Playing the age card

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent only posted once in the chat, identifying that his chief of staff Dan Katz would be a part of Wong’s tiger team.

But he was asked about the chat in a Fox News interview Wednesday. Bessent played it by the book, saying that he’ll “leave all of that to the legal experts.” That statement tracks with his proactive approach to pending litigation about the chat — NOTUS reported Thursday that Bessent already moved to preserve his phone data in the face of a lawsuit filed this week.

He also sprinkled some humor in to dodge the question, playing on the fact that many of his colleagues in Trump’s Cabinet are younger than him.

“I will say one of the few advantages of being one of the older people in the cabinet is that I still like to pick up the phone and call people,” Bessent said, prompting a laugh from the Fox host.

Blaming the administration writ large
Goldberg has not laid low since the first article was published on Monday. In media interviews, he has pushed back on the White House’s efforts to downplay the significance of the information shared in the Signal chat.

“If Karoline Leavitt is arguing that it’s not a war because Congress didn’t declare war on Yemen. OK, fine. She wants to play a semantic game,” Goldberg said Wednesday on MSNBC, referring to the White House press secretary. “But this is operational details about a forthcoming attack on an enemy that has anti-aircraft capabilities. They’ve allegedly shot down our drones before.”

“So why you would tell anyone in the world on a messaging app that American pilots are about to fly into a — sorry for the expression — warzone? That’s an interesting question,” he said.

Staying radio silent
A number of the Signal group chat members have stayed relatively quiet about the incident. Those include Wong, Needham, Katz, National Security Council senior director Walker Barrett, National Security Council Chief of Staff Brian McCormick and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

Many of them either lack personal X accounts or seldom post on their accounts, and a number of them didn’t post at all in the chat. Many also haven’t been in situations where they’d be peppered with questions from reporters and lawmakers.

Wiles was the only one of this group who messaged in the chat about the strike itself, and it was to offer praise after the fact.

Only Wong has faced criticism for his presence in the chat. That criticism has largely centered around far-right conspiracy theories that Wong, whose parents emigrated from China, is a secret agent of the Chinese government. The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the unsubstantiated allegations, although prominent White House allies have come to Wong’s defense.