Trump downplays national security team texting military operation plan on Signal as a minor ‘glitch’

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday downplayed the texting of sensitive plans for a military strike against Yemen’s Houthis this month to a group chat that included a journalist, saying it was “the only glitch in two months” of his administration as Democratic lawmakers heaped criticism on the administration for handling highly sensitive information carelessly.

Trump told NBC News that the lapse “turned out not to be a serious one,” and articulated his continued support for national security adviser Mike Waltz, who mistakenly added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the chain that included 18 senior administration officials discussing planning for the strike.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said in the NBC interview. The president also appeared to point blame on an unnamed Waltz aide for Goldberg being added to the chain. “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

Democratic lawmakers expressed outrage at the White House’s and senior administration officials' insistence that no classified information was shared. Senior administration officials have struggled to explain why the publicly available app was used to discuss such a delicate matter.

In the run-up to his 2016 election victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump urged criminal prosecution of the former secretary of state for communicating about classified information with her aides on a private email server she set up. The matter was investigated, but no charges were brought.

Trump also faced charges for mishandling classified information at his Mar-a-Lago resort following his first White House term. Those charges have been dismissed.

Trump administration officials were insistent the Democratic outrage about the latest matter was misplaced.

The White House called the uproar a “coordinated effort to distract from the successful actions taken by President Trump and his administration to make America’s enemies pay and keep Americans safe.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his first comments on the matter on Monday, attacked the journalist who received the messages, Goldberg, as “deceitful” and a “discredited so-called journalist” while alluding to previous critical reporting of Trump from the publication.

“Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters on Monday.

Box: What is Signal

Signal is an app that can be used for direct messaging and group chats as well as phone and video calls. It uses end-to-end encryption for its messaging and calling services that prevents third parties from spying. Messages and calls sent on Signal are scrambled; only the sender and recipient at each end will have the key to decipher them. Signal’s encryption protocol is open source, meaning that it’s freely available for anyone to inspect, use or modify. Government officials have used Signal for organizational purposes, such as scheduling meetings.