But that defense of the administration has withered under scrutiny in the intervening weeks. Any tactical victory achieved during the initial March 15 attack has not fulfilled the intended U.S. goal of curbing Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, a major international trade route.

When The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he had been inadvertently added to a Signal group chat where Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and other senior officials discussed a planned attack on the Houthis, the MAGA commentariat scrambled to respond.

Trump’s media allies lashed out at Goldberg and sought to downplay the importance of his reporting, even as stunned experts pointed out that Hegseth’s sharing the exact strike times and the weapons packages to be used hours before their deployment over an insecure channel put U.S. forces at risk.

As part of their PR strategy, Trump’s Fox News propagandists instead touted the effectiveness of the strike on the Houthis — then stopped talking about the campaign. But two weeks after Goldberg published the administration’s messages, and nearly a month after the first bombs fell, U.S. forces are still embroiled in an open-ended air war in Yemen that has reportedly cost nearly $1 billion, with no conclusion in sight.

Trump, Fox hosts declare U.S. strikes on Houthis “successful”

Trump sought to downplay the scandal, in part by driving attention toward the purportedly effective strikes he claimed had received insufficient coverage.

“The main thing was nothing happened, the attack was totally successful,” the president told reporters on the afternoon of March 25. He said during a media availability the next day the press coverage of the Signal saga was “a witch hunt,” adding that “the attacks were unbelievably successful, and that’s ultimately what you should be talking about."

Hannity, the Fox star and Trump political operative, apparently heard his music. He lashed out at “the state-run legacy media mob” on his March 25 broadcast, claiming that “perhaps most importantly, something they'll never think about, the military mission thankfully was a complete success.”

Hannity added that “the outrage from the left over a reporter accidentally being added — a one-off, one-time, minor accident that did not impact the operation — to a White House group chat about a successful strike on Yemen is just a political show” by people who “want to smear Donald Trump and the White House” and claim “any political scalp they can get.”

“The mission in Yemen was operationally a complete success,” the Fox host said the next night. “It can’t get any more successful.”

After airing footage of Trump saying that “the result” of the strikes “is unbelievable” because the Houthis now “want to negotiate peace,” Hannity asked viewers, “Why focus on the successful military operation when you can trash Donald Trump and people that work for him?”

Several of Hannity’s colleagues followed suit over the same two-day period.

“What the media will not and cannot address is that the mission to destroy key Houthi targets was itself a huge success,” claimed Fox host Laura Ingraham. “So I think we should judge a policy by its outcome, not by an unintended error in transmission.”

“The strikes were successful,” according to Fox host Jeanine Pirro.

“The mission was a success,” said Fox host Jesse Watters.

“Nothing happened other than a successful military operation was executed,” offered Fox host Will Cain, adding that those who argue otherwise are “playing politics, not principles.”

And with that, they declared the Signalgate story was over — and stopped discussing the U.S. military strikes in Yemen on their shows.

None of the hosts mentioned the conflict between March 27 and April 2, when Hannity asserted that “just recently, when European trade routes were blocked off by the Houthi rebels, well, we were the ones that delivered a massive blow to Iran's proxy. Looks like we might be giving another one.”

None of them have mentioned it since.*

In Yemen, an open-ended U.S. air war without a plan for victory

Recent reporting contradicts Trump’s Fox-echoed claims of success in Yemen, finding instead that the U.S. is engaged in a costly fight that has had little impact on Houthi attacks and with little apparent strategy for victory. “In closed briefings in recent days, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that there has been only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers, according to congressional aides and allies,” The New York Times reported on April 4.

The officials briefed on confidential damage assessments say the bombing is consistently heavier than strikes conducted by the Biden administration, and much bigger than what the Defense Department has publicly described.

But Houthi fighters, known for their resiliency, have reinforced many of their bunkers and other targeted sites, frustrating the Americans’ ability to disrupt the militia’s missile attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea, according to three congressional and allied officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

According to the Times’ sources, the “total cost could be well over $1 billion by next week,” and the military is going through munitions so quickly that “some Pentagon contingency planners are growing concerned about overall Navy stocks.” CNN likewise reported on April 7 that “the senior echelon” of the Houthis’ “military and political leadership appears intact,” and the group continues to fire ballistic missiles at U.S. targets in the region.

“The Houthis have been bombed tens of thousands of times over the past decade and remain undeterred,” Yemen expert Elisabeth Kendall told CNN. “So one is left thinking that the bombing is largely performative: let’s show the world - we’ll do it because we can.”

*Based on a Media Matters review of Fox transcripts in the Nexis database for references to “Yemen” or “Houthi.”