President Donald Trump didn’t know what Signal was.
Shortly before facing reporters yesterday afternoon, Trump was told by aides about a story publishing in The Atlantic disclosing that the magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been accidentally added to a group chat on the messaging app Signal, two White House officials told me on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Goldberg was still in the chat when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared plans for a military strike against the Houthis in Yemen.
Trump—who is famously reluctant to use any electronic messaging, and who started sending the occasional text message only during his last campaign—had not heard of the encrypted app and opted against weighing in when he spoke with the press, the officials said. Instead, Trump insisted he knew little about the matter while taking a swipe at Goldberg and this publication.
But since then, the two officials and an outside adviser told me, the president has grown frustrated at the incident’s sloppiness and the negative headlines it has spawned—including from a contentious congressional hearing today—even as he and his allies have focused on attacking the media rather than showing outward concern for the apparent flagrant national-security breach.
“That’s an app that a lot of people use. And somebody got on. I happen to know the guy is a total sleazebag. The Atlantic is a failed magazine, does very, very poorly. Nobody gives a damn about it,” Trump said to reporters today at the White House.
Trump said that his team “would take a look at” the security of Signal but did not commit to banning its use, instead declaring that “our national security now is stronger than it’s ever been.”
The president’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said he is investigating how a journalist was added to the chat group. (The transcript of the Signal chat shows that Waltz added Goldberg.)
The report has rippled across Washington, as Democrats demand investigations into the security lapse while Republicans and the White House has tried to downplay the breach. Trump was, of course, elected in 2016 with a campaign that was in part centered on the handling of sensitive materials by his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and his administration has pledged to sharply crack down on leaks to the media. Yet it tried to shift blame and publicly shrug off one of the most significant blunders in decades.
Goldberg wrote yesterday that he watched as the chat’s participants—including Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Vice President J. D. Vance—discussed details of an imminent attack against Houthi rebels. Republicans, including Trump, denied that the chats contained classified information.
Trump has indicated to advisers that he wanted to watch how the story played out in the media in the days ahead but instructed them to defend those involved. A familiar playbook was then enacted by those in the administration: Attack the source. Hegseth fired the opening volleys last night after landing in Hawaii, as he tried to discredit Goldberg, a journalist Trump has previously attacked, while admitting little wrongdoing. Trump told aides he appreciated Hegseth’s blustery defense. The president spoke with his national security adviser late last night about the incident and this morning told NBC in a brief interview that “Waltz has learned a lesson and he’s a good man.”
But for some within the West Wing, there was a sense of a serious mistake. Many in the administration recall the sloppiness and chaos of Trump’s first term and have prided themselves on conducting a smoother and more professional operation so far this time around. The episode with the group chat evoked the disorganization of Trump 1.0, officials said. When Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X this morning to downplay the contents of the thread, some Trump allies privately expressed fear that she was opening up the White House to further problems if the facts did not ultimately match her characterization. There was less immediate scrutiny of Hegseth among Trump allies; the defense secretary resonates with the president’s base in a way that Waltz does not. Still, the two officials told me that—unless the story truly snowballs in the days ahead—Trump is unlikely to push out his national security adviser. Optics, and not national security, are paramount in Trump’s reasoning.
“The last thing he wants to do is give you guys [in the media] a scalp,” one of the officials said.
Yet the image-conscious president was not happy with how the story is playing out on television; it’s the rare negative story that has broken through, at least somewhat, even on conservative-leaning outlets.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, delivered uneven and at times contradictory performances this morning when they testified before Congress that the Signal chat didn’t include classified information. Democratic senators challenged that view.
“This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly toward classified information,” said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who serves as the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Gabbard initially declined to acknowledge that she had participated in the Signal chat, only to later say that she was traveling abroad during the period in which the chat occurred. Ratcliffe confirmed that he had participated but then said he didn’t remember any discussion of “weapons packages” or other operational details that were reported. He also said that the chat’s contents shouldn’t be considered to be secret because Hegseth has the authority to determine whether Defense Department information is classified and he has insisted it wasn’t.
The Signal discussion lasted days and included specific information about timing, weapons, and targets. Signal, a nongovernmental messaging service, is encrypted, but the app and nongovernment cellphones are vulnerable to hacking. A memo obtained by The Atlantic warning about Signal’s vulnerabilities was circulated to former CIA officers this month, just days before the Houthi PC Small Group was formed.
“This is not a trivial matter—using a commercial messaging app like Signal to discuss sensitive national-security operations is sloppy, inappropriate, and puts our troops at risk,” Chris Meagher, a former top Pentagon spokesperson in the Biden administration, told me. “These discussions should take place in either secure spaces or on secure devices. There are no other options.”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The messages also revealed that Vance was skeptical of the need to strike the Houthis to protect international shipping, because European nations relied much more on trade through the Red Sea than the U.S. does. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance wrote. “I just hate bailing Europe out again.”
One of the White House officials told me that Trump has not spoken to Vance about the vice president’s second-guessing. Vance later moved to support the attacks, writing in the chain, “I will say a prayer for victory.”
Two other administration officials responded with prayer emojis.
