Trump reacts to new Atlantic messages: 'Really not a big deal'
President Trump on Wednesday shrugged off new reporting from The Atlantic highlighting messages from a Signal group in which administration officials discussed specific timing of an attack on Houthi rebels.
Trump was asked about the new development during an appearance on "The Vince Show" with Vince Coglianese.
“There weren’t details, and there was nothing in there that compromised. And it had no impact on the attack, which was very successful," Trump said.
“A thing like that — maybe Goldberg found a way," Trump continued, referring to Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic who was included in the chat by mistake. "Maybe there’s a staffer, maybe there’s a very innocent staffer, but we’ll get — I think we’ll get to the bottom of it very quickly, and it’s really not a big deal."
National security adviser Mike Waltz said on Fox News on Tuesday night that a staffer was not responsible for adding Goldberg to the group chat.
"Well, look, a staffer wasn't responsible," Waltz told Laura Ingraham, refuting a suggestion from the president. "And look, I take full responsibility. I built the group to make — my job is to make sure everything's coordinated."
The Atlantic on Wednesday morning published the Signal group chat messages among national security leaders, which show in full the internal discussions Goldberg described in a Monday article.
The published chat offers details about the attack in Yemen that the initial article did not contain, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sending a specific timeline of the airstrike and what weapons would be used ahead of the attack being carried out.
“The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions,” Goldberg and colleague Shane Harris wrote Wednesday.