Trump points finger at Waltz for Signal conversation leak

Over the last few days, Donald Trump and his administration officials have been spinning #SignalGate to no end, but Trump seems to have refocused his message.

After calling the story a hoax and claiming that Signal could be broken, Trump has now dropped the ball for the mishap right in the lap of National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

Could Be Defective

I have not hidden my criticism of the Trump administration over #SignalGate, but it is not for the conversation being leaked but rather for how all this was handled after the fact.

First and foremost, I think Trump was commenting on the leak before having actually seen the chat, which was a huge mistake.

To that point, very early on, Trump suggested something was wrong with the app, stating, “I don’t know that Signal works. I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you. It could be a defective platform, and we’re gonna have to find that answer.”

The implication was clear… Trump was insinuating that the reporter was somehow added to the chat group by the app, not by someone physically doing it, or at least that was my interpretation of it.

Trump Calls It a Hoax

When Trump and administration officials started to call the story a hoax, I knew Trump was only taking Hegseth and Waltz at their word and had not seen the full context of the text.

Calling the chat attack plans rather than war plans was semantics, as anyone with any intelligence experience would have been able to figure out what was going on relatively quickly.

Yet, the spin White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt chose to put out there was, "The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT 'war plans.' This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin."

Waltz backed this up, adding, "No locations. No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE: President Trump is protecting America and our interests."

Trump Points the Finger

When Trump first discussed the leak, he had stated that as far as he knew, it was someone from within Waltz camp that had added the reporter, then he went into conspiracy mode.

Now, however, Trump has seemingly backed off those harder stances, once again pointing the finger at Waltz, stating, "It was Mike, I guess. I don’t know, I always thought it was Mike.”

What should have been a small bump in the road has turned into a major issue for this administration, and Trump has to be aware the spin machine they are using is not working, so that statement was a powerful one, a defeated one by Trump.

It sounds to me like Waltz could be on the chopping block, but there are bigger concerns here, at least for me. Trump needs to find out who added that reporter because now I am very much leaning into this being done purposefully rather than a mistake, and I say that because of the specific journalist that got the story. Ask yourself, why would any member of the Trump administration be close enough to an editor of The Atlantic that they would have his number on speed dial? This just stinks to the high heavens to me.