During an interview with ABC News on Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reacted to a report on members of the Trump administration allegedly sharing sensitive details on strikes in Yemen on a group chat that had Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg mistakenly on it by stating that “this was obviously a mess, to add a reporter to this Signal chain. And I feel confident it’s not something that will happen again.” And responded to a question on whether he’d support Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) call for an investigation into the matter by stating that Schumer is engaging in “political attacks.”
Cruz said, “Well, listen, this was obviously a mess, to add a reporter to this Signal chain. And I feel confident it’s not something that will happen again.”
Cruz then praised the Trump administration for taking action against the Houthis.
Host Linsey Davis then asked, “Minority Leader Schumer has called for an investigation into how this could have happened. Would you support one?”
Cruz responded, “Well, listen, it doesn’t surprise me that Chuck Schumer’s immediate response is [to] engage in political attacks. That’s, apparently, all the Democrats are about today is political attacks, and Schumer has a real incentive to do that, because his left flank, he’s got AOC threatening to primary him right now, and he’s worried about his left flank. I’ve got to say, I’m curious why Schumer and the Democrats are not concerned about the fact that, for the last four years, the Houthis have been allowed to engage in terrorism against America, against America’s allies, to drive up costs for consumers.”
He added, “[I]t was clearly a screw-up. It was obvious that including Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertent, and that was a mess and an embarrassing mess. But I will say, there’s a big difference, in that, immediately, the Trump White House took responsibility, they said this was genuine, this was a real exchange, and it was a mistake. And that taking responsibility, that was the right thing to do. It’s very different from [what] Hillary Clinton and the Democrats did, where they obfuscated, they denied, they tried to hide the thing for months upon months upon months.”
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