Source: The Washington Post / Getty
By now, most of you have heard the news about the White House administration of bumbling idiots who included a journalist in a group text that revealed detailed war plans to bomb Yemen on March 15, 2025. For those who haven’t heard about it yet, President Donald Trump’s woefully underqualified Secretary of National Defense, Pete Hegseth — who, ironically, has made it his priority to eliminate DEI from the military because he thinks diversity initiatives serve the woefully underqualified — included Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, in a group chat shared on the Signal messaging app that included other top Trump administration officials.
The Atlantic published an op-ed piece about the White House blunder that didn’t include any particularly damning details about what was revealed. Well, now, that has changed because Trump and his minions are out here doing damage control by claiming that the administration “accidentally” shared with Goldberg was classified and that the journalist lied about what he saw in that text thread.
We all know that Trump’s only way of explaining away his missteps and those of his cabinet members is to claim as often as possible that those clear and unmistