The Signal story was ineffective. We’ve moved on; the liberal media failed spectacularly to get a scalp from the Trump administration. The legacy press is too stupid and predictable to be taken seriously anymore. Trump’s approval rating rose during this event. Was it a self-inflicted wound? Sure, but it was exaggerated. It stems from top Trump officials adding The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to an anti-Houthi Signal chat. The allegation is that war plans were divulged. They were not.
So it really did get sucked into Mike Waltz phone…
— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) April 6, 2025
According to @guardian, the WH forensic report says Brian Hughes, who runs Waltz comms, sent Goldberg’s contact last Oct to push back on a campaign story. Apple added the number under Hughes as a “contact suggestion update.” pic.twitter.com/688DXYiEZl
Goldberg said that one’s number doesn’t get sucked into these things. It turns out that it can happen. The left-wing Guardian had a piece about this annoying snafu, which appears to be the work of an errant software update. Note: this is based on anonymous sources familiar with the forensic review ordered by the Trump White House (via The Guardian):
According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of Waltz, their national security surrogate.
Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.
Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone – under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.
A day after that Goldberg story was published, on 22 October, Waltz appeared on CNN to defend Trump. “Don’t take it from me, take it from the 13 Abbey Gate Gold Star families, some of whom stood on a stage in front of a 30,000 person crowd and said how he helped them heal,” Waltz said.
According to the White House, the number was erroneously saved during a “contact suggestion update” by Waltz’s iPhone, which one person described as the function where an iPhone algorithm adds a previously unknown number to an existing contact that it detects may be related.
The mistake went unnoticed until last month when Waltz sought to add Hughes to the Signal group chat – but ended up adding Goldberg’s number to the 13 March message chain named “Houthi PC small group”, where several top US officials discussed plans for strikes against the Houthis.
So, it was a mistake, but still an avoidable one. These things happen. No administration will bat 1.000—look no further than the incompetent, brain-dead Biden administration. The classified war plans narrative fell apart within a day, forcing Goldberg, who said he wouldn’t disclose those texts because he and his publication are serious about state secrets, to post them and finally expose this story as a nothing burger, and it is.
The nation moved on in less than 36 hours. No one cared because voters know and smell exaggeration from miles away, thanks to the press’ incessant Trump derangement syndrome.