In a particularly rough week for the Trump administration, a number of the president’s allies are calling for accountability after military plans were inadvertently shared with a journalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A growing number of Donald Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s top defense officials discussed sensitive military operations in a commercial app \u2014 and inadvertently included a journalist in their chat group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to screenshots published by The Atlantic<\/a>, a Signal user named \u201cMichael Waltz\u201d<\/a> initially invited Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine\u2019s 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 people were identified only by their initials. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump and his aides have insisted that none of the information about strikes against Yemeni Houthis \u2014 a group the United States has designated as a foreign terrorist organization \u2014 was classified when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared it with the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Wednesday, however, Trump was less definitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That\u2019s what I\u2019ve heard. I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not sure. You have to ask the various people involved. I really don\u2019t know,” Trump replied when reporters asked him w<\/a>h<\/a>ether\u2002<\/a>still believes<\/a> nothing classified was shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Atlantic’s reporting quoted from messages in which Hegseth specified types of U.S. military aircraft<\/a> and the timing of recent airstrikes against Houthi militias in Yemen. They did not include information about specific targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u2014 who requested anonymity to speak candidly \u2014 say focusing on whether the material was classified is beside the point for a White House struggling to regain control of its message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat is a legal question,\u201d said a former senior Trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to remain in his good graces. \u201cWe are talking about a political problem right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That same former adviser said White House officials would be smart to pick a fall guy and push him out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey need to put this on someone and clean it up that way,\u201d he said. “The most obvious person to do that with is Waltz.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reactions among Republicans run a gamut from attacking Goldberg \u2014 the tack the White House has taken \u2014 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 the episode among his core supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, who backed Trump in the election, issued a self-described “rant”<\/a> on X, saying Wednesday that Waltz needed to go and calling it “a f\u001e\u001e\u001e up of epic proportions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Trump, you may love Michael Waltz. You love Pete Hegseth. You may love these guys. Somebody has to go down,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis was a huge f— up,\u201d a Republican operative who is a major Trump backer and a military veteran said, using similar language. \u201cIt\u2019s unbelievable to me that there is the use of these kinds of devices used for something like this. Just an inexcusable mess all around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was an F up<\/a>. The first and most simple way to address it is just to acknowledge it was an F up. That\u2019s it,” conservative commentator Tomi Lahren wrote Wednesday on X, adding, however, that she did not want to see anyone get fired over it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Waltz has said he takes “full responsibility<\/a>” for the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I built the group,\u201d Waltz said in a Fox News interview Tuesday night, referring to the private Signal chat. \u201cMy job is to make sure everything\u2019s coordinated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, a 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 \u2014 but, he added, if anyone deserves the heave-ho, it\u2019s Waltz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, Trump is standing by Waltz and the other officials involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n