The Trump administration is currently facing questions about a story published Monday by a journalist at The Atlantic, who wrote that he had inadvertently been added to an unsecured group Signal message between high-ranking officials — including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — discussing plans for an upcoming military strike in Yemen.
YouGov polling conducted the day after this information was revealed found that most Americans — 74% — say the conduct by Trump administration officials is a very (53%) or somewhat (21%) serious problem. The leak of military operations information is viewed as a very or somewhat serious problem by 89% of Democrats, 72% of Independents, and 60% of Republicans.
More Americans are concerned about the Trump administration's military planning leak than the share who said they were concerned about Hillary Clinton using personal email to conduct government business as Secretary of State, according to surveys in 2015 and 2022. The last time YouGov asked about Clinton's private email server was in September 2022, at which point 62% of Americans, 40% of Democrats, and 88% of Republicans viewed it as a very or somewhat serious problem. And in March 2015 — the first time YouGov asked Americans to weigh in on the Clinton email scandal — even fewer viewed her behavior as a serious problem: 56% of Americans, 36% of Democrats, and 79% of Republicans.
Did the recent leak by Trump administration officials break the law? Americans are twice as likely to believe it broke the law (48%) than to believe it did not break the law (21%).
When we first asked a similar question about Clinton's behavior in 2015 — that is, whether she broke the law by using a personal email for work while she was Secretary of State — 41% of Americans believed she had broken the law and 28% believed she did not.
37% of Americans believe that the media is not making enough of a big deal about Trump administration officials inadvertently including a journalist in their unsecured group chat, while 22% think the media is making too much of a big deal, and 17% think reporting has been just about right.
Fewer say the media is making too big of a deal about the Trump administration scandal than said the same about the Clinton scandal in 2016 (22% vs. 37%). Currently, 42% of Republicans think the media is making too big of a deal about the Trump leak; in 2016, 6% said the same about Clinton's emails. Among Democrats, 9% think the media is making too big of a deal about the Trump leak, compared to 69% who thought so about Clinton's emails.
Related:
- How do Americans evaluate Trump's and Clinton's security violations?
- Most Americans say Trump taking classified materials to Florida is wrong
- As Clinton email controversy grows, public response becomes more partisan
— Carl Bialik contributed to this article
See the results:
- How serious of a problem do you think it is that senior members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, discussed highly sensitive military plans using an unclassified chat application in a group that inadvertently included a journalist?
- Do you think that senior members of the Trump administration broke the law when they discussed highly sensitive military plans using an unclassified chat application in a group that inadvertently included a journalist?
- Do you think the media coverage of senior members of the Trump administration using an unclassified chat application in a group that inadvertently included a journalist is...?
Methodology: The Daily Questions survey was conducted online on March 25, 2025 among 5,976 U.S. adults. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, U.S. census region, and political party. The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 2%.
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