Yuri Kobzar21:47, 27.03.25

It was Waltz who accidentally added the journalist to a secret chat, and then claimed that he had never met the journalist in person.

After the scandal involving the leak of top US officials’ secret correspondence on the Signal messenger, the belief prevailed among White House officials that Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who was responsible for the mistake, is an “idiot.” This was stated in an interview with the BBC by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, who was the one who accidentally got into the secret chat.

It was Waltz who added Goldberg to a chat room where US leaders were discussing specific plans for strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. When Goldberg released screenshots of the chat room, Waltz admitted that he had added the journalist to the chat room, but denied knowing the person at all. 

However, Goldberg claims to have met with Waltz in person several times. So that explains how the US presidential advisor got the journalist’s phone number, without which he would not have been able to be added to the Signal chat.

Waltz himself even asked Elon Musk to find out how he got Goldberg’s contact. The journalist openly ridiculed the situation, saying it was a job for “eight-year-olds,” not a tech mogul.

After The Atlantic editor-in-chief released much of the classified correspondence, both President Trump and his adviser, Waltz, lashed out at the journalist with personal insults. And while Trump appears to have no plans to punish his subordinate for what appears to be a blunder of such magnitude, many in the White House believe that Waltz was guilty of an unforgivable error.

“There’s a widespread feeling in the White House that Mike Waltz is an idiot. That’s what they call him, and a lot of people in the system, in the national security system, can’t believe that he, I don’t know, let’s call it poor phone hygiene, did this,” Goldberg says.

The journalist also emphasized that none of the 17 other participants noticed his presence in the secret chat. Goldberg himself left the chat when he realized that this was not a prank, but really the correspondence of the first persons of the state, and he was not supposed to monitor it.

(C)UNIAN 2025