New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman weighed in on why she believes President Trump is defending national security adviser Mike Waltz over the Signal group chat breach, suggesting the rhetoric is an effort to stiff media outlets and their portrayal of the controversy.
“Trump is very clear that, according to a number of people I’ve spoken to, he does not want to fire someone because he sees that as giving in to the media,” Haberman said during a Thursday appearance on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.”
“People around him see that as weak,” she added. “And I think you will hear that for a while. Whether this is sustainable for them is another story.”
Waltz admitted to adding The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the message thread where attack plans about strikes in Yemen were being discussed among senior Trump administration officials, including Walz, Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Goldberg released the full messages to the public on Wednesday.
“I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else,” Waltz told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham earlier this week. “Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean, is something we’re trying to figure out.”
Despite concerns from former defense officials, Trump has reiterated that he maintains full confidence in Waltz and like others in the administration has seemingly brushed off the incident as a “mistake.”
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC, adding that the security breach was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has also argued that Waltz and Hegseth, who has also taken heat over the breach, should not be punished.
As the White House scrambles to contain the criticism, Waltz has pressed ahead on his duties full force following the incident.
The national security adviser is slated to accompany Vance and his wife Usha during a trip to Greenland Friday, where they are set to visit an American military base.
