US President Donald Trump met with NATO Executive Director Mark Latte at the White House Oval Office in Washington, DC on March 13, 2025, and sat on L-R with Secretary of Defense JD Vance and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
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President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was not angry with national security adviser Michael Waltz.
“Michael Waltz learned the lessons and he’s a good guy,” Trump told NBC News over the phone.
Trump denounced lower-level staff when asked how Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg became included in a text thread that included Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses.
“It was one of the people at Michael on the phone. The staff had his number there,” the president said.
Trump doubled over the second half of Tuesday, telling reporters during a White House meeting that Waltz “continues to do a good job” and that he doesn’t need to apologise.
Asked if anyone would be fired for the incident, Trump said, “We’ve mostly considered that.”
Waltz, sitting near Trump at the meeting, denied knowing Goldberg, saying his team is “finding and reviewing how he entered this room.”
Both men blew the humiliation away in Goldberg. That report, particularly his 2020 article, which accused Trump of calling the murdered US troops “suckers” and “losers,” has long drawn the president’s rage.
“The attack follows an obvious playbook by “first amendment rights for elected officials and all Americans hostile to journalists,” Atlantic spokesperson Anna Bross said in a statement to NBC Tuesday afternoon.
“Our journalists continue to boldly and independently report the truth of the public interest,” Bross said.
Goldberg revealed in an article in Bombshell on Monday that his number on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, was added to a chat thread called “Houthi PC Small Group” on March 13th.
The thread showed participants discussing and debating plans related to the US bombing attack on Yemen’s Houthi target. This was finally held on March 15th.
Participants’ names appeared to coincide with Secretary Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence, Director of Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as names from top-level Trump administration officials such as Vance, Hegseth and Waltz.
Goldberg refused to reveal some of the contents of the text, including the name of one person he described as an “active intelligence officer.” Goldberg also declined to detail the post from Hegses, including what journalists call “operational details of upcoming strikes in Yemen, including information on targets, weapons deployed by the US, and attack sequences.”
A national security council spokesperson confirmed the reliability of the signal group with the Atlantic, saying it is “reviewing how careless numbers have been added to the chain.”
(LR) FBI Director Kash Patel. Tarshi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence. CIA director John Ratcliffe arrives to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on “global threats” in Capitol Hill, Washington, DC on March 25, 2025.
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During the annual hearing of global threats in front of the Senate Intelligence Email Committee on Tuesday morning, Gabbard said when Virginia Sen. Mark Warner was actively asked by the panel’s top Democrats, she “is not going to go into the details.”
Both Gabbard and Ratcliffe testified that the signal text did not contain classified information.
Warner urged officials to share texts with the committee after denounced the incident as the latest example of “sloppy, careless and incompetent behaviour” by the Trump administration.
Gabbard and Ratcliffe did not commit to doing so. But D-ore. When Sen. Ron Wyden of the group, asked whether he would work with the audit to ensure he was not involved in other group chats containing the classified information, Gabbard said there was “no objection.”
Jeffrey Goldberg will speak on stage during the “Power of Power” panel at the Atlantic Festival 2024, held in Washington, DC on September 19, 2024.
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Ratcliffe asked the same question, saying, “We will adhere to the follow-up that the National Security Council believes is appropriate.”
D-Ga. When asked by Senator Jon Ossoff of the company, Ratcliffe said “no” if he agreed that the case was a “big mistake.”
Trump and his officials pushed back the story, challenging Goldberg’s thread’s characterization as a “war plan” and launched a personal attack on Goldberg himself.
“No one texted the war plan, and that’s all I have to say about it,” Heggs said Monday afternoon.
Goldberg replied honestly. “That’s a lie. He was texting the war plan, he was texting the attack plan,” he said of Hegses in a CNN interview Monday night.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated the allegations that the “No ‘War Plan” was discussed, denying that the classified material was sent to a signal thread.
In a post on X late Tuesday morning, Leavitt said Trump “lives confidence in his national security team, including Mike Waltz.”
Criticism of the texting controversy was not confined to Democrats.
R-Neb. “It’s Baronie,” Rep. Don Bacon said when asked by reporters about the White House’s denial that the thread with Goldberg had something to do with war planning.
“Be honest, do it yourself,” Bacon said, adding that it contains information that is classified as “it’s true.”
“I think that’s pretty clear,” he said.
