Trump defends national security chief Waltz after Signal texts about Houthi strike sent to reporter

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was not upset with national security advisor Michael Waltz after he reportedly added a journalist to a text thread in which top officials discussed pending military strikes.

"Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he's a good man," Trump told NBC News in a phone call when asked if he still had confidence in his top national security aide.

Asked how Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, came to be included in a text thread that included Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump blamed a lower-level staffer.

"It was one of Michael's people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there," the president said.

Goldberg revealed in a bombshell article Monday that his number on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, had been added on March 13 to a chat thread called the "Houthi PC small group."

The thread showed participants discussing and debating plans related to U.S. bombing attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen, which were ultimately carried out on March 15.

The participants' names appeared to match those of top-level Trump administration officials, including Vance, Hegseth and Waltz, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

A national security council spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the Signal group to The Atlantic, saying, "We are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain."

But Trump and his officials have still pushed back on the story, disputing Goldberg's characterization of the thread as "war plans" and launching personal attacks on Goldberg himself.

"Nobody was texting war plans. And that's all I have to say about that," Hegseth said Monday afternoon.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the claim that "no 'war plans' were discussed," and denied that any classified material was sent to the Signal thread.

Goldberg responded bluntly. "That's a lie. He was texting war plans, he was texting attack plans," he said in a CNN interview Monday night.

Gabbard and Ratcliffe are testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday morning for the annual "Worldwide Threats" hearing.

At the start of that hearing, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Intelligence panel's ranking member, held up the Atlantic story as the latest example of what he called "sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior" by the Trump administration.

"This is not a one off," he said, adding that other military of intelligence officers "would be fired" for similar conduct.

Criticism over the texting controversy was not limited to Democrats.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said "that's baloney" when asked by reporters about the White House's denial that the thread with Goldberg involved war plans.

"Just be honest and own up to it," Bacon said, adding, "It's a fact" that classified information was included.

"So it's pretty, I think it's pretty clear," he said.

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