Washington:
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday dismissed the accidental addition of a journalist to a group chat about Yemen air strikes as a “glitch” and stood by his top national security team despite the stunning breach.
Trump’s administration faces mounting pressure following a report on Monday by The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg about the conversation on the Signal messaging app.
The chat about attacks on Iran-backed Huthi rebels involved some of the administration’s most senior officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
Trump, who returned to the office in January, told broadcaster NBC in a phone interview that the breach was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”
The president added that Waltz, his top security official in the White House, “has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.”
Goldberg said he had received a connection request from a user identified as Michael Waltz on Signal. Trump said however that “it was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”
The White House had earlier pushed back more forcefully on day two of the scandal, after confirming the breach on Monday.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X on Tuesday that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed” and “no classified material was sent to the thread.”
She also attacked Goldberg as being “well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
Hegseth, a former Fox News host with no experience running a huge organization like the Pentagon, had also said late Monday that “nobody was texting war plans.”
But top Democrats have condemned the breach, saying it was potentially illegal and calling for an investigation to find out why officials were using a commercially available app for sensitive discussions.
Leavitt said the White House’s 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.”
The White House was also “looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread.”
‘European free-loading’
Trump announced the strikes on the Huthis on March 15, but Goldberg said he had hours of advance notice via the group chat.
Two other officials on the chat, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA chief John Ratcliffe, were due to speak to the US Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
The panel’s Republican chair, Senator Tom Cotton, told Fox and Friends on Tuesday that the group chat issue “will come up” at the hearing.
“John Ratcliffe, Tulsi Gabbard and the other leaders will have a chance to address it, but I do hope that we keep the focus on the decisive action that the president took against these outlaw rebels in Yemen,” Cotton said.
Journalist Goldberg said he was added to the group chat two days before the Yemen strikes, and received messages from other top government officials designating representatives who would work on the issue.
The leak could have been highly damaging if Goldberg had publicized details of the plan in advance, but he did not do so.
But the report did reveal details of what top White House officials think about key allies.
A person identified as Vance expressed doubts about carrying out the strikes, saying he hated “bailing Europe out again,” as countries there were more affected by Huthi attacks on shipping than the United States.
Contributors identified as Hegseth and Waltz both sent messages arguing only Washington had the capability to carry out the strikes, with the Pentagon chief saying he shared Vance’s “loathing of European free-loading” and calling the Europeans “pathetic.”
The Huthi rebels, who have controlled much of Yemen for more than a decade, are part of the “axis of resistance” of pro-Iran groups staunchly opposed to Israel and the United States.
They have launched scores of drone and missile attacks at ships passing Yemen in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden during the Gaza war, saying they were carried out in solidarity with Palestinians.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
