Top Trump administration officials involved in the discussion of war plans on a Signal group chat continued to downplay the importance of the content there, but a key question that catalyzed the controversy remains largely unanswered: how was The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg added to the chat?
National security advisor Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth struggled to answer, with the former saying that analysts are still trying to determine how that was possible and the latter downplaying the importance of the content discussed.
"Nobody is texting war plans. That's all I have to say about it. I know exactly what I'm doing," Hegseth said while addressing press.
Waltz, in turn, went to Trump-friendly Fox News where he was pushed by host Laura Ingraham as he struggled to provide an explanation. "
Ingraham: But you’ve never talked to him so how is his number on your phone? pic.twitter.com/uVlf5d3rJ8
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 25, 2025
"That's what we're trying to figure out. We have the best technical minds there. Everybody out there has had a contact that said one person and it had a different phone number," Waltz said.
Ingraham didn't seem satisfied with the answer, asking "but how's the number on your phone?" Waltz seemed to suggest he had tried to add another person but it ended up being Goldberg's.
"The person who I thought was on there was never there," added Waltz, refusing to say who the person supposed to be there was." He proceeded to say he took full responsibility for the blunder and sought to move on.
The Atlantic seemed to put Hegseth in further trouble on Wednesday, releasing what it said were the war plans discussed in the group. "There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared," reads a passage of the article.
The piece details that journalists asked top officials if they objected to the outlet publishing the full text, but most failed to answer. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt then said the administration did, but the outlet has decided to do so anyway. Texts include final approval from the mission, as well as the time of the attacks.
Goldberg noted that officials were communicating even though an unknown number was part of the group, saying that should it have been someone hostile, attacks could have been thwarted and American troops put in danger.
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