Pete Buttigieg is pressing President Donald Trump to punish national security adviser Mike Waltz for his "screw-up" of including the Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, in a group chat in which war plans were being discussed.
The former transportation secretary demanded "accountability" after Goldberg was added to a group chat between Walz, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other high-level Trump administration officials in which they discussed bombing Houthi targets in Yemen.
“If there’s no accountability for a screw-up like this, especially from a president who used to fire people every day on television for sport, what are we even doing here?” Buttigieg told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
Goldberg published an article in the Atlantic on Monday outlining how Waltz added him to a Signal group chat called "Houthi PC small group" in which officials discussed the March 15 strikes against Houthi targets. The plan, he said, "included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing."
After Hegseth sent the war plans to the group chat, Goldberg questioned the chat’s validity as he couldn’t “believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans.”
“Our current secretary of defense hadn’t shown a lot of evidence of … running a large organization or, let alone running a large organization well, and he got put in charge of the largest organization in the United States of America and the most important organization in the world, which is the U.S. Department of Defense,” Buttigieg told Collins.
Buttigieg used more colorful language to describe the incident on X, calling it “the highest level of f***-up imaginable.”
Hegseth denied to reporters on Monday that he sent war plans via Signal.
“Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said.
GABBARD AND RATCLIFFE TO BE GRILLED OVER SIGNAL GROUP CHAT THAT EXPOSED HOUTHI PLANS TO REPORTER
However, Brian Hughes, spokesman for the National Security Council, confirmed the Signal text exchanges were authentic.
“This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Hughes said. “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security.”
