In yet another major win for President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Army veteran Pete Hegseth, it is emerging that the story published in The Atlantic about a supposed group chat in which “war plans” were shared was a “hoax,” as there were no war plans shared in the chat, which is just what Hegseth said to discredit the story from the start.

For reference, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, released an explosive report in which he claimed to have been added to a group chat in which Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and other top Trump Administration officials discussed “war plans.”

Hegseth quickly told the media that the allegations from Goldberg were false, as no one in the chat was texting about “war plans.” He said, “As I also stated yesterday, nobody’s texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.” Adding to that, Hegseth noted, “I know exactly what I’m doing, exactly what we’re directing, and I’m really proud of what we accomplished, the successful missions that night and going forward.”

Initially, The Atlantic tried defending its reporting by releasing screenshots of the supposed messages. Those were soon examined, and readers discovered that none of them involved the supposed “war plans” discussed by the Trump Administration officials; rather, they mainly showed those officials being annoyed with America’s NATO allies for not pulling their weight.

Also commented upon in the chat, which is what Goldberg used as the basis for his claim that the “war plans” were discussed, was the then-imminent bombing of Houthis, which was far from a discussion of “war plans.” And so The Atlantic changed its headline to “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisors Shared on Signal,” which more accurately reflects what Goldberg claims to have seen, and were plans that were widely known outside the chat.

X political commentator Eric Daugherty, sounding off on The Atlantic and commenting on its new headline in a post on X, said, “🚨 THEY’RE BACKPEDALING! The Atlantic just sent out an update report CLARIFYING that there WERE NO WAR PLANS exchanged in that Signal chat… they were (as we all saw) some discussion on the Houthi strikes that Americans knew were coming.”

Continuing, Daugherty said, “This hoax totally fell on its face! They added additional messages in today’s release, but there is nothing new. There are endless holes in what was supposed to be a HUGE outrage. – No classified info – Signal was approved for use by the Biden admin – No “war plans” were discussed.” Watch Hegseth hammer The Atlantic here: