President Trump characterized an extraordinary security breach as a minor transgression on Tuesday, insisting that top administration officials had not shared any classified information as they discussed secret military plans in a group chat that included the editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine.
“So this was not classified,” Mr. Trump said during a meeting with U.S. ambassadors at the White House. “Now if it’s classified information, it’s probably a little bit different, but I always say, you have to learn from every experience.”
Mr. Trump also stood by his national security adviser, Michael Waltz, who had inadvertently added the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to the Signal thread, which included Vice President JD Vance and others. In the chat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared information on timing, targets and weapons systems to be used in an attack on Houthi militants in Yemen.
“I think it was very unfair the way they attacked Michael,” the president said.
During the meeting, as reporters peppered the president with questions about the leak, Mr. Trump repeatedly turned to Mr. Waltz to answer. Mr. Waltz tried to largely redirect the focus, lauding the strikes in Yemen and attacking Mr. Goldberg.
“This one in particular, I’ve never met, don’t know, never communicated with,” he said, adding that “we are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room.”