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Americans are keenly interested in the newly revealed Signal chats involving Donald Trump's high-ranking officials, and CNN's Harry Enten explained why that could pose a political problem.

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reported earlier this week that he had been added by national security adviser Mike Waltz to a group chat involving vice president J.D. Vance and defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who disclosed top-secret plans about a military operation in Yemen, and Enten said interest in the encrypted messaging app and the publication has exploded.

"Sometimes I get a little surprised when I look at some of the data, and, of course, it's very early on in this, but we can look at Google searches, and I think it gives you an idea that there's a lot of interest in this story," Enten said. "All right, Google searches this week versus last week for these topics for The Atlantic, how many people are searching for The Atlantic – up 900 percent. That is the highest on record since Google searches began. They started tracking them back in 2004. How about for Signal, of course, the app on which this all occurred? Up over 1,000 percent again the highest on record. It has gone up through the roof on these two particular topics."

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"Whether or not people ultimately end up caring and it changes their minds about the administration, that's one thing," Enten added, "but the interest at this particular point is absolutely there. People are interested in this story, right? Beyond the interest, their take on it, you don't read that in a Google search, but there is interest, absolutely."

Other members of Trump's cabinet, including secretary of state Marco Rubio and treasury secretary Scott Bessent, took part in the chat, which could have potentially exposed top-secret information to foreign adversaries, and CNN's Kate Bolduan wondered whether the scandal would hurt their already low public standing.

"Trump's cabinet, obviously, many of them are on this group chat," Bolduan said. "Many of them are facing a lot of scrutiny and questions right now. Trump's cabinet, to this point, before this, was already on somewhat, I don't know, we call it thin ice. "

Enten agreed they already had low approval ratings compared to previous administrations.

"Here we go, all right – disappointed with the administration appointments of these different presidents, you might notice only one of these presidents, only one of these terms that were a majority disappointed," Enten said, looking at data to Bill Clinton's first term, in 1993. "Look at this: In 2025, 52 percent were already disappointed with Donald Trump's picks for his administration. That is the first time you get a majority. Back in 2017, was only 44 percent [disappointed] for Donald Trump. Before that, you see 16 [percent], 17 [percent], 14 [percent]. Joe Biden's picks were not, in fact, polled, but less than 40 percent disapproved in separate Pew polling."

"So the bottom line is, even going into this, there was already a lot of skepticism about Donald Trump's picks for his cabinet, for his appointments," Enten added. "There's no doubt in my mind that this number will almost certainly tick a little bit upwards, because we already were dealing with a public that was quite skeptical. This story can only make things worse. "

The problem seems especially acute for Hegseth, who is already deeply unpopular.

"Obviously he's very much in the middle of this story," Enten said. "Despite what some of trump defenders try to say, if you speak to [retired general] Spider Marks, for example, he would absolutely say that Pete Hegseth was right in the middle, and again, what you see here was the most unpopular defense secretary going all the way back, you have to go all the way back to Donald Rumsfeld, who, of course, was basically kind of forced out a little bit back in 2006. The unfavorable rating for Pete Hegseth [is] 42 percent compared to this favorable rating, that was only 30 percent. Many more Americans disliked Pete Hegseth coming into the scandal than liked him."

"Again, skeptical, skeptical, skeptical public, they're only going to probably become more skeptical, and seeing how again, seeing where they begin and how it evolves as we continue to cover it," Enten added.

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A panel on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Thursday lit into President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk for making major political miscalculations that would come back to haunt the GOP in coming elections.

During a panel discussion about the cuts that Musk is making at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration, Politico's Jonathan Martin argued that the administration doesn't even seem to comprehend the damage it's doing to itself.

"Of all the issues Elon Musk is dealing with this side of Social Security, I think touching the VA benefits or the VA broadly -- talk about a third rail in a lot of parts of this country!" he said. "And it just hands Democrats a weapon with precisely the kind of voter you're talking about that is otherwise going to be inclined to support Republicans."

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Host Joe Scarborough agreed with Martin that hurting the VA and Social Security were gifts to Democrats who have otherwise struggled to put together a coherent response in opposition to Trump.

"It's one unforced error after another," Scarborough marveled. "You've got a billionaire who runs the Commerce Department saying, 'Well you know what... I mean my mother-in-law, she missed her paycheck, she wouldn't whine about it.' Wow... and then you've got Elon Musk, who tells Joe Rogan that Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme ever. They don't understand that people that get those Social Security checks, so many of them... they're able to pay their rent, to stay in their apartment to get, you know, medicine, to get groceries because of that Social Security check."

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied that he had shared "war plans" after accidentally texting secret military information to a reporter ahead of a strike on Yemen.

During a rant on an airport tarmac Wednesday, Hegseth suggested he had been acquitted of wrongdoing after The Atlantic described his text messages as "attack plans" instead of "war plans."

"Nobody's texting war plans!" the defense secretary exclaimed to reporters. "I noticed this morning out came something that doesn't look like war plans. And as a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans because they know it's not war plans."

"There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information," he insisted. "My job, as it said atop of that, everybody's seen it now, team update is to provide updates in real time, general updates in real time, keep everybody informed. That's what I did! That's my job!"

