‘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.
On March 13, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently added The Atlantic magazine’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 was at first skeptical of the authenticity of the group, confiding 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” which 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.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had discussed details in the chat on how the strike would commence. The Atlantic eventually published an article about the group chat.
On Saturday, Trump said “I do” when asked if he still had 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 Saturday phone interview, Trump suggested that he has “no idea what Signal is” and doesn’t “care what Signal is.”
“All I can tell you is it’s just a witch hunt, and it’s the only thing the press wants to talk about, because you have nothing else to talk about. Because it’s been the greatest 100-day presidency in the history of our country,” he said.
The Epoch Times has requested a full transcript of the call from NBC.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Original News Source Link – Epoch Times
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