Trump downplays scandal over leaked Yemen air strike chat

United States (US) President Donald Trump downplayed a growing scandal after a journalist was accidentally added to a group chat about air strikes on Yemen.

On Tuesday, Trump denied sharing any classified information and defended a senior aide amid the breach.

‘They used an app’

Trump came to the defence of US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and touted the military operation as a success.

“They used an app, if you want to call it an app, that a lot of people use. A lot of people in government use, a lot of people in the media use,” Trump said.

Responsibility for the breach

Waltz said US technical and legal experts were looking into the breach but insisted he had “never met, don’t know, never communicated” with the journalist.

He later told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he took “full responsibility” for the breach, saying: “I built the group; my job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”

Waltz suggested the leak was the result of him mistakenly saving Goldberg’s number under another name.

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Yemen strikes

Trump announced the strikes on 15 March, but The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote on Monday that he had hours of advance notice via the group chat on Signal, which included Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance.

Goldberg said he was added to the group chat two days earlier and received messages from other top government officials designating representatives who would work on the issue.

On 14 March, a person identified as Vance allegedly expressed doubts about carrying out the strikes, saying he hated “bailing Europe out again”, as countries there were more affected by Huthi attacks on shipping than the United States, AFP reported.

‘Something that can happen’?

When asked if anyone would be fired as a result of the firestorm, Trump downplayed the matter.

“We’ve pretty much looked into it. It’s pretty simple, to be honest … It’s just something that can happen. It can happen.”

Trump, meanwhile, said in an interview with Newsmax later on Tuesday that someone who “worked for Mike Waltz at a lower level” may have had Goldberg’s number and somehow been responsible for him ending up in the chat.

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