President Donald Trump addresses the media during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 13, 2025. Seated from left to right are Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
Mandel Ngan | Afp | Getty Images
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump expressed that he was not upset with National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, following reports that a journalist was added to a text thread where high-ranking officials discussed impending military actions.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview when asked about his confidence in his national security advisor.
When questioned about how Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic, became part of a text thread with Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump attributed the mishap to a junior staff member.
“It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there,” the president explained.
Goldberg disclosed in a shocking article on Monday that his Signal number—an encrypted messaging app—had been incorporated into a chat thread labeled “Houthi PC small group” on March 13.
The thread involved participants debating and strategizing U.S. bombing operations against Houthi targets in Yemen, which were carried out on March 15.
The names of the participants seemed to correspond with high-ranking officials from the Trump administration, including Vance, Hegseth, and Waltz, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
A spokesperson from the National Security Council confirmed the legitimacy of the Signal group to The Atlantic, stating, “We are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
Meanwhile, Trump and his administration have challenged the narrative, disputing Goldberg’s description of the thread as “war plans” and launching personal attacks against him.
“Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth remarked on Monday afternoon.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt supported this assertion, claiming that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed,” and denied that any classified information was communicated through the Signal thread.
Goldberg responded assertively: “That’s a lie. He was texting war plans, he was texting attack plans,” he stated during a UJ interview on Monday night.
Gabbard and Ratcliffe are scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday morning during the annual “Worldwide Threats” hearing, which is set to commence at 10 a.m. ET.
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