Donald Trump held a secret candle light dinner at Mar-a-Lago after bombing Houthis, a report claimed.
When the Signal chat controversy was unfolding in real time, President Donald Trump reportedly held a secret Mar-a-Lago candlelight dinner, which many members of the Signal group chat attended that mistakenly included Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, leading to a major fiasco that came to light after 10 days.
The Wired reported that guests were asked to pay $1 million to get a seat in the March 15 private dinner, which was not listed on his public calendar and so was believed to be a secret arrangement. Earlier on that day, the US bombed Yemen, targeting Houthis and killing at least 53 people, including children.
Trump flew to Mar-a-Lago on Air Force One with Elon Musk and his four-year-old son X. Others in attendance were national security adviser Michael Waltz and White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, among others.
The secret dinner came to be reported as the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg penned an account of how the Trump officials planned to proceed with the bombing and how vice president JD Vance thought it was a bad idea.
After the bombing, there was a flood of congratulatory messages in the Signal group. “Amazing job,” Waltz texted, while Rubio congratulated Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, “Good Job Pete and your team!!”
Massive backlash for leaked chats
The Donald Trump administration faced a massive backlash over the news of the leak of the war plan, though defense secretary Pete Hegseth maintained that no war plan was discussed on the Signal chat group. Donald Trump stood by Waltz and said, “Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man.” “The only glitch in two months,” the president said, “and it turned out not to be a serious one.”
It is not yet known whether Waltz himself added Goldberg or it was one of his staff. “I would say that I don’t know Mike Waltz. I think I’ve met him twice. I think I met him at a conference or a party, at a conference a couple of years ago. And then maybe four or five, I forgot when he got to Congress [2019], but four or five years ago. I don’t know him,” Goldberg said about his acquaintance with Waltz.
