A Republican senator has shared his read on President Donald Trump’s true feelings about the Yemen group chat snafu.
The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffery Goldberg was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat used by top White House officials to discuss planned strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
Goldberg reported on the group chat Monday and released the messages in full on Wednesday, revealing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent a detailed timeline of when U.S. forces would strike Yemen.
Now, an anonymous Republican senator tells The Hill that Trump is “not happy” but has chosen to stick by Hegseth and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who has taken responsibility for adding Goldberg to the chat.
This comes after Trump claimed the incident was “really not a big deal.”
“There weren’t details, and there was nothing in there that compromised,” Trump said Wednesday on The Vince Show podcast by Vince Coglianese. “And it had no impact on the attack, which was very successful.”
“A thing like that, maybe Goldberg found a way,” he added. “Maybe there’s a staffer, maybe there’s a very innocent staffer, but we’ll get, I think we’ll get to the bottom of it very quickly, and it’s really not a big deal.”
Trump suggested a staffer may have been involved after Waltz already said there wasn’t and took full responsibility.
“Well, look, a staffer wasn’t responsible,” Waltz told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Tuesday. “Look, I take full responsibility. I built the group to make — my job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”
Several other Republicans aren’t defending Waltz.
Another Republican senator told The Hill this is “going to have to be investigated.”
“The worst part of it is Hegseth saying himself, ‘This didn’t really happen.’ Why don’t you just admit it?” the lawmaker said.
Republican Senator Kevin Cramer told the outlet “they should make sure it never happens again.
“I wish they’d tell us, ‘It will never happen again.’ It’s the first strike in the early stages of an administration,” he said. “Don’t let it ever happen again.”
“I don’t know how many strikes you get. In baseball you get three. Maybe this is worth two,” he added. “If mistakes like this continue to happen, we’ll deal with them as it happens. My hope and my expectation is that it won’t.”
But Waltz, Hegseth and others still have support from Republican leadership.
“He was made for that job, and I have full confidence in him,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said of Waltz.
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
