Signalgate is turning off even the most loyal of President Donald Trump’s supporters.
A YouGov poll found that a whopping six in ten Republicans find the leaks of American war plans to be a serious issue. That's below the three-quarters of voters overall who take issue with the leaks, but it still marks a rare break with Trumpism for GOP voters.
The count was taken a day after The Atlantic’s top editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed that he’d been added to a group chat of Trump officials by National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.
The polling company noted that Americans’ concern over the Signal scandal was larger than polled concern at any point over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server use. 48 percent of Americans told pollsters they believe the administration broke the law by discussing the military plans on Signal.
And it’s not just voters who want Trump to own its mistake. Congressional Republicans have strengthened their rebukes after an initial collective shrug.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn called it a “huge screwup” earlier this week and Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said the chamber must investigate the leaks.
“This is what happens when you don’t really have your act together,” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told The Hill, decrying the administration's lax attitude toward state secrets.
Even MAGA diehard Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said the administration should’ve been more careful.
“I think it was incredibly sloppy. But that being said, I think it was a mistake,” Greene told reporters on Tuesday, sidestepping a question on whether Waltz should be forced out and adding that she feels “confident” that the White House would correct the error.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself a party to the Signal chat, said on Wednesday that “someone made a big mistake” when adding Goldberg without mentioning Waltz by name. Waltz contends that Goldberg’s contact information was “sucked into [the] group.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly defended officials who took part in the group chat, with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt calling the story a “hoax” in a Wednesday briefing.
