Now Mike Waltz is suggesting Atlantic journalist ‘hacked’ Signal group - but there’s a problem

While US President Donald Trump has conceded that the Signal group chat scandal is an unfortunate “glitch” (quite the understatement, for sure), his national security adviser Mike Waltz has sought to attack the Atlantic hack who broke the story - editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg - by suggesting he… well… hacked his way into the discussion about strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.

Yes, that’s despite Waltz himself accepting that he set up the Signal group in question, and Trump positing that an associate of Waltz was the one who added Goldberg.

“Of course I didn’t see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else.

“Now whether he did it deliberately, or it happened in some other technical mean is something we’re trying to figure out,” he told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Tuesday.

The Atlantic has stood by its editor and its reporting, saying in a statement that “attempts to disparage and discredit The Atlantic, our editor, and our reporting follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and others in power who are hostile to journalists and the First Amendment rights of all Americans”.

“Our journalists are continuing to fearlessly and independently report the truth in the public interest,” it added.

And social media users have responded to Waltz’s remarks to point out that even if Goldberg did hack his way into the group (again, the editor himself says he was added into it, and Trump has directed blame at a Waltz staffer), then Signal chats being hackable would make the situation a whole lot worse:

Another social media framed Waltz’s remarks in a different way, which is just as troubling:

And others highlighted an apparent contradiction in the Trump administration thinking Signal is secure enough to have on their phones, but vulnerable enough that it could be hacked by a journalist:

Elsewhere, the same Fox News interview with Ingraham saw Waltz reveal the “lesson” Trump says his adviser has learned from the whole incident, which was just another opportunity for him to attack Goldberg.

He said: “Lesson learned number one is we’ve got journalists out there who have made fame and fortune trying to trash this president.

“We’ve got to tighten up, we are tightening up, and we have some of the best technology minds looking at how this happened.”

Embarrassing.

Why not read…

• Hillary Clinton issues damning 7-word response to Trump administration's airstrikes group chat scandal
• Republicans' hypocritical Hillary Clinton comments resurface amid Trump administration group chat scandal

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