The responsibility for the Signal war plans mix-up will likely fall on either Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth or National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
This week, the nation was surprised by news from The Atlantic that the Trump administration had inadvertently included their editor in a group chat where high-ranking officials were strategizing about a potential strike on the Houthis in Yemen.
Hegseth and Waltz are central figures in this controversy – Hegseth shared the detailed strike plans, and it appears that Waltz’s device was responsible for adding Goldberg to the group chat.
‘Pete Hegseth was the one that put in the chat the more specific details. So there’s a lot of scrutiny on him right now, in particular, if Trump will do anything or remove him from his post,’ executive editor of politics Kelly Laco said on DailyMail’s Welcome to MAGAland podcast on Wednesday.
However, so far, the White House has remained unified in their response to the scandal, trying to direct the narrative against editor Jeffrey Goldberg and insisting, despite evidence to the contrary, that the messages do not represent a bombshell mishandling of classified information.
‘I don’t think anyone’s going anywhere for the time being, for sure, Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz will survive the week. Right now they’re pretty much unified clapping back and really throwing Jeff Goldberg under the bus,’ Laco added.
‘Trump stuck his neck out for Pete Hegseth during the confirmation hearing process, he had the most contentious hearing. He was questioned over his sobriety, his past infidelities, his previous wives.
‘But Trump stuck by him from start to finish and so I don’t see him abandoning him in this situation, particularly because the strikes went well. If they had gone south that would be a different story.’
Meanwhile, the fact that The Atlantic shared a grab that shows Waltz’ device was the one to add Goldberg to the chat also puts him at the center of the scandal.
‘Clearly at some point, Mike Waltz had communicated with this editor. His number was in the phone under the initial JG, and no one in the chat thought to ask, “who is this unnamed person who isn’t contributing?”‘ Laco said on the latest episode of MAGAland.
However, it’s clear that as of now Trump is still backing both of his loyalists, and it could that they throw a lower aide under the bus.
‘We’ll see if there ends up being a scapegoat, maybe a lower level staffer who could take the blame,’ Laco concluded.
‘If the Trump administration stands strong, continues to say this is all a hoax, just like Russia was a hoax, I don’t even think they’ll have to sacrifice either of them,’ said chief reporter Germania Rodriguez Poleo on MAGAland.
But Waltz admitted that he accidentally added the journalist to a Signal group chat about military strikes.
‘I take full responsibility,’ Waltz said during his tortured explanation of the debacle on Tuesday night.
In a bizarre explanation, Waltz then said the ‘mistake’ may have actually been an act of subterfuge by the journalist.
Waltz then floated the idea that the journalist did something to wiggle his way into the text chain.
‘We’re going to figure out how this happened,’ he reiterated, adding his team is working to determine if the journalist ‘did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is what we are trying to figure out.’
To make matters worse for Waltz, who had claimed he’s never met Goldberg, a photo has emerged showing him posing alongside the Atlantic’s editor.
Earlier this week, Waltz said: ‘Whether it’s the Russia hoax or making up lies about Gold Star families, and this one in particular I’ve never met, don’t know, never communicated with, and we are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room.’
However, a reporter has unearthed a picture of at the 2021 screening of a film at the French Embassy in Washington where Waltz is standing next to Goldberg.
‘The event Waltz attended—a Q&A with a French filmmaker—was moderated by Goldberg,’ Anna Bower of Lawfare wrote.
The film, ‘The Will to See,’ is an ‘unflinching look at the most urgent humanitarian crisis around the globe’ directed by French intellectual Bernard Henri-Levy, who originally shared the photo.
Henri-Levy tagged both Waltz and Goldberg in his post to X, thanking them for being in attendance.
Waltz was serving in Congress, representing the 6th District of Florida at the time of the screening.
