National Security Adviser Michael Waltz Says He Built Signal Group Chat That Mistakenly Included The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg: “Embarrassing, Yes”

deadline.com:

National Security Adviser Michael Waltz said that he built a Signal group chat that mistakenly included a journalist, The Atlantic‘s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whose bombshell story detailed how top Trump advisers shared war plans on the texting platform.

In an interview with Fox News‘ Laura Ingraham, Waltz acknowledged that including Goldberg was in error and that the episode was “embarrassing, yes.” But he also tried to undermine Goldberg’s credibility, continuing the Trump administration’s effort to blame the media. “How did a Trump-hating editor of The Atlantic end up on your Signal chat?” Waltz then went into some of Goldberg’s past stories about Trump and questioned how “he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then gets sucked into this group.” “I don’t know this guy,” he said. “I know him by his horrible reputation, and he really is the bottom scum of journalists.” In his piece, Goldberg wrote that he got a request from Waltz to join the group on March 11.

A few days later, he got notice that he was to be included in “Houthi PC small group.” On it, Waltz and other Trump administration figures, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, messaged about planned attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen.

On March 15, Hegseth texted operational details about the coming strikes, including the exact time they would begin. When they did start at that time, Goldberg wrote that he then got the sense that the text chat was real.