John Bolton Names The Only Reason Trump Would Fire Someone Over War Plans Group Chat

President Donald Trump’s ex-national security adviser John Bolton on Monday said he was “shocked” and “without words” over news that a journalist was invited to a group chat where Trump officials discussed highly sensitive government matters.

Bolton, in an interview with CNN’s Kasie Hunt, was later asked whether someone could be fired over The Atlantic’s bombshell report on the war plans text thread.

“Listen, Donald Trump’s not going to fire anybody unless he thinks this redounds to his personal detriment,” Bolton explained. “And we’ll see what happens.”

Bolton, a frequent Trump critic since the president pushed him out of his first administration, said he “couldn’t imagine anybody” would discuss matters of national security ― like the then-upcoming strikes in Yemen ― in the messaging app Signal.

His reaction comes after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, detailed the group chat, which Goldberg said current national security adviser Michael Waltz inadvertently invited him to join.

Bolton slammed CNN guests who argued that Signal is “highly encrypted.”

“I’ll just say this, if you think Signal is equivalent to U.S. government secure telecommunications, think again,” stressed Bolton.

He later continued, “But I just can’t, to this moment, get over the idea that during the days that group was going on, not one of the participants said, ‘We shouldn’t be doing this on Signal.’”

Bolton noted that he’s “certainly not aware” of any similar uses of such apps in Trump’s first term, adding that if officials couldn’t attend a discussion in the Situation Room on national security matters, they would join via a secure government line.