(AFP) – US President Donald Trump downplayed a growing scandal Tuesday after a journalist was accidentally added to a group chat about air strikes on Yemen, denying any classified information was shared and defending a top aide over the breach. Trump said he would “look into” the use of the Signal app as he put on a united front at a meeting with US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who inadvertently included The Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg in the conversation of top national security officials.
As Democrats scented blood for perhaps the first time since the Republican returned to power in January, Trump doubled down by attacking Goldberg as a “sleazebag” and said “nobody gives a damn” about the story rocking Washington. Journalist Goldberg said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent information in the Signal chat about targets, weapons, and timing ahead of the strikes on March 15. Goldberg also revealed highly critical comments by top US officials about European allies.
“There was no classified information,” Trump told reporters when asked about the chat, saying that the commercial app Signal was used by “a lot of people in government.” Waltz said US technical and legal experts were looking into the breach but insisted he had “never met, don’t know, never communicated” with the journalist. He later told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he took “full responsibility” for the breach, saying: “I built the group; my job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.” Waltz suggested the leak was the result of him mistakenly saving Goldberg’s number under another name. “Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else’s number?” he said.
Trump meanwhile said in an interview with Newsmax later on Tuesday that someone who “worked for Mike Waltz at a lower level” may have had Goldberg’s number and somehow been responsible for him ending up in the chat.
– ‘Sloppy, careless, incompetent’ –
The comments came as part of an aggressive Trump administration pushback against the scandal. US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe – who were both reported to be in the chat – endured a stormy Senate Intelligence Committee hearing over the leak. “There was no classified material that was shared,” Gabbard, who has previously caused controversy with comments sympathetic to Russia and Syria, told the panel. Ratcliffe confirmed he was involved in the Signal group but said the communications were “entirely permissible and lawful.”
Hegseth, a former Fox News host with no experience running a huge organization like the Pentagon, had said Monday that “nobody was texting war plans.” But Democrats on the committee called on Waltz and Hegseth to resign. Senator Mark Warner blasted what he called “sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior.” Other White House officials also went on the attack against the Democratic narrative. “Don’t let enemies of America get away with these lies,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said on X, describing the row as a “witch hunt.” Trump has repeatedly used the same term to dismiss an investigation into whether his 2016 election campaign colluded with Moscow.
– ‘Freeloading’ –
The Atlantic’s bombshell report has sparked concerns over the use of a commercial app instead of secure government communications – and about whether US adversaries may have been able to hack in. Trump’s special Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was in Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin when he was included in the group, CBS News reported. The report also revealed potentially embarrassing details of what top White House officials think about key allies.
Trump said he agreed with Pentagon chief Hegseth’s reported comments in the chat that European nations were “freeloading” off the United States. “Yeah I think they’ve been freeloading,” Trump told reporters. “The European Union’s been absolutely terrible to us on trade.” In the chat, a user identified as JD Vance, the US vice president, opposed the strikes saying that “I just hate bailing Europe out again” as countries there were more affected by Huthi attacks on shipping than the United States. A user identified as Hegseth replies: “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s PATHETIC.”
The Huthi rebels, who have controlled much of Yemen for more than a decade, are part of the “axis of resistance” of pro-Iran groups staunchly opposed to Israel and the US. They have launched scores of drone and missile attacks at ships passing Yemen in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden during the Gaza war, saying they were carried out in solidarity with Palestinians.
– Danny KEMP
© 2024 AFP
