A growing number of Donald Trump’s allies are calling on the president to fire his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, to try to mitigate the political fallout from revelations that the nation’s top defense officials discussed sensitive military operations in a commercial app — and inadvertently included a journalist in their chat group.
According to screenshots published by The Atlantic, a Signal user named “Michael Waltz” initially invited Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor in chief, into the conversation on the app Signal. The group, according to The Atlantic, appears to have included Vice President JD Vance, several other members of the Cabinet involved in national security issues, Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. Some of the individuals were identified only by their initials.
Trump and his aides insist none of the information about strikes against Yemeni Houthis — a group designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization — was classified when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared it with the group.
The Atlantic’s reporting quoted from messages in which Hegseth specified types of U.S. military aircraft and the timing of recent airstrikes against Houthi militias in Yemen. They did not include information about specific targets.
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But with questions about the handling of sensitive information continuing to swirl in congressional hearings and in media outlets across the ideological spectrum, many Trump allies — who requested anonymity to speak candidly — say focusing on whether the material was classified is beside the point for a White House struggling to regain control of its message.
“That is a legal question,” said one former senior Trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to remain in the president’s good graces. “We are talking about a political problem right now.”
That same former adviser said White House officials would be smart to pick a fall guy and push him out.
“They need to put this on someone and clean it up that way,” he said. “The most obvious person to do that with is Waltz.”
Reactions among Republicans run a gamut from attacking Goldberg — the tack the White House has taken — to calling for someone to get the boot. But for a president who has enjoyed lockstep support for his agenda from his party in the first couple of months of his second presidency, there is an unmistakable unease about this episode among his core supporters.
Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports who backed Trump in the election, issued a self-described “rant” on X Wednesday saying Waltz needed to go and calling it “a f‑‑‑ up of epic proportions.”
“Trump, you may love Michael Waltz. You love Pete Hegseth. You may love these guys. Somebody has to go down,” he said.
“This was a huge f— up,” one Republican operative who is a major Trump backer and a military veteran said, using similar language. “It’s unbelievable to me that there is the use of these kinds of devices used for something like this. Just an inexcusable mess all around.”
“It was an F up. The first and most simple way to address it is just to acknowledge it was an F up. That’s it,” conservative commentator Tomi Lahren wrote on X Wednesday, adding, however, that she didn’t want to see anyone get fired over it.
Waltz has said that he takes “full responsibility” for the problem.
“I built the group,” Waltz said in a Fox News interview Tuesday night, referring to the private Signal chat. “My job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”
At the same time, one source close to the White House argued that media fascination with the story creates an opening for the White House to move forward on controversial agenda items while news outlets are focused on the Signal storyline. Under that scenario, the source said, no one needs to be fired — but, he added, that if anyone deserves the heave-ho, it’s Waltz.
So far, Trump is standing by Waltz and the other officials involved.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated that point in Wednesday’s press briefing.
“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.
“The national security advisor has taken responsibility for this matter, and the national security council immediately said, alongside the White House counsel’s office, that they are looking into how a reporter’s number was inadvertently added to this messaging thread,” Leavitt added.
On Capitol Hill Wednesday, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee pressed CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about their participation in the group chat and whether classified material had been left vulnerable through the use of a commercial app and the inclusion of a journalist on the thread.
Both Ratcliffe and Gabbard said none of the material, which included specifics of strike timing and weaponry, was classified.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, expressed incredulity at that premise.
“The idea that this information, if it was presented to our committee, would not be classified,” he said. “Y’all know is a lie.”
Despite having starred in a television show, “The Apprentice,” in which he famously told contestants, “You’re fired,” Trump is famously averse to letting go of loyalists. For that reason, some in his orbit say it is unlikely that he will straight-out fire Waltz or Hegseth.
But one former senior Trump administration official who served in a foreign policy role said that a resignation would be the right outcome.
“This is serious and it can’t just be sloughed off,” this person said. “Any honorable public servant would see that and recognize that they’ve made a mistake of serious proportions, and a lesson needs to be learned from it.”
The source credited Trump for having “stood by his team,” but added, “I can assure you, if that were me, I would have resigned.”
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
- Senate Republicans warm to hiking the debt limit in their sweeping party-line bill
- Supreme Court skeptical of challenge to phone and internet subsidy program for under-served areas
- Trump’s move to end an immigration program hits a powerful Republican base of voters
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