The White House is aggressively pushing back on a report claiming that a search has begun for a suitable candidate to replace Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth after it was revealed that he’d been involved in yet another controversial group chat to discuss sensitive defense information with people who had no need to know anything about it.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X (formerly Twitter) at 1:32 pm on Monday to denounce an NPR report, citing a single U.S. official, that stated how the White House was starting the process to find a successor for the former Fox News weekend host, who Trump tapped to lead the massive American defense bureaucracy shortly after winning the 2024 presidential election.
She called the NPR report “total FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about” and referenced Trump’s statements from earlier in the day when he told reporters he had confidence in Hegseth despite the newly-unearthed Signal chat scandal, which was reported on over the weekend by The New York Times.
“As the President said this morning, he stands strongly behind [Hegseth],” she added.
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