Top Trump official recently attacked by MAGA gets blame for war plans blunder: CNN
A Trump official's account on the Signal messaging app has been tagged as the one that added a journalist to a highly sensitive war plans chat involving the bombing of Houthi rebels in Yemen, according to CNN's Jeff Zeleny.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, wrote in a shocking article of his inadvertent inclusion in a Signal messaging chat revealing war plans about an imminent strike on Yemen. Goldberg wrote that he believed top officials on the chat included National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard.
"Mike Waltz, who's the security advisor, is the one who apparently added Jeffrey Goldberg onto the thread, or someone using the Mike Waltz account," Zeleny reported Monday from the White House. "That is certainly going to be something for him to respond and answer to."
"He's, of course, a former Florida member of Congress. Many people in MAGA world are very suspicious of him anyway, so this will be very, very interesting to see the fallout from this, if there is any."
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Zeleny continued that the White House did not deny the content of Goldberg's story. He read what he called a "really extraordinary" statement from the National Security Council about the blunder.
"This thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials," Zeleny read.
He continued, "But in any other administration that I've covered — and this is the fifth president that I've covered — it's done in the situation room. It is done in classified channels. It is not done over Signal."
Zeleny said that Goldberg "did the administration somewhat of a favor by dropping out of the group chat as he reported, and by also not reporting many of the operational details that he said that he saw. So, the bottom line to all of this is, it offers a window — if it's all as it seems — it offers a very interesting window into how this administration is operating, or at least had operated. The White House chief of staff is weighing in at the end of it, congratulating everyone. At no point did anyone say, 'Hey, guys, we should sort of take this offline.'"