President Donald Trump swatted down CNN’s Kaitlan Collins when when she pressed him on the stunning disclosure that his security team convened on Signal to discuss a coming military operation.

The network’s White House reporter, who has clashed with Trump in the past, tried to question him during a White House meeting with U.S. ambassadors. ‘Excuse me – I didn’t pick you,’ Trump scolded her after she tried to question her, indicating he had called on someone else.

She had been trying to ask Trump about his statement that his national security advisor, Mike Waltz, had ‘learned a lesson’ from the experience. Although Trump shunned her, he did come back to Collins, during a televised meeting where he made a series of eyebrow raising statements about the incident, but said Waltz is ‘doing his best.’

‘We’ll have to find some other form of device,’ Trump acknowledged, when pressed on how his security team was using the commercial app, after journalist Jeffrey Goldberg penned a stunning piece about being inadvertently included on the ‘war plans’ group chat.

‘It wasn’t classified information. This was not classified,’ Trump said, when pressed on the contents of the conversations. But he also repeatedly acknowledged that such operations should be discussed in person, in a secure environment, when possible.

He even admitted such unsecure conversations could be penetrated. ‘Sometimes somebody can get onto those things that’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on,’ Trump said.

‘People do get into those lines,’ he said. He spoke of the convenience of the app, saying ‘everybody else seems to be using it’ but expressed his preference for conducting such business in a room with ‘solid lead walls and a lead ceiling and a lead floor.’

An investigation is ongoing. Waltz, whose office has been identified with making the error, will be in charge. ‘I’ve asked you to immediately study that and find out,’ Trump told him. Trump also repeatedly made two points when pressed on the group chat, attacking the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, and touting the military operation the group had been discussing, the attack on the Houthis.

‘The guy’s a total sleazebag,’ Trump said of Goldberg. Although Trump called for giving Waltz a break, he was less forgiving toward political rival Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign amid her email scandal. He said she should be put in jail.

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