Some in MAGA are questioning the loyalty of National Security Adviser Michael Waltz after an unearthed “friends” list suggested he may be cozy with Trump’s political and media adversaries.
Days after news broke of Waltz mistakenly adding The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat of security officials, WIRED unearthed his contacts on the payment app Venmo, which include some suspected anti-Trump types.
That included a top MSNBC executive, two CNN stars, a former Trump cabinet member exiled from MAGA, and a Fox News correspondent known not to shy away from criticizing the president and his administration.
WIRED first reported on Waltz’s Venmo account Wednesday, after which The American Prospect published a PDF naming all of Waltz’s 300+ “friends” on the app, which draws contacts from the host phone.
Waltz quickly made his friends list private, but the Daily Beast was still able to dig through the contacts.
MSNBC Executive Producer Lauren Peikoff’s name appeared on the friends list, as did the CNN anchor Brianna Keilar, CNN White House Correspondent Kristen Holmes, and NewsNation anchor Leland Vittert.
Keilar’s husband, who like Waltz has a military background, was also included.
Waltz’s friend list also included Trump’s former secretary of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, who had a very public falling out with the president in his first term.
Nielsen resigned in 2019 after she refused to close ports of entry along the border at Trump’s request, The New York Times reported, defying the president in a cabinet meeting. Trump announced Nielsen’s departure on Twitter before she could even submit a resignation letter, Axios reported.
Nielsen did not immediately respond to questions emailed by the Daily Beast on Friday about what relationship—if any, as professionals or as friends—she had with Waltz.
Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin was also on Waltz’s friends list. She is known for pushing back against her colleagues’ often rosy coverage of Trump. This week, she reported that U.S. officials told her Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth indeed shared “classified” information in the Signal group chat.
Also in Waltz’s contact list was the ex-White House correspondent Ed Henry, who was fired from the network in 2020 amid sexual misconduct allegations. Fox hosts Bret Baier and Brian Kilmeade, as well as the Fox Correspondent Griff Jenkins and the Fox News Digital editor Porter Berry, were also among Waltz’s Venmo contacts.
French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy speaks to the audience—including National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg—during the 2021 launch of his documentary. Twitter
Waltz’s office noted he used to represent Florida in the House of Representatives and was a Fox News contributor.
“He has relationships with people who work in media. There should be nothing surprising here,” spokesperson James Hewitt told the Prospect.
Waltz’s contacts have raised suspicions in MAGA-land about where his loyalties lie.
Trump supporter and writer Mark Groubert struck a similar tone Friday, posting, “Before entering Congress, Mike Waltz was counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. He’s a rat. Get rid of him.”
Sean Davis, founder of the right-wing commentary site The Federalist, criticized Waltz’s connections with reporters in a post on X.
“I’m a lot less interested in how J.D. Vance is trying to keep the defense bureaucracy aligned with Trump’s foreign policy message and vision, and a lot more concerned about why Mike Waltz is regularly talking to Jeffrey Goldberg, a dead-end neocon war pimp who has been involved with every major foreign policy hoax of the last quarter century,” he wrote.
