U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, is downplaying the texting of attack plans to a group chat that included a journalist, stating “no Americans died from this.”

Top national security officials texted plans for military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in the secure messaging app Signal nearly two hours before the attacks occurred. The group chat was set up by national security adviser Mike Waltz, who mistakenly added The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the chain that included 18 senior administration officials.

The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Goldberg reported.

Cassidy was not included in the chat.

“The president has signaled this shouldn’t have been done, but the president stands behind his team,” Cassidy said Tuesday during a conference call with Louisiana journalists. “It was a mistake they made and he expects them to learn from that mistake.”

Cassidy said if an American had died in the attack, “maybe somebody gets fired.”

“That’s what the American people did to Joe Biden after his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, but this is something we will take as a learning experience and I expect this to, frankly, not happen again,” Cassidy said.

The senator said one of the reasons the Signal app was being used was because “the Chinese have been very aggressive about attempting to intercept texting messages between government officials so it was out of an abundance of caution that had them doing this type of chat.”

“I think it’s better to say, ‘Hey, can you do it better next time? We know that you will and don’t let it happen again,” he said.

Foreign aid

The United States Agency for International Development was created in 1961. Until recently, it funded health and humanitarian aid programs in more than 130 countries. The Department of Government Efficiency has cut 83 percent of USAID contracts, shifting the remaining programs under the State Department.

“In his address to Congress, President Trump emphasized — rightfully so — (that the program) wasted money on things that were more related to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and a woke culture agenda than was to advancing U.S. interests. That said, some of the things we do with foreign aid is to push back on China,” Cassidy said. “China is attempting to come into the Caribbean — they want the Caribbean to be a Chinese lake — and some of what they’re doing is going into Latin America where they are parlaying their version of foreign aid in order to get concessions for things like natural minerals.”

Cassidy said the U.S. wants its foreign aid to push back on that type of Chinese foreign aid.

“How do we go to Africa and benefit the Africans in such a way that when it comes to competing for natural resources that we need and they have that they look upon the United States as a better partner that they look upon the Chinese?” he said. “I’m all for those types of programs. I’d rather support our interests worldwide using that sort of program than having to use the military.”

Cassidy said a program created by former President George W. Bush used foreign aid to combat HIV in Africa.

“It has brought us incredible benefits as a country in terms of building goodwill among those nations and I’m told those programs being run by the Centers for Disease Control are still running very well,” he said. “I know the Trump administration is trying to get some of the programs that had been terminated back up and running so that they can continue to work well.”

He said the Trump administration “is clearly differentiating between these sorts of programs that fill the goal and those with a woke agenda, pushing woke values on traditional-value countries that frankly didn’t want them but nonetheless the money was flowing in.”