Trump Defends National Security Adviser Waltz After Signal Leak

The president also appeared to confirm the adviser’s staffer added The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat.

National security adviser Mike Waltz speaks during the daily press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on Feb. 20, 2025. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Tuesday defended national security adviser Mike Waltz after The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to a Signal chat with other high-level administration officials.

Trump said he still backs Waltz, a former Republican congressman, as some House Democrats suggested that administration officials be fired over the incident.

In response to questions about Waltz’s status inside the White House, Trump told NBC News in a phone interview on Tuesday that “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” adding that Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all.”

When asked how Goldberg was added to the chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

Trump also said he is confident in his staff and team, saying that Goldberg’s addition to the chat was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”

Some Democrats, however, suggested that administration officials should be punished or fired.

“We can’t chalk this up to a simple mistake—people should be fired for this,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) told Axios.

“This is an outrageous national security breach and heads should roll. We need a full investigation and hearing into this on the House Armed Services Committee, ASAP,” Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) wrote in a post on social media platform X, among many similar messages about the incident posted by Democrats.

Top House Democrats on the House Armed Services, Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight committees sent a letter on Monday to Trump administration officials. They wrote, “We are deeply troubled by the report in The Atlantic that you and other Trump Administration officials” spoke about military actions against the Houthis via Signal.

In an article published on Monday, Goldberg alleged that the Signal chat—which also included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—contained plans to strike the Houthis, a Yemen-based terrorist group that has been conducting attacks in the Red Sea for months.

Goldberg told MSNBC on Monday that the exchange in the chat allegedly contained a “minute-by-minute accounting of what was about to happen” shared by Hegseth in Yemen.

“This is their plan, and he was taking their plan and sharing it with a bunch of civilian leaders,” he said.

But Hegseth, speaking to reporters on Monday in Hawaii, panned Goldberg’s assertions and said that “nobody was texting war plans.” He also criticized Goldberg over previous reporting he’s done.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday echoed Hegseth’s statement that no plans for war were sent in the chat. She said that no classified material was disclosed.

“The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible,” Leavitt wrote.

The incident occurred months after the FBI and other federal agencies advised U.S. government officials and elected politicians to stop using text messaging and switch to platforms that use end-to-end encryption, including Signal, WhatsApp, and BrightChat, among several others.