President Donald Trump continued to throw his unequivocal support behind Mike Waltz on Tuesday, saying the embattled national security adviser didn’t need to apologize for inadvertently adding a reporter to an encrypted chat of top administration officials discussing war plans.
The president — in his first lengthy comments on the leak since The Atlantic published a bombshell Monday report about how its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been added to the Signal chat — called criticism against Waltz “unfair” and bashed Goldberg and his magazine for being “bad for the country.”
“He’s a very good man and he will continue to do a good job,” Trump said of Waltz, whose future in the administration has been called into question during a meeting with the president’s ambassador nominees at the White House.
Waltz, in his first chance to defend himself, promised he’d “never met, don’t know, never communicated with” the editor, whom the MAGA movement has long villainized for what they consider unfair liberal attacks. “There are a lot of journalists in this city who have made big names for themselves making up lies about this president,” he said.
Waltz said technical experts and legal teams are “looking at” the leak.
“Of course we’re going to keep everything as secure as possible,” he said. “No one on your national security team would ever put anyone in danger.”
Trump brushed aside questions about if someone would be fired for the mistake. “We’ve pretty much looked into it,” he said, “It’s pretty simple, to be honest, it’s just something that can happen.”
And asked repeatedly if he would change policies to bar national security officials from using Signal — an app experts, including Elon Musk, have said could pose security concerns — Trump said he would “certainly” look into it, but added that none of the information shared in the chat was classified.
“I don’t know anything about Signal,” Trump said, but later added that it “was the best technology for the moment.”
Still, Trump said he would have to ask the military if The Atlantic could make public information Goldberg said he was withholding in the interest of national security.
Trump has long been critical of the left-leaning magazine and Goldberg, whom he called a “sleezebag.” He “found it very boring and he left early,” Trump joked of the editor’s decision to leave the group chat after he had confirmed it was legitimate.
