Trump confirms National Security Council firings as Waltz's Signal chat woes snowball

National security advisor Mike Waltz and his office have repeatedly come under fire since news broke on the Signal chat leak with a journalist.

On Thursday, Trump confirmed that members of the National Security Council had been fired, but remarked it was not many individuals. The president added that he continues to have trust in his national security team amid the turmoil. 

Waltz, who previously served as a Florida congressman and as a decorated combat Green Beret, has come under fire from Democrats and critics since March, when the Atlantic magazine's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg published a firsthand account of getting added to a Signal group chat with top national security leaders, including Waltz, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, while they discussed strikes against Yemen terrorists. 

Signal is an encrypted messaging app that operates similarly to texting or making phone calls, but with additional security measures that help ensure communications are kept private to those included in the correspondence.