Trump says he would ask Hegseth to review if flight times should be classified

President Trump on Wednesday said he would ask Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to review what kinds of information should be classified, especially flight times, after they were included in the Signal group chat.

The White House has insisted that no classified information was shared in the chat after The Atlantic released screenshots on Wednesday showing Hegseth relayed specific information related to weapons used and the timing of attacks. The Pentagon chief told other top officials on Signal the exact times American F-18 fighter aircraft and MQ-9 drones took off for Yemen before the March 15 airstrikes.

When asked whether he would ask Hegseth if flight times and sequencing should be considered classified, Trump replied that he would consider it.

"Sure. I'll ask him. Sure. I would," Trump said while taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office. "You can view that two ways, frankly — there's a lot of ways to answer that question, but I'd certainly ask him to take a look."

The president also said that national security adviser Mike Waltz "claimed responsibility" for the incident after Waltz inadvertently added The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat.

"It was Mike, I guess. I don't know. I was told it was Mike," he said. "Mike — he took responsibility for it."

Additionally, the president praised Hegseth for his work at the Pentagon.

"Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with it," Trump said.

Hegseth earlier on Wednesday stressed that nothing was classified in the chat, sharing on the social platform X, "There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information."

The president also distanced himself from questions about whether the information shared was classified or not, telling reporters, "That's what I've heard."

"I don't know. I'm not sure. You'll have to ask the various people involved. I really don't know," he added.

He was also asked about Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the Senate Armed Services chair, pushing for an inspector general to probe what happened and told reporters, "That doesn't bother me."

"I want to find if there's any mistake or if Signal doesn't work— it could be that Signal is not a very good company, and maybe it's not very good. I think we'd rather know about it now," Trump said. "There was no harm done because the attack was unbelievably successful that night, and it has been unbelievably successful every single."

He told reporters multiple times that the strikes on the Houthis were successful, focusing on the operation's success when asked about the Signal mishap.

Hegseth has been moved to the center of the storm of the scandal after The Atlantic released the texts that Goldberg initially considered too sensitive, showing Hegseth shared specific details of imminent U.S. attacks against Houthi rebels in Yemen.