Dave Portnoy on Signal scandal: ‘Somebody has to go down’

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy on Wednesday tore into Trump administration officials for dismissing the gravity of the Signal leak, calling on President Trump to fire a high-level official involved in the “f‑‑‑ up of epic proportions.”

In a lengthy video posted to the social platform X, the media figure said national security adviser Mike Waltz should be the one dismissed, noting Waltz started the Signal group and inadvertently added The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat.

Portnoy, in the video, addressed the president directly, saying, “Trump, you may love Michael Waltz. You love Pete Hegseth. You may love these guys. Somebody has to go down.”

“To me, it’s Michael Waltz,” Portnoy continued. “He’s the one who added him to this conversation. But you can’t have the top of the top security people in the United States — with the most sensitive information in the world — adding random editors of a magazine that hates Trump’s guts to a group chat talking about an attack before it happens on a terrorist group.”

“You can’t poopoo it. You can’t downplay it. You have to sit up there and be like, ‘Holy s‑‑‑. This is a f‑‑‑ up of epic proportions. There will be accountability. I will get to the bottom of this,’” Portnoy added, still addressing Trump.

Goldberg published a bombshell report Monday describing how he was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat with top Trump Cabinet officials discussing U.S. plans to strike Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The top editor published a second major report Wednesday including group chat messages detailing timing of the attack and which weapons would be used.

Goldberg initially withheld those detailed messages, citing concerns about disclosing classified U.S. intelligence, but after Trump officials repeatedly blasted the reporting and claimed classified information was not circulated in the chat, the outlet said it wanted to make the messages public to let people decide for themselves.

Portnoy, in his video, sharply criticized Trump and his officials for insisting at first that the messages were not classified and then for dismissing the severity of the mistake.

Portnoy said as soon as Goldberg released the full text exchange, it became clear that, “Guess what? It’s super sensitive. It’s super classified.”

“It’s surreal that these guys added Jeffrey Goldberg to this group chat. I mean, they were talking about the attack, leading up to the attack, all the way to a couple hours — when they’re going to do it, the time, the weather, you name it. And if this information somehow got out to the Houthis — and I assume in situations like this, things move at the speed of light — lots of American soldiers could have died, lives in jeopardy,” Portnoy continued, describing the nature of the messages published Wednesday.

Portnoy described The Atlantic as “a magazine that basically hates Trump, hates the left, hates people like me,” but he shot back against people — especially in the Trump administration — seeking to discredit the reporting.

“I don’t care if you’re right, left … there’s nothing being made up here,” Portnoy said. “Jeffrey Goldberg is telling the truth. It’s obvious these texts are real. It’s obvious they’re classified. It’s obvious we gave away the strike information two hours before it happened. We are lucky it didn’t cause the death of American military members. Somebody has to go down for this.”

“This is a mistake. This isn’t a Barstool mistake where you let an idiot hang around,” he added. “This is a mistake that can’t happen twice. It cannot happen once, so you have to make a change and show it’ll never happen.”

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg praised Portnoy’s message on Wednesday, making a nod to the president’s former days as a reality television star, when he was known for his catchphrase, “You’re fired.”

“Dave is right on this. It’s not a left or right thing. This was a massive screwup and a real security failure,” Buttigieg said on X, in response to the video. “So why is the President, who used to fire people for fun on reality TV, not firing the people who made this mess?”

Updated at 3:23 p.m. EDT