Donald Trump believes that a staffer for National Security Advisor Mike Waltz allowed reporter Jeffrey Goldberg onto an encrypted group chat that detailed the administration’s war plans. 

Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, made the jaw-dropping revelation on Monday that he found himself added to a conversation on Signal that included Waltz and 17 other staffers.

Trump has largely stood by Waltz and even suggested the security advisor would lead his own investigation into the incident, while calling The Atlantic’s Goldberg a ‘total sleazebag’ who had made up stories in the past. 

Speaking to Newsmax Tuesday, Trump attempted to explain how Goldberg was added to the secret conversation. 

‘What it was, we believe, is somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that worked with Mike Waltz, worked for Mike Waltz, at a lower level, had Goldberg’s number or call through the app, and somehow this guy ended up on the call,’ he said. 

Trump claimed that the chat ‘wasn’t classified, as I understand it’ and noted that the attack on the Houthis the group chat planned out was ‘a tremendous success.’

‘I can only go by what I’ve been told, I wasn’t involved in it but I feel very comfortable,’ Trump told Newsmax. 

Trump added that he was showing loyalty to his staffers as opposed to former administrations. 

He then claimed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney treated Scooter Libby ‘horribly’ after Libby was convicted in 2007 of perjury and making false statements for interfering with a special prosecutor investigation.

Trump told reporters at the White House Monday he hadn’t seen The Atlantic story: ‘I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic. It’s to me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business.’

When pressed about the Signal chat, Trump said: ‘It couldn’t have been very effective, because the attack was very effective. I can tell you that I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time.’

On Tuesday, Trump slammed Goldberg’s reputation as a journalist.

‘I happen to know, the guy’s a total sleazebag. The Atlantic, The Atlantic is a failed magazine. Does very, very poorly, nobody gives a damn about it. This gives it a little bit of a shot.’ 

He continued by claiming that The Atlantic ‘made up more stories’ and later said that Goldberg was ‘basically bad for the country.’

‘And it’s just a failing magazine and the public understands that,’ Trump said. 

He then turned his attention to Waltz, who was sitting alongside some of the president’s ambassador picks. 

‘He’s a very good man. That man is a very good man right there that you criticize so strongly,’ Trump said. ‘He’s a very good man and he will continue to do a good job.’

In an interview earlier Tuesday with NBC News, Trump suggested that it wasn’t Waltz but an unnamed aide who inadvertently added Goldberg to the group chat. 

During the ambassadors’ meeting, Trump said Waltz didn’t need to apologize. 

‘No, I don’t think he should apologize. I think he’s doing his best. It’s equipment and technology that’s not perfect, and probably he won’t be using it again, at least not in the near future,’ Trump said. 

Waltz started the chat which included users identified as Vice President Vance , Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a CIA representative, Trump adviser Stephen Miller and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. 

Longtime Washington DC journalist Goldberg was shocked to find himself part of what should have been a highly confidential conversation.  

‘It should go without saying—but I’ll say it anyway—that I have never been invited to a White House principals-committee meeting, and that, in my many years of reporting on national-security matters, I had never heard of one being convened over a commercial messaging app,’ he wrote in The Atlantic.

On the Bulwark podcast, Goldberg said his initial reaction to receiving the messages was, ‘if this is real, why the hell do I have this?’

Goldberg revealed that the chat also contained the name of a covert CIA agent.

‘I withheld her name – they named somebody who’s an active CIA officer in this thread which is on Signal – and I withheld it, I didn’t put it in the story, because she’s undercover,’ he said. 

The shocking story shows operational details were unwittingly revealed. Hegseth, a former Fox News host, is now under the microscope over the egregious failing. 

Goldberg noted that ‘Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted (him) the war plan at 11:44 a.m.’ The bombs started dropping in Yemen around 2 p.m.

While speaking with reporters in Hawaii, Hegseth claimed that Goldberg had not got hold of the confidential messages. 

‘You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,’ Hegseth said.

On the Bulwark podcast, Miller asked Goldberg whether he would consider publishing the messages to demonstrate the legitimacy of his claim. 

‘Maybe in the coming days, I’ll be able to let you know that, “OK, I have a plan to have this material vetted publicly,”‘ Goldberg said. 

‘But I’m not going to say that now, because there’s a lot of conversations that have to happen about that.’

Goldberg doubled down, saying the group chat messages included ‘who they were trying to kill in the next two hours’. He slammed Trump’s team as ‘defensive’. 

‘At moments like this, when they’re under pressure because they’ve been caught with their hand in the cookie jar or whatever, you know, they will just literally say anything to get out of the moment,’ Goldberg said. 

‘As much as I enjoy national security investigative reporting, I don’t need strike plans two hours before a launch,’ he added. 

‘That should not be coming into my phone. I mean, I take this stuff very, very seriously and I take the responsibility not to get Americans killed very, very seriously.’