Dave Portnoy Thinks Someone Should Be Fired For War Plans Group Text

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy’s six-minute-long video on Wednesday calling for the firing of President Donald Trump’s national security adviser over a group text discussing war plans.

Portnoy, who endorsed Trump and attended his inauguration, called the scandal, in which Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to a group text message with the national security team, a “major, major, major glitch in intelligence and just a huge mistake.” Portnoy said national security adviser Michael Waltz should lose his job and that Trump should not “pooh-pooh” the scandal.

“You can’t pooh-pooh it,” Portnoy said in his video. “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.’”

When asked about the video during a press briefing, Leavitt said that while she had “great respect” for Portnoy, Trump has “confidence” in his national security team.

Portnoy, who in his video said he hates The Atlantic as much as the president does, added that he understands being loyal to employees, but Trump should still have someone take accountability for the situation.

“Trump, you may love Michael Waltz, you may love Pete Hegseth, you may love these guys, somebody has to go down,” Portnoy said. “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.”

On Monday, Trump said he didn’t know anything about the group chat scandal.

“I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “You are telling me about it for the first time.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has claimed no war plans were discussed in the group text thread and CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said there was no classified information in the chat. On Tuesday, Waltz claimed he did not know how Goldberg was added to the group text.

Portnoy said, “We’ve all texted the wrong person,” but added that most people aren’t a part of the national security team.

“There’s nothing being made up here. Jeffrey Goldberg is telling the truth. It’s obvious these texts are real,” he added. “It’s obvious they’re classified. It’s obvious we gave away the strike information two hours before it happened. We’re lucky it didn’t cause the death of American military members. Somebody has to go down for this.”

On Wednesday, The Atlantic published all of the texts from the group chat that included planning military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.