President Trump Breaks Silence to Media

President Donald Trump publicly backed U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz after The Atlantic broke the news of a security leak regarding the Trump Administration’s war plans to attack the Houthis in Yemen. The leak occurred via a Signal (an encrypted messaging app) text thread that included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg.

NBC News reports on its phone interview with President Trump regarding the leak:

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.

Trump’s comments were his first substantive remarks since The Atlantic broke the story. . . . Goldberg said he was added to the discussion after receiving a request from a user identified as Waltz.

When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.” 

Trump said Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” on the military operation.

The president expressed confidence in his team, saying he was not frustrated by the events leading up to The Atlantic’s story. The situation, Trump said, was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”

Of course, the far Left is circling the waters right now like sharks. However, Trump is standing by his Cabinet amid calls for the resignations of Hegseth, Waltz, and others. The media doesn’t care if the attacks on the Houthis were still very successful and resulted in zero American casualties.

Now the Signal leak was an unforced error. But the leaks that occurred during the first Trump Administration? They were intentional leaks to the press. The most egregious example was former FBI Director James Comey giving official agency intel to the press, for which he was not held accountable.

So let’s not pretend like the far Left is innocent of leaks. I hope that the Trump Administration clamps down better on future leaks – both intentional and unintentional.

Now I’d like to shift to one of the biggest disasters in U.S. history: President Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. Unlike The Atlantic blunder that didn’t result in American casualties, Biden’s decision cost the lives of 13 American soldiers and 170 Afghan civilians.

After Biden’s abysmal withdrawal, the ACLJ filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Biden Administration to get answers. It’s been a slow process, but through our FOIA lawsuit we just uncovered a brand-new bombshell that reveals more information about a dissent cable that top State Department officials in the Biden Administration received a month before the withdrawal.

The dissent cable was sent to Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, and Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. They are the swampiest of the swamp, the driving force behind Biden’s foreign policy failures, and carryovers from the Obama Administration.

A dissent cable is a foreign service officer’s last resort when the normal chain of command won’t heed a warning about an issue that the foreign service officer sees as critically important. They can send a dissent cable directly to leadership in the State Department. That's what happened, and the warning was still clearly ignored by Biden’s top officials.

Sherman and Nuland received this dissent cable on July 13, 2021: “Good afternoon. We received the dissent channel message below expressing concern regarding U.S. policy toward Afghanistan. Please let me know if you would like to provide initial guidance to shape our response on this matter.”

Kabul fell a month later, on August 15, 2021. Because the Biden Administration didn’t heed this dissent cable, 13 American soldiers died. Just a few days later, Sherman deflected from the issue, stating to the media:

There was a concern that if we moved too quickly that it would undermine the confidence of the Afghan government and it would lead to a collapse even faster. . . . I appreciate that in hindsight people are saying, “Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that? (Emphasis added).

Sherman supposedly regretted not having “hindsight”; however, we now know that she knew about the pitfalls of a potential withdrawal in July. And again, no State Department officials were held accountable.

Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell reacted to the lack of accountability for Deep State bad actors like Sherman:

People like Wendy Sherman get away with being wrong because the bureaucracy excuses them, and the media excuses them. They’re never held to account. Wendy Sherman has been wrong so many times, whether it’s on Iran or North Korea – just pull up her assessments. You almost have to do the opposite of Wendy Sherman to be right. She literally has been wrong on every major foreign policy issue. And you look at Afghanistan, what she was saying, what she was doing, and how she was coordinating the policy – it’s no wonder that this is just the latest failure that we add to her résumé.

The ACLJ will keep you updated on further developments from our latest FOIA discovery. Stay tuned.

Today’s Sekulow broadcast included a full analysis of President Trump voicing support for U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz after the security leak.

Watch the full broadcast below: