President Trump downplayed the Signal leak Tuesday, saying it’s “one of the prices you pay” when not everyone is together in a room and defended National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
Speaking with reporters in a room surrounded by his U.S. ambassadors, Mr. Trump said he didn’t “know anything about Signal” when asked whether he would consider banning the use of the encrypted messaging service to communicate with senior officials.
“I wasn’t involved in this, but I just heard about it, and I hear it’s used by a lot of groups. It’s used by the media a lot. It’s used by a lot of the military, and I think, successfully, but sometimes somebody can get onto those things,” he said.
“That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on, which is always the best, frankly,” he said.
Mr. Trump said investigators would look into how Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine, was added to a Signal group chat in which high-level officials were discussing plans to launch airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen.
“They’ve made a big deal out of this because we’ve had two perfect months,” he said.
“But the main thing was, nothing happened. The attack was totally successful,” the president said Tuesday. “This was not classified. Now if it’s classified information, it’s probably a little bit different.”
Mr. Trump said the criticism that Mr. Waltz received was “very unfair.”
“He’s a good person. The person that was on just happens to be a sleaze bag, so maybe that’s just coincidence,” he said.
When asked whether Mr. Waltz should apologize, the president said, “No, I don’t think he should apologize. I think he’s doing his best.”
He said in the future they may be “forced to use it. But generally speaking, I think we probably won’t be using it very much.”
In the text chain between officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance and Mr. Waltz, among others, Mr. Vance was hesitant on the plans, saying to Mr. Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”
Mr. Hegseth then replied: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”
Mr. Trump said Tuesday he agrees with the freeloading comments.
“The European Union has been absolutely terrible to us,” he said, before going off on NATO and the money the U.S. has spent helping Ukraine fight its war with Russia.
