2 months ago
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PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, mistakenly added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat discussing U.S. military operations in Yemen due to an iPhone mechanism that prompts contact updates automatically, per new, exclusive reporting from Hugo Lowell at The Guardian.
👥 Who’s Involved: Mike Waltz, Jeffrey Goldberg, Donald Trump, White House staff, Trump campaign members, and National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes.
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📍 Where & When: The incident was discovered in March 2024, stemming from a mistake during the 2024 campaign communicated via Signal, a messaging app.
💬 Key Quote: Jeffrey Goldberg stated, “I’m not going to comment on my relationship with Mike Waltz beyond saying I do know him and have spoken to him.”
⚠️ Impact: The episode led to a forensic review by the White House IT office to uncover how Goldberg’s number was added mistakenly. It also prompted discussions about secure communication methods in the administration.
IN FULL:
The now infamous mix-up involving White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, resulted from an automated contact update prompt in Waltz’s iPhone, according to The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell. The illustration, provided below, is indicative of the type of function that Waltz apparently used when receiving a message from his colleague Brian Hughes.
According to several people briefed on an internal review, the error emerged from a series of missteps dating back to the 2024 campaign. Efforts to counter a critical story led a Trump campaign staffer to forward Goldberg’s contact details to Waltz, which prompted Waltz to inadvertently save “Goldberg’s number in his iPhone—under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the National Security Council.”
President Trump deliberated on firing Waltz, expressing discontent not only over the accidental inclusion of Goldberg, a frequent critic but also due to the discussion of sensitive topics on an unclassified platform like Signal. Nonetheless, Trump retained Waltz, avoiding the media fallout that might ensue from a high-profile dismissal.
The White House ordered an internal investigation, which attributed the contact mishap to an algorithmic error in Waltz’s iPhone.
Waltz maintained that he never interacted with Goldberg and suggested the integration of Goldberg’s number was due to a technical anomaly with the phone’s contact settings. Goldberg declined to elaborate on any existing ties with Waltz, simply acknowledging past communication.
“I’m not going to comment on my relationship with Mike Waltz beyond saying I do know him and have spoken to him,” Goldberg said.
PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: Democratic Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) reportedly accepted approximately $400,000 from Political Action Committees (PACs) despite previously claiming to have taken no money from such sources.
👥 Who’s Involved: Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and various PAC donors, as well as telecom companies like AT&T and labor unions.
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📍 Where & When: The financial disclosures relate to contributions between July 5 and December 31, 2020; Crockett ran for state representative and subsequently for Congress.
💬 Key Quote: Professor Matthew Foster remarked, “Democrats are more sensitive to this. They know people look at their contributions and use them against them.”
⚠️ Impact: The revelations raise questions about Crockett’s campaign financing claims.
IN FULL:
Far-left Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) is being accused of having lied while serving in the Texas state legislature, publicly claiming in a 2020 post on Twitter (now known as X) that she does not accept campaign contributions from corporate Political Action Committees (PACs). However, the recent disclosure of campaign finance documents reveals Crockett has received nearly $400,000 in campaign contributions from PACs. Notably, in 2020, while Crockett publicly declared that she didn’t take corporate money, campaign filings show she received contributions from at least 22 entities described as PACs.
While serving in the Texas state legislature, Crockett received contributions from numerous corporate PACs, including telecom giant AT&T and a Wholesale Beer PAC. More recently, as a member of Congress, the Texas Democrat has more openly accepted corporate cash, with over $370,000 in federal PAC contributions since she was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022. Among her corporate backers are major pharmaceutical companies, including AbbVie and Gilead Sciences, powerful financial firms like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, and even defense contractors like Lockheed Martin.
Even more concerning, Congresswoman Crockett has accepted numerous overseas junket trips financed by foreign governments and business consortiums. In February 2023, Crockett participated in a foreign junket to Doha, Qatar, costing around $17,500. The junket and expenses were covered by the U.S. Qatar Business Council, a Qatari entity that advocates for increased trade and investment between the United States and the Persian Gulf state, which is accused of being a major financier of Islamist terror groups, including Hamas. Similar trips, sponsored by Indian and Emirati authorities, were also noted in her financial disclosures for that year.
Crockett’s reversal on accepting corporate PAC contributions could become a political liability for the Congresswoman. In a recent media interview, American University professor Matthew Foster noted, “Democrats are more sensitive to this. They know people look at their contributions and use them against them.” He added: “Clearly [Crockett] thinks that issue is a big deal and a way to resonate with voters—so if what they put out there was false, it’s a great opportunity for the opposition to run on that.”
More recently, the Texas Congresswoman has faced significant criticism from both Republicans and Democrats after she made derogatory comments about Texas Governor Gregg Abbott (R). The National Pulse reported last week that Crockett, while speaking at a Human Rights Campaign event in Los Angeles, referred to the disabled and wheelchair-bound Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels.”
Subsequently, Crockett has dubiously claimed the derogatory nickname for Gov. Abbott was in reference to his use of buses to send illegal immigrants from Texas to Democrat-run cities like Chicago and New York. However, it is widely reported that the far-left Texas Democrat has referred to Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels” for years and well before he began bussing illegal immigrants out of his state.
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