President Donald Trump was not just upset that National Security Adviser Mike Waltz inadvertently added a journalist to a group chat where senior government officials discussed military plans.
The press bashing president was also agitated to learn that Waltz had The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s number in his phone to begin with, Politico reported.
Three sources familiar with the situation told the news outlet that Trump was suspicious to learn one of his top aides had the contact details of a journalist who had in recent years broken multiple notable stories seen as embarrassing to the president.
“The president was p---ed that Waltz could be so stupid,” a fourth person, who said Trump was displeased with the embarrassment brought about by the screwup, told Politico.
Trump has long expressed animosity towards the publication Goldberg leads, calling The Atlantic a “third rate” magazine with “absolutely no credibility” in a social media post last week. His particular ire at Goldberg has been fueled by his revelation in 2020 that Trump called fallen members of the military “suckers” and “losers” and spiraled over the years because Goldberg refused to bend to Trump’s denial of the revelation, which was confirmed by his former chief of staff, Marine four-star general John Kelly.
On Tuesday, Trump broke his silence on the Signal scandal to say at the White House, “The person that was on just happens to be a sleazebag, so maybe that’s just coincidence.”
An anonymous senior White House official told Fox News on Tuesday that Goldberg’s number was “added to a contact card by one of the Trump administration staffers” as an explanation for why it was in Waltz’s phone.
The official insisted that Waltz has never met or spoken to Goldberg.
Waltz then repeated that claim during an appearance on Fox News later in the evening in which he went to great lengths to follow Trump’s line. “I can tell you for 100 per cent, I don’t know this guy,” he told interviewer Laura Ingraham. “I know him by his horrible reputation and he really is the bottom scum of journalists.
“I know him in the sense that he hates the president. I don’t text him. He wasn’t on my phone.” He instead advanced a conspiracy theory which involved Goldberg somehow placing himself in Waltz’s phone—something Ingraham appeared skeptical of.
Goldberg has declined to speak in detail about his relationship with Waltz but told The Bulwark podcast that they had met at least twice and that he believed they “shared views” on some things.
Goldberg wrote in the first explosive report that revealed Waltz’s phone adventures gone wrong, that he withheld information that “could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East.”
The administration claimed the national security community and the media had exaggerated the seriousness of the information that was disclosed.
The White House stood by Waltz, Politico reported, after he and Trump smoothed over any frictions by Tuesday afternoon after speaking multiple times about the Atlantic story a day earlier.
The news outlet said that one of the Trump officials familiar with the situation noted Trump did not appear upset about any national security concerns since the operation that was discussed—an attack on Houthi militants in Yemen—was ultimately successful.
But on Wednesday, Goldberg published the full chat including screenshots which show Waltz was the administrator and damning texts from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying exactly when American F-18s would take off.
The response was again to go after Goldberg, claiming he “oversold” what he had originally reported.
As well as Vice President JD Vance, Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, attacked Goldberg, claiming that he had downgraded the leak from “war plans” to “attack plans.”
He told MSNBC’s Morning Joe, “I don’t even know what that means. They’re talking about attacking and killing terrorists using various weapons systems. She’s just playing some sort of weird semantic game.”
