President Donald Trump on Sunday heaped praise on Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) following the lawmaker’s combative appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, where he pushed back against criticism surrounding the now-infamous Signal chat that involved senior Trump administration officials discussing imminent military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, shortly after the segment aired, writing:
“A GREAT job by Senator Markwayne Mullin on beating back Kristen Welker’s, and the Radical Left’s Witch Hunt, on the never-ending Signal story. They just don’t stop – Over and over they go! Meet the Fake Press should instead explain how successful the attack was, and how Sleepy Joe Biden should have done it YEARS AGO. This story and narrative is so old and boring, but only used because we are having the most successful ‘First One Hundred Presidential Days’ in the history of America, and they can’t find anything else to talk about. The Fake News Media has the lowest Approval Ratings in history, and for good reason. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
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Trump’s comments come amid ongoing media scrutiny over the Signal thread — a private, encrypted group chat involving top Trump national security officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.
NBC’s Kristen Welker pressed Mullin during Sunday’s interview on whether it was appropriate for sensitive military operations to be discussed on a commercial app.
In response, Mullin dismissed the concerns, calling the Signal discussion a “thoughtful conversation” and emphasizing that no classified information was shared.
“There was no war plan released. There was no specific location given,” Mullin said. “The Atlantic didn’t post anything that wasn’t already known after a successful strike against a terrorist organization that had attacked our Navy over 170 times.”
When Welker pointed to timestamps and weapon descriptions shared in the chat, Mullin defended the administration’s actions again, questioning the classification of the information.
“Tell me where the location was. What part of the world was this at?” he said. “This could have been going on any place. There was no specific information.”
Mullin also blasted the media for obsessing over the leak while ignoring what he called “real failures” under the Biden administration — including the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s widely criticized secret hospitalization earlier this year.
“Why are we focused so much on this?” said Mullin. “Why didn’t we focus on the 13 service members that were killed in Afghanistan? There was no outcry or anybody resigning from that. What about the idea of when Secretary Austin went to MIA for surgery and went completely offline?”
When asked what message the incident sends to service members and their families, Mullin claimed morale has surged since Trump returned to the White House.
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“The numbers speak for themselves. We’ve had record numbers of new recruits since President Trump took office. Morale is through the roof,” he said, tying the spike to a more aggressive posture on national security and a shift away from “woke” military policies.
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