Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the story “totally fake,” and his top spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said it’s “100% Fake News.” The department’s new Rapid Response account posted about it all afternoon.

The repeated rebuttals were not about the news that Hegseth shared details of an impending military operation in a group chat with his wife and brother on an unsecured platform. Nor was it about the ongoing campaign in Yemen, military recruitment, or the campaign to root out DEI from the Defense Department.