X customers demand Trump’s defence secretary Pete Hegseth get the lettuce remedy after Signalgate
X users demanded US defence decretary Pete Hegseth get the lettuce treatment after messages from him and other top officials were written in a group chat that included a journalist
Following a major gaffe by his administration, could one of Donald Trump’s top people be about to face his toughest challenge yet, the return of the Daily Star lettuce?
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth is among a number of top officials in hot water after a Signal group chat set up to discuss details of an operation to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen included the editor in chief of The Atlantic.
Hegseth is fending off criticism over concerns that the embarrassing conversation was not entirely secure. He even spoke about “weapons packages, targets, and timing” in the group chat.
He and vice president JD Vance also said some mean things about us Europeans. Hegseth said “European freeloading” was “pathetic”.
Hegseth has since lodged a defence, saying on Tuesday that nobody “was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that”. His boss Trump said the incident was a “glitch” and also took aim at The Atlantic.
But, social media users who are more than a bit cross at the gaffe have threatened the return of the Daily Star lettuce that brought the career of Tory PM Liz Truss crashing down in 2022.
“Should we get a lettuce ready for Pete Hegseth?” one person wrote on X.
“Time to pit a lettuce against Pete Hegseth’s career,” said another.
One person even asked dear old Liz, who lasted just 49 days in the job as PM, if she thinks Hegseth will “do better than you did”.
How childish.
The Lincoln Project, a political action committee made up of moderate republicans, even went as far as posting a picture of poor Pete next to a lettuce.
“Let it begin,” the group warned.
America’s director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard who was also included in the group chat, was grilled by the House Intelligence Committee in Congress today.
She acknowledged it was a “mistake” for security officials to discuss sensitive military plans in a group text chain that also included a journalist.
Wednesday’s hearing was called to discuss an updated report on national security threats facing the US. Instead, much of the focus was on the text chain, which also inclued CIA director John Ratcliffe and other senior officials.
Ratcliffe and Democrat congressman Jimmy Gomez had a heated exchange during the hearing after Gomez asked if “Hegseth had been drinking before he leaked classified information”.
Ratcliffe responded: “No. You know, no. I’m not going to answer that. I think that’s an offensive line of question. The answer is, no.”
Gabbard was asked the same question. She answered: “I don’t have any knowledge of Secretary Hegseth’s personal habits.”
And just tonight, the German news outlet Der Spiegel reported that private details of several of his security advisors have been leaked on to the internet.
The details, including phone numbers and email addresses, as well as Signal accounts for some, were of Gabbard, Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
There is concern that hostile foreign agents could use the details to try and access sensitive information.
“It is thus conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike,” wrote Spiegel, but it is not clear if the Signal chat that caused controversy this week used the same numbers as the one found by the German newspaper.
The Daily Star has approached Gabbard, Hegseth and Waltz for comment.
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