Waltz questions how Atlantic editor ‘somehow’ got ‘sucked into’ Signal chat

National security adviser Mike Waltz questioned how The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal group chat with national security officials who were communicating about a U.S. airstrike in Yemen targeting Houthi rebels earlier this month.

“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia, hoax, gone to just all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president United States, and he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then get sucked into this group,” Waltz said during a Tuesday evening appearance on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle.”

Throughout the interview, the national security adviser suggested Goldberg’s number was labeled under a different name in his contact list, which resulted in the journalist being added to the message chain.

“I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else,” Waltz told host Laura Ingraham. 

“Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean, is something we’re trying to figure out,” he added.

The senior-level Trump Cabinet member said he took “full responsibility” for the mistake and said Goldberg’s addition was not the fault of a staffer — as President Trump had floated as a possibility — while recognizing that the person he intended to add never joined the chat. Waltz declined to name the individual in question.

Both Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth allege no “classified information” or “war plans” were shared in the chat, contradicting The Atlantic’s reporting.

“That’s a lie. He was texting war plans,” Goldberg said during a Monday appearance on CNN. “He was texting attack plans. When targets were going to be targeted; how they were going to be targeted; who was at the targets; when the next sequence of attacks was happening.”

Even without direct knowledge of specific war strategy, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) mentioned that foreign adversaries Russia and China likely saw the contents of the chat due to Waltz’s trip abroad during communications. 

Despite criticism from lawmakers, the Trump administration has touted the strike’s success in Yemen and said it has full confidence in Waltz’s ability to lead national security efforts.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC’s Garrett Haake, later adding it was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”

Waltz said he would work to make sure future mistakes in regard to national security communication do not happen again.

“It’s embarrassing. Yes, we’re going to get to the bottom of it. I just talked to Elon on the way here. We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened. But I can tell you, I can tell you for 100 percent, I don’t know this guy,” Waltz told Fox News. 

“I know him by his horrible reputation, and he really is the bottom scum of journalists. And I know him in the sense that he hates the president, but I don’t text him. He wasn’t on my phone. And we’re going to figure out how this happened,” he added.