'He's a good man': Trump defends Mike Waltz saying he 'made a mistake' following group chat fiasco
25 March 2025, 13:58 | Updated: 25 March 2025, 20:06
Donald Trump has stood by Mike Waltz following an unprecedented group chat disaster that has sent shockwaves through Washington.
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The US president’s national security team - including vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Peter Hegseth, Marco Rubio and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard - used a group chat to discuss top secret plans for airstrikes on Yemen.
Waltz started the chat on Signal, a commercial encrypted messaging app - accidentally adding a journalist who saw their secret plans.
The jaw-dropping leak supposed that Waltz would be axed from Trump's top team, however, so far the President has stood by Waltz saying he's a "good man" and that he's "learned a lesson".
Prior, he said he was not aware of the security breach when questioned by a reporter, saying he was “not a big fan” of The Atlantic, describing it as a failing business.
One person close to the White House said: “Everyone in the White House can agree on one thing: Mike Waltz is a f---ing idiot.”
Several officials within the administration believe that Mr Waltz should be dismissed for his “recklessness”, according to Politico.
The decision will be made by Trump and will likely come within the next few days.
James dissects the moment Trump claimed ignorance over leaked messages
The group chat was confirmed as being authentic by Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
He told The Atlantic: “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.
“The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.
"The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
Goldberg said he voluntarily left the thread, and also stopped short of revealing the contents of some of the messages as they could come to the advantage of enemies of the US.
Goldberg said the messages in the chat, named ‘Houthi PC Small Group’ included “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.”
He said that “Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 am” The US began bombing Yemen around 2 pm the same day.
“It should go without saying—but I'll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app,” he wrote in The Atlantic.
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Trump told reporters at the White House that he hadn't seen The Atlantic story: “I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of the Atlantic. It's to me, it's a magazine that's going out of business.
Pressed about the leak, he said: “It couldn't have been very effective, because the attack was very effective. I can tell you that I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the first time.”
The security breach is likely to put the Trump administration under further pressure about their handling of classified information and intelligence.
At one point, Hegseth gloats about guaranteeing ‘100% OPSEC - operations security’, while a well-known journalist reads on.
The blunder has been described by pundits across the US as unprecedented.
The group message chain included a number of messages denigrating Europe, which, according to the Trump administration, benefits economically from the US Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.
Vance addressed a message to Hegseth, saying: ‘if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again."
“The user identified as Hegseth responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this.
“Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”
The US is not the only nation protecting the shipping lanes in the Red Sea, however, as a task force of more than 20 countries including Britain are involved in the operation targeting the Houthis.
Europe branded 'pathetic freeloaders' by top US officials | LBC callers react
