New Poll Reveals How Voters Feel About Signalgate Scandal

4/4/2025

On "Forbes Newsroom," HarrisX Founder and CEO Dritan Nesho discussed a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll showing voters' responses to the Signal scandal.

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Transcript

00:00I now want to talk about a story that really rocked the headlines last week, and that is

00:05Signal Gate.

00:06It's the first staff scandal of the second Trump term, and essentially a journalist was

00:12added to a Signal group chat, which is a messaging app with our nation's top security leaders

00:18to discuss an upcoming attack against the Houthis in Yemen.

00:22What do people think about this?

00:26Well, 54% said that it was a big deal, right?

00:32And Americans in general like to hold their elected leaders or the administration accountable

00:40when there are issues that they consider to have a lot of negative impact or potential

00:48negative impact.

00:49I think that public opinion doesn't necessarily distinguish between the players.

00:58Is it Mike Waltz, who's at fault, the national security advisor?

01:02Is it Pete Katz?

01:04But I think this is a valuable lesson for the administration that usually the mistakes

01:11that come up at the beginning of an administration, they tend to be foreign policy related.

01:20These mistakes can distract or worse harm the footing of an administration.

01:26Academics usually say pigs and piglets after the Bay of Pigs, which obviously was John

01:31F. Kennedy's big problem.

01:33So I would say that Signal Gate is a piglet.

01:36It's going to fizzle out, but it's an invaluable lesson for the administration and really where

01:45most voters agree with a stronger stance against Iran than the Biden administration had.

01:50They agree that the United States should take an action vis-a-vis the Houthis.

01:56So it's not a policy issue.

01:58I think a bigger pig in the making when it comes to a possible foreign policy issue is

02:06the trade wars, right?

02:07They're not being very well communicated.

02:11And that's where the administration is really starting to create friction with different

02:16key segments of the electorate.

02:19So I think it's a good wake-up call, Signal Gate is a good wake-up call that these things

02:25that where the administration has a lot more leeway on foreign policy and the decisions

02:31that it may really need to be as carefully considered as, let's say, domestic legislation,

02:36otherwise that can derail the first hundred days or worse, put the administration on a

02:42completely wrong footing.

New Poll Reveals How Voters Feel About Signalgate Scandal

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