President Donald Trump on Tuesday attempted to explain why his national security adviser had the contact information of a reporter the White House loathes, blaming a stunning leak on an unnamed junior staffer without providing evidence.

“Somebody that … worked for Mike Waltz at a lower level, had, I guess, [Jeffrey] Goldberg’s number, who called through the app, and somehow this guy ended up on the [chat],” the president told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly in an interview that aired Tuesday night and was recorded earlier in the day.

Trump was responding to a question from the conservative anchor about why Waltz — who inadvertently added Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, to a Signal group chat of top administration officials as they planned a military operation in Yemen — apparently had Goldberg’s contact information in his phone.

It was the latest example of Trump jumping to Waltz’s defense as others in the White House wondered if the embattled national security adviser would soon be pushed to resign. But Trump brushed aside concerns and reiterated “I feel very comfortable actually.”

Earlier Tuesday, Waltz took “full responsibility” for the oversight but denied knowing Goldberg, whom Trump has called a “sleazebag” whose reporting is “bad for the country.”

“I can tell you 100 percent I don’t know this guy,” Waltz told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. When she pressed him about how he got into the chat, he replied: “Have you ever had somebody’s contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else’s number?”

At no point in Waltz’s interview with Ingraham did he bring up a lower-level staffer with Goldberg’s contact information.

In his revelation of the incident on Monday, Goldberg wrote that he was added to the encrypted conversation, presumably inadvertently, after receiving “a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz.”