President Trump pointed fingers at national security advisor Mike Waltz for the Signal chat scandal. He made the comment while signing an executive order Wednesday evening.
“It was Mike, I guess. I don’t know, I always thought it was Mike,” Trump told reporters. He brushed off the media’s response as a “witch hunt.”
Just a day before, Trump had a different answer. On a call with NBC, he said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number in there.”
When a reporter asked if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should worry about his job, Trump jumped in. “Hegseth, he was doing a great job… How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with this,” he said.
Trump also questioned the app itself. He suggested Signal, the encrypted messaging app, “could be defective.”
He downplayed the scandal altogether. Instead, he praised the attack that was being discussed in the chat as “unbelievably successful.”
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg broke the story on Monday. He had been accidentally added to a Signal chat with Trump officials discussing an attack on the Houthis in Yemen.
Goldberg wasn’t sure the chat was real at first. But once the plans began unfolding in real life, he said, “I had very strong doubts,” but knew it was real when events lined up.
“I’ve never seen a breach quite like this,” Goldberg added. While Signal is used by officials, he said it’s usually for logistics—not “imminent war plans.”
The Trump team has been trying to downplay the whole thing. They celebrated when The Atlantic shifted language from “war plans” to “attack plans.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the story a “hoax.” She said it came from “a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
Leavitt also revealed that Elon Musk is helping investigate the leak. But Trump says Waltz won’t be fired over it.