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"And with President Trump's leadership, our enemies are on notice."

As Hegseth walked away, he continued to get peppered with questions.

"Mr. Secretary, how do you square what you said with what your messages show?" a reporter yelled. "Mr. Secretary, did you share classified information? Mr. Secretary, did you declassify that information before you put it into action?"

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CNN's Kaitlan Collins clashed with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday during a press briefing when Leavitt denied Collins a chance to ask a followup question.

Earlier this week, a bombshell report in The Atlantic alleged that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared secret war plans in a Signal chat while inadvertently revealing them to a reporter who had been errantly added to the group.

The administration responded by denying any classified information was transmitted through the chats and The Atlantic responded Tuesday by publishing messages showing that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed the precise times that American missiles were scheduled to strike at Houthi rebel groups inside Yemen.

Collins asked Leavitt if she stood by the administration's claims that there had been no classified information in the messages given what she now knows.

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Leavitt complained she'd been "asked and answered the same question" several times and noted that the president "feels the same today as he did yesterday."

Collins asked for a follow-up and spoke while Leavitt called on someone else.

"I'm not taking your follow-up," snapped Leavitt.

"I have a follow-up on something you just said, Karoline," said Collins.

"Kaitlin, I'm not taking your follow-up. Philip, go ahead," Leavitt said

After the briefing, host Boris Sanchez noted that the White House might be trying to do counter-programming to get people off of talking about the Signal scandal by announcing possible auto tariffs. The Dow Jones immediately began falling, Sanchez said.

"We're being told by our reporters that markets started trending downward. Yes, it appears that the White House is trying to counterprogram this story. And I want to go to CNN's Kaitlan Collins, who's in the room now. Caitlin, I found it interesting, first, that she rejected your question and said that she had already answered it, even though she didn't directly address the substance of what you were asking. And then that she rejected your follow-up, which is atypical."

Collins reported that Republicans on Capitol Hill see the White House as trying to twist itself into knots trying to say that the Signal chat contents weren't classified when it is overwhelmingly likely that they were given that they revealed the precise timing of military strikes.

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During a House Oversight subcommittee meeting Wednesday, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) unleashed on DOGE chairwoman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for supporting the Trump administration's desire to cut federally-funded media outlets National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System.

"Greene and other GOP members grilled the heads of NPR and PBS on allegations of perceived bias to determine whether to continue federal funding," according to The Daily Beast.

"It should not be surprising that the president is doing everything possible to make it more difficult for the media to hold him accountable, and for the public to be informed about his reckless and illegal behavior — yet here we are," Crockett began before asking the media leaders about how stripping their funding would hurt the public at large.

Witnesses included NPR CEO Katherine Maher, PBS CEO Paula Kerger, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Michael Gonzalez, and Alaska Public Radio president Ed Ulman.

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"Isn't it true that without these stations' broadcasts, Americans in rural communities would lack access to lifesaving information and public safety alerts?" Crockett asked Ulman, who answered in the affirmative.

Crockett continued, "In your opinion would eliminating funding for stations in rural America like WNGH, Channel 18, in the chairwoman's district would hurt Americans?"

"It would hurt Americans, yes," Ulman answered.

Crockett then launched into Greene, with whom she has a contentious working relationship.

"In fact, Georgia Public Broadcasting serves as the official distributor of evacuation route during state evacuations, and the chairwoman is here advocating to strip their funding. Look, the DOGE agenda isn't about efficiency; it's about breeding corruption at the expense of the safety of the American people, particularly rural and remote parts of the country. They don't care about public safety. They don't care about emergency management. They don't care about free speech, all of which are harming the American people."

Crockett continued, "To be clear, free speech is not about whatever it is y'all want somebody to say. And the idea that you want to shut down everybody that is not Fox News is bull----. We need to stop playing because that's what y'all are doing in here. You don't you want to hear the opinions of anybody else."

Crockett went on to read the First Amendment as Greene repeatedly banged the gavel and announced "the gentlelady's time has expired."

Watch the clip below or at this link.

House and Senate Republicans are still "nowhere near" agreement on how to craft the sweeping budget bill to pass President Donald Trump's agenda, reported Politico — and the Senate leaders are considering "big changes" to what the House already passed, yet another complication in a process already full of hurdles.

"GOP senators made clear Tuesday they intend to revamp the House-approved framework for the sweeping domestic policy bill — most crucially, by likely tweaking the amount of spending cuts congressional committees would need to achieve to finance the package of tax cuts, border security enhancements and energy provisions," said the report.

“[House Republicans] said they needed time to do one big, beautiful bill,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, told reporters. “They had a chance; the product is woefully inadequate.”

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House Republicans' budget framework eyes Medicaid and food aid cuts as a major source of offsets for the spending — but all of this doesn't even include Trump's campaign promises to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits.

All of this comes after weeks of dissent and disagreement between Republicans in the House and Senate over whether it even made sense to do this as one bill or two.

It also comes as Republicans scramble to pass the bill in anticipation of Trump's tariffs, which continue to divide the party, causing significant negative impacts on the economy — and as they debate over whether or not they should, or even can, include the critical reprieve from the debt ceiling later this year before it forces the United States into an artificial default.