National Security Adviser Michael Waltz said that he built a group Signal chat that mistakenly included a journalist, The Atlantic‘s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whose bombshell story detailed how top Trump advisers shared war plans on the texting platform.
In an interview with Fox News‘ Laura Ingraham, Waltz acknowledged that including Goldberg was in error and that the episode was “embarrassing, yes.” But he also tried to undermine Goldberg’s credibility, continuing the Trump administration’s effort to blame the media.
“How did a Trump hating editor of The Atlantic end up on your Signal chat?”
Waltz then went into some of Goldberg’s past stories about Trump, and questioned how “he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then gets sucked into this group.”
“I don’t know this guy. I know him by his horrible reputation, and he really is the bottom scum of journalists,” he said.
In his piece, Goldberg wrote that he got a request from Waltz to join the group on March 11. A few days later, he got notice that he was to be included in “Houthi PC small group.” On it, Waltz and other Trump administration figures, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, messaged about planned attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen. On March 15, Hegseth texted operational details about the coming strikes, including the exact time they would begin. When they did start at that time, Goldberg wrote that he then got the sense that the text chat was real.
Ingraham pressed Waltz on how Goldberg ended up in the chat.
“A staffer wasn’t responsible and I take full responsibility,” Waltz said. “I built the group. My job is to make sure everything is coordinated.”
He added, “Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name, and then you have somebody else’s number?” He added, “You got somebody else’s number on someone else’s contact, so of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Now whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we’re trying to figure out.”
“But you’ve never talked to him before so how is the number on your phone?” Ingraham asked.
“Well, if you have somebody else’s contact and then somehow it gets sucked in,” Waltz said.
He said that another person was supposed to be on the chat, but he declined to identify the person.
Trump has expressed support for Waltz in the wake of the fallout. But Democrats want investigations, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries fired off a letter to the president calling for him to fire Hegseth. There also is a great deal of confusion over the White House assertion that classified information was not on the text chat, even though, according to Goldberg, it included the most sensitive details of the pending attacks.
In his story in The Atlantic, Goldberg did not share the details of the plans, writing that the “information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility.”
The Atlantic also issued a statement today responding to the Trump administration’s effort to discredit Goldberg.
“Attempts to disparage and discredit The Atlantic, our editor and our reporting follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and others in power who are hostile to journalists and the First Amendment rights of all Americans. Our journalists are continuing to fearlessly and independently report the truth in the public interest.”
