National Security Advisor Mike Waltz appeared on Fox News Tuesday evening and denied ever having the phone number for The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
On Monday, Goldberg published a piece and said he had been accidentally added to a group chat on the secure messaging platform Signal, where select Trump cabinet members discussed bombing the Houthis. When asked by Fox host Laura Ingraham on “The Ingraham Angle” about the issue, Waltz talked about what he said were the Trump administration’s accomplishments before he denied knowing Goldberg personally.
“It’s embarrassing, yes. We’re gonna get to the bottom of it. I just talked to Elon [Musk] on the way here. We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened, but I can tell you for 100%, I don’t know this guy,” Waltz said. “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, but I don’t text him. He wasn’t on my phone, and we’re gonna figure out how this happened,” Waltz added.
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Ingraham then asked if the team knew “what staffer is responsible” for the mix-up. Waltz pushed back and took full responsibility for building the group chat that contained members like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and Vice President JD Vance.
“I don’t mean to be pedantic here, but how did the number get in the group chat?” Ingraham asked.
“Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else’s number?” Waltz asked. “You’ve got somebody else’s number on someone else’s contact. So, of course, I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we’re trying to figure out.”
Following the release of Goldberg’s report, the White House confirmed to the Daily Caller the existence of the group chat and that the war plans had been accidentally leaked to The Atlantic.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were subsequently asked about the chat group during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. They said no classified information was leaked. Democrat Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, however, pressed them to share the chat information with the committee, as Goldberg notably did not publish the full chat thread.
The Atlantic did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Fox News/”The Ingraham Angle”)
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