Trump defends Mike Waltz over Signal texts

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he was not upset with national security advisor Michael Waltz after he reportedly added a journalist to a Signal 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.

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

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

Trump doubled down later Tuesday, telling reporters during a White House meeting that Waltz “will continue to do a good job” and that he does not need to apologize.

Asked if anyone would be fired over the incident, Trump said, “We’ve pretty much looked into it.”

Waltz, sitting near Trump in the meeting, denied knowing Goldberg and said that his team is “looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room.”

Both men lobbed insults at Goldberg, whose reporting — especially his 2020 article accusing Trump of calling slain U.S. soldiers “suckers” and “losers” — has long drawn the president’s ire.

Anna Bross, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic, said in a statement to NBC on Tuesday afternoon that the attacks “follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and others in power who are hostile to journalists and the First Amendment rights of all Americans.”

“Our journalists are continuing to fearlessly and independently report the truth in the public interest,” Bross 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.

Goldberg declined to reveal some of the contents of the texts, including the name of one person he described as an “active intelligence officer.” Goldberg also declined to detail a post from Hegseth that included what the journalist called “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information…