National security adviser Mike Waltz acknowledged Tuesday evening that messages discussing an attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen that were reportedly leaked in a Signal chat including The Atlantic's editor in chief were "a mistake."
“We made a mistake, we’re moving forward, and we’re going to continue to knock it out of the park for this president,” Waltz told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on her show Tuesday.
“Look at what he’s gotten done in under two months. And I didn’t even get going on — on the economy, on trade," he added.
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg detailed in a report what he learned while having access to the Signal chat, which included top Trump administration officials like Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The news rattled Washington on Monday and raised questions about national security.
During the interview with Ingraham, Waltz questioned how Goldberg even gained access to the chat.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia, hoax, gone to just all kinds of lengths to lie and smear the president United States, and he’s the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then get sucked into this group,” Waltz told the host.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier Tuesday in a post on social platform X that “war plans” were not discussed in the chat, mirroring a similar comment from Hegseth.
“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” the Defense chief said after being asked about Goldberg’s access to the chat.
The Atlantic editor pushed back on that claim from Hegseth in an interview on CNN on Monday night, saying he “was texting war plans.”
“No, that’s a lie. He was texting war plans,” Goldberg responded. “He was texting attack plans. When targets were going to be targeted; how they were going to be targeted; who was at the targets; when the next sequence of attacks was happening.”
President Trump largely brushed off the apparent leak, saying issues often happen with modern technology. He also defended Waltz in the aftermath, saying his national security adviser was "doing his best."
Goldberg has suggested he's open to sharing more details from the exchange with the public.
