President Trump on Tuesday said he still has confidence in National Security Adviser Mike Waltz after a snafu in which an Atlantic editor was added to a group text where high-level administration officials discussed plans to launch airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with NBC News.
Mr. Trump stressed that the presence of Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief at the outlet, in the chat “had no impact at all” on the March 15 bombing of the Houthis.
When pressed about whether he was frustrated about the media’s focus on the story, Mr. Trump responded that it was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday downplayed the significance of Mr. Goldberg being included in the group chat, saying that neither classified materials nor “war plans” were discussed in the Signal chat. She repeated that the White House is looking into how Mr. Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread.
“Thanks to the strong and decisive leadership of President Trump and everyone in the group, the Houthi strikes were successful and effective. Terrorists were killed, and that’s what matters most to President Trump,” she wrote on X.
In a follow-up post, Ms. Leavitt reaffirmed that the president still has confidence in Mr. Waltz and pushed back on stories saying Mr. Trump is frustrated with his national security adviser. She said those stories were “driven by anonymous sources who clearly do not speak to the president and written by reporters who are thirsty for a ’scoop.’”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, reiterated the White House’s position that classified materials weren’t shared in the group chat, but acknowledged that it “was a mistake and a serious one.”
“Look, they’ve acknowledged that there was an error, and they’re correcting it,” Mr. Johnson said. “And I would have asked the same thing of the Biden administration.”
“I don’t think anyone should have lost their job over that because an errant number found its way onto a dialogue between leaders,” he said. “It’s a mistake, but we got to correct it going forward.”
When pressed on whether the mistake was using Signal to discuss war plans or adding Mr. Goldberg to the group chat, the speaker said he was not “in a position to determine whether that’s appropriate or not” and defended Mr. Waltz, who has said he was “born for the job” of national security adviser.
Another House Republican said he’s skeptical of the White House’s explanation and insistence that war plans weren’t discussed in the chat.
“That’s baloney,” said Rep. Don Bacon, Nebraska Republican and member of the House Armed Services Committee.
“Just be honest and own up to it,” he said, adding that the committee may hold a hearing on the matter.
The defense of Mr. Waltz came in response to an article published Monday by Mr. Goldberg, a veteran national security and foreign affairs journalist. In his article, the editor said he was added to a group chat called “Houthi PC small group” on March 13 via Signal, an encrypted messaging service widely believed to be more secure than other commercial texting applications.
Mr. Goldberg reported that as part of the text chain, he received a series of messages on Signal about the strike. Other participants appeared to include Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliff and other senior aides.
Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said the message in Mr. Goldberg’s article “appears to be authentic” and administration officials were “reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
