Signals scandal in the USA "Waltz is a f***ing idiot" - now the Trump administration is seething

Journalist contradicts Secretary of Defense: Jeffrey Goldberg had his story confirmed by Pete Hegseth before he made the Signal scandal public. Is he now costing a consultant his job?

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth calls Jeffrey Goldberg a "deceitful and discredited so-called journalist" because he made public in the Atlantic that he had learned of imminent attacks on the Houthis in Yemen in a chat group.

"Nobody texted war plans," emphasizes Hegseth, but Goldberg adds in an interview with CNN. "That's a lie," the 59-year-old defends himself. On the contrary: there were very precise technical details that he did not publish out of concern for the safety of the military personnel involved.

"The public interest is [only] that they made war plans in a messaging app and didn't even know who was invited to the conversation. It's an obvious, ridiculous breach of security," the New Yorker continues.

Hegseth's denial is all the more incomprehensible given that Goldberg says he confronted him with his research. "Is this real?" he asked. "Are you sure this is not a disinformation campaign from abroad or from a foreign actor targeting journalists?" Goldberg only published his article after Hegseth confirmed its authenticity.

Will Trump's security advisor now be fired?

Goldberg did not trust the content of the chat - until US bombs on Yemen were reported: The time matched the information from the chat. Even after that, the journalist remained skeptical: he considered it unlikely that he would really end up in his chat just like that. "Why would they do something like that on Signal?" he asked himself.

Even when Goldberg withdrew from the chat, in which 18 people were involved, the matter did not come to light. He had never experienced such a level of recklessness, the editor-in-chief recalls in the CNN interview. The members of the government concerned should be glad that he was not a foreign actor, Goldberg said.

Donald Trump only found out about the Signal scandal through the press, as he himself says. He had no knowledge of the matter. However, it is clear that the incident makes his party look old, as it has always gone out on a limb when it comes to information and data security.

And now the US government is being criticized, which Trump will not like: In a day or two, the US president could draw consequences, believes "Politico". The first pawn in this move could be Mike Waltz, who was involved in the chat: the security advisor has cast his boss in a bad light, according to sources close to him.

"Just s*******"

"It was reckless not to check who was in the chat," says the Politico source. "It was reckless to have that conversation on Signal. As national security adviser, you can't be reckless." Another anonymous person says: "Everyone in the White House agrees on one thing: Mike Waltz is a f****** idiot."

Pete Buttigieg has strong words for the incident after Trump repeatedly emphasized that the merit principle applies in his administration: "This kind of intelligence failure raises the question of whether there is any place for merit or competence in this administration," the Democrat tells CNN.

And further: "If there are no serious consequences for this kind of failure, then it becomes clear that all the praise about merit you hear from the White House is just s*******. We deserve much better than this."