A growing number of Donald Trump’s allies is asking the president to dismiss his national security advisor, Michael Waltz, who tried to mitigate the political consequences of the revelations that senior defense officials of the Nation discussed delicate military operations in a commercial application, and inadvertently included a journalist in his chat group.
According to screenshots published by The Atlantic, a signal user called “Michael Waltz” initially invited Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the chief magazine, to the conversation about the application signal. The group, according to the Atlantic, seems to have included Vice President JD Vance, several other members of the Cabinet involved in national security problems, Trump’s head of personnel, Susie Wiles and the deputy director of Cabinet, Stephen Miller. Some of the individuals were identified only by their initials.
Trump and his assistants have insisted that none of the information on the strikes against Yemeni Houthis, a group designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization, qualified when the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, shared it with the group.
On Wednesday, however, Trump was less definitive.
“That’s what I have heard. I don’t know. I’m not sure. You have to ask the various people involved. I really don’t know,” Trump replied when journalists asked him if he still believes that nothing classified was shared.
The reports of the Atlantic mentioned of messages in which Hegseth specified types of US military planes and the moment of recent air attacks against hutis militias in Yemen. They did not include information about specific objectives.
But with the questions about the management of confidential information that continues to turn in the hearings of the Congress and in the media throughout the ideological spectrum, many Trump allies, who requested the anonymity of speaking frankly, say that focusing on whether the material was classified is the point of a white house that fights to recover control of their message.
“That is a legal question,” said a former Trump main advisor who spoke on condition of anonymity to remain in the good thanks of the president. “We are talking about a political problem at this time.”
That same former advisor said that White House officials would be intelligent to choose a type of autumn and get it out.
“They need to put this in someone and clean it that way,” he said. “The most obvious person to do that is Waltz.”
The reactions between the Republicans cover from attacking Goldberg, the tachuela that has taken the White House, to ask someone to get the start. But for a president who has enjoyed Lockstep’s support for his agenda in his party in the first months of his second presidency, there is restless restlessness about this episode among his main supporters.
Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports who supported Trump in the elections, issued a “perorata” self-denominated on Wednesday that Waltz needed to go and call him “AF–up of epic proportions.”
“Trump, you can love Michael Waltz. You love Pete Hegesh. You may love these guys. Someone has to fall,” he said.
“This was a great F – above,” said a Republican operation that is a main sponsor of Trump and a veteran military, using a similar language. “It is incredible to me that there is the use of this type of devices used for something like this. Only an inexcusable disaster everywhere.”
“It was a Fup. The first and simplest way of addressing it is to recognize that it was a Fup. That’s it,” wrote conservative Tomi Lahren in X Wednesday, and added, however, that he did not want to see anyone to be fired for that.
Waltz has said that it takes “full responsibility” for the problem.
“I built the group,” Waltz said in a Fox News interview on Tuesday night, referring to the private signal chat. “My job is to make sure everything is coordinated.”
At the same time, a source close to the White House argued that the fascination of the media creates an opening so that the White House advances in the controversial articles of the agenda, while the media focus on the history of the signal. Under that scenario, said the source, nobody needs to be fired, but, he added, that if someone deserves the agitator, it is waltz.
Until now, Trump is standing with Waltz and the other officials involved.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and is a good man,” Trump said Tuesday in a telephone interview with NBC News.
The White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, reiterated that point in the Information Session of the Press on Wednesday.
“What I can say is definitely what I just talked to with the president, and he continues to have confidence in his national security team,” he said.
“The National Security Advisor has assumed the responsibility of this matter, and the National Security Council said immediately, together with the Office of the White House Advisor, who are investigating how a journalist’s number was added inadvertently to this thread of messages,” Leavitt added.
On Wednesday in Capitol Hill, the Democrats of the Chamber Intelligence Committee pressed the director of the CIA John Ratcliffe and the National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard about his participation in the group chat and if the classified material had been vulnerable through the use of a commercial application and the inclusion of a journalist in the thread.
Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard said that none of the materials, which included details of attack and weapons time, qualified.
The representative Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, expressed disbelief in that premise.
“The idea that this information, if presented to our committee, would not be classified,” he said. “Everyone knows what a lie is.”
Despite having starred in a television program, “The Amprentice”, in which he told the contestants: “You are fired,” Trump is famous to let the loyal ones. For that reason, some in their orbit say that it is unlikely to shoot directly to Waltz or Hegseth.
But a former Trump administration official who served in a foreign policy role said that a resignation would be the right result.
“This is serious and cannot be collapsed,” said this person. “Any honorable public servant would see that and recognize that they have made an error of serious proportions, and a lesson must learn from it.”
The source accredited Trump for “being with his team,” but added: “I can assure you, if that were me, I would have resigned.”
