Trump berates reporter for asking question about Signal chat leak scandal: 'Don't bring that up again'

WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump could not control his anger after a reporter on Thursday, April 3, questioned him about Signalgate.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been accused of using the commercial messaging app to talk about top-secret war plans. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz also mistakenly invited The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg into the chat group.

Later, it was reported that the Pentagon's independent watchdog will be starting a probe into the matter.

Trump calls Signalgate ‘a wasted story’

However, when the reporter asked the commander-in-chief if he wanted to share his thoughts on “Pete Hegseth and this [inspector general] investigation” during a press conference on Air Force One, he replied, “What is it?”, as per MEDIA ITE.

The reporter then mentioned, “There’s an IG investigation into the secretary of defense’s use of the Signal app.”

But Trump immediately fired back, saying, “Oh, you’re bringing that up again? Don’t bring that up again. Your editors probably. That’s such a wasted story, so what else?”

Memo sent to Pete Hegseth regarding investigation

This came as NBC News reported that acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins sent a memo to Pete Hegseth on April 3.

The memo informed him that “the objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other [Department of Defense] personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business.”

“We may revise the objective as the evaluation proceeds. We plan to perform this evaluation in accordance with the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency ‘Quality Standards for Inspection and Evaluation,’” it added.

Karoline Leavitt claimed of no probe in Signalgate

But surprisingly, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had said on Monday, March 31, as per MEDIA ITE, “As the president has made it very clear, Mike Waltz continues to be an important part of his national security team and and this case has been closed here at the White House, as far as we are concerned.”

“There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can obviously never happen again, and we’re moving forward; and the president and Mike Waltz, and his entire national security team, have been working together very well if you look at how much safer the United States of America is because of the leadership of this team,” Leavitt added.

Also last week, the 27-year-old had disclosed that DOGE's lead "Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this, to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat — again, to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again."