From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Trump says he won’t fire Mike Waltz for adding journalist to secret war chat: ‘The only glitch in 2 months’
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
US President Donald Trump tells NBC News that he will not fire his National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, after the senior aide added a journalist to a sensitive chat on a messaging app in which information on US military operations was shared.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” says Trump.
The president also blames one of Waltz’s staffers for adding The Atlantic chief editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat about US plan for strikes on the Houthis in Yemen.
The group, on the Signal messaging app, included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and 12 other officials.
Waltz has been a firm and outspoken backer of Israel throughout his career. He is seen as an Iran hawk, and represents a traditional, muscular Republican foreign policy approach, as opposed to an emerging isolationist wing in the current administration.
Trump also tells NBC that the slip-up had “no impact at all” on military operations against the Houthis. He says he has confidence in his team, with this being “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”
Trump and Waltz spoke yesterday, when Goldberg published the story, two officials tell NBC.
The Times of Israel Community.