‘I don’t fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts,’ Trump said.
President Donald Trump said on March 29 that he had no intention to fire anyone in his Cabinet after a journalist was accidentally added to a Signal group chat discussing his administration’s plans for an airstrike against the Houthis in Yemen.
“I don’t fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview on March 29.
On March 13, national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal group text, called “Houthi PC small group,” of administration officials discussing the airstrike. Signal is an encrypted messaging service.
The veteran national security and foreign affairs journalist said he was at first skeptical of the authenticity of the group, discussing with colleagues whether the texts were “part of a disinformation campaign, initiated by either a foreign intelligence service, or, more likely, a media-gadfly organization” that sought to embarrass journalists.
After the leak, the National Security Council released a statement confirming the chat’s authenticity.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” the statement read.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed details in the chat of how the strike would commence. The Atlantic eventually published an article about the group chat.
On March 29, Trump said he still has confidence in both Waltz and Hegseth.
“I think it’s just a witch hunt, and the fake news, like you, talk about it all the time, but it’s just a witch hunt, and it shouldn’t be talked [about],” he added. “We had a tremendously successful strike. We struck very hard and very lethal. And nobody wants to talk about that. All they want to talk about is nonsense. It’s fake news.”
During a March 26 press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated that Trump stands by his national security officials.
“What I can say definitively is what I just spoke to the president about, and he continues to have confidence in his national security team,” she said.
In his March 29 phone interview, Trump said that he has “no idea what Signal is” and doesn’t “care what Signal is.”
The Epoch Times has requested a full transcript of the call from NBC.
By Jacob Burg
