atlantic published the full messages of the Signal group text on Wednesday after the White House repeatedly claimed there was no classified information discussed within the chat.
The Pentagon and White House have tried to deflect criticism by attacking Goldberg and The Atlantic. The magazine and Goldberg, however, repeatedly reached out to the White House before and after publication to gain additional context on the Signal chat and ensure that publishing the full texts would not cause harm. In a response, Goldberg reported Wednesday, Leavitt described some of the information as sensitive and said the White House would prefer it not be published.
In the group chat, Hegseth posted multiple details about the impending strike, using military language and laying out when a "strike window" starts, where a "target terrorist" was located, the time elements around the attack and when various weapons and aircraft would be used in the strike. He mentioned that the U.S. was "currently clean" on operational security.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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