On Monday, Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that National Security Adviser Michael Waltz had included him in an encrypted group chat to discuss war plans for striking Houthi targets in Yemen. It didn’t take long for the blame games to begin.
There was plenty of blame to go around—while Waltz invited Goldberg into the chat, it was others, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who Goldberg claims shared classified material in the chat. For one wing of the MAGA coalition, it was Waltz who should go.
The stakes here are not just group chat etiquette. The real problem, for this faction, is that Mike Waltz represents a foreign policy that is insufficiently hostile to the old Beltway consensus about America’s enemies and allies. Hegseth has empowered America Firsters at the Pentagon. Waltz has Jeffrey Goldberg in his list of contacts.
It’s true that Donald Trump said Tuesday that Waltz is a “good man” who “learned his lesson.” And in the Trump era, it can be perilous to be on the wrong side of the MAGA wing that is skeptical of foreign interventions.