Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed back on the bombshell story from the Atlantic yesterday in which editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to a Signal group chat where top Trump administration officials discussed plans to bomb Yemen.
A spokesman for the National Security Council confirmed the veracity of the message chain, telling Goldberg that “this appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
When asked about the incident by a reporter on Monday, Hegseth deflected, saying: “So you’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist, who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”
He later disputed part of Goldberg’s account, saying that no “war plans” were discussed.
A clip of that comment was shared by the Department of Defense’s rapid communications X account, but it was quickly met with a Community Note flagging that “the White House has confirmed the authenticity of the Atlantic’s reporting.”
On Tuesday, that Community Note disappeared, drawing immediate outrage from critics.
“X has purged community notes from this Pentagon account that posts about transparency and accountability,” blasted one account.
“What happened to this accurate community vote @elonmusk ???” commented one user.
Another version of a Community Note included more citations and determined Hegseth’s comments were “misleading.” That version is also no longer visible.
Another person theorized that perhaps it was not X itself that removed the note, but a coordinated bot effort to downvote its helpfulness rating.
“To me, this seems more like backers, bots, or some such skewed the voting toward that side, rather than it being pulled administratively,” the user concluded.
Regardless of the cause of the note’s disappearance, critics are dismayed that there’s no longer any added context under Hegseth’s remarks.
“Where’d the community note go? HUH?” questioned one person.
“Wild how the @CommunityNotes on this just magically disappeared,” echoed someone else.
“Bring back the Community Note,” urged one anti-Trump account.
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