» Trump backs Waltz after journalist reveals Yemen strike chat

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President Donald Trump expressed confidence in Michael Waltz after the national security advisor included a journalist in a text group about plans for military strikes in Yemen, while the top two U.S. intelligence officials said no classified information had been shared.

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“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with NBC News.

Trump said the inclusion of Jeffrey Goldberg, the top editor of The Atlantic, in the text thread had “no impact at all” on the planning for the operation and cast the mishap as “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”

The president’s comments fit with a broader effort by the administration to downplay the stunning breach, which created a firestorm in Washington over the Trump team’s handling of sensitive information. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed” and “no classified material was sent to the thread.”

Goldberg recounted the incident in a story published Monday. The text group, which also included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others, discussed details of plans for an attack on Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

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Goldberg did not publish the actual plans in the article but wrote that Hegseth at one point shared “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen,” including targeting information and weapons specifications. The Trump team shared the plans on the encrypted messaging app Signal, which has a reputation for tight security but has not been authorized by the US government as a platform to disseminate classified information.

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe described the use of Signal as permissible for intelligence officials. He and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom were on the text chain, defended their participation and reiterated that no classified information was shared.

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Gabbard said the National Security Council was “reviewing all aspects of how this came to be, how the journalist was inadvertently added to the group chat and what occurred across the board.”

Asked how the Atlantic editor had been added to the text group, Trump suggested to NBC that one of Waltz’s aides was responsible.

“It was one of Michael’s people on the phone,” Trump said. “A staffer had his number on there.”

Democrats at the previously scheduled Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global security threats where Ratcliffe and Gabbard spoke were unconvinced, calling the incident a massive national security breach. Some vowed to get the full text exchange.

“If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired,” said Senator Mark Warner, the panel’s top Democrat. “This is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information. This is not a one-off or a first-time error.”

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Leavitt earlier Tuesday said that the “White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible.”

Goldberg said in a CNN interview Monday night that the group was “texting attack plans. When targets were going to be targeted, how they were going to be targeted, who was at the targets. When the next sequence of attacks were happening.”

“They were plans for the attack, and they were texted before the attack,” Goldberg said.

— With assistance from Natalia Drozdiak.

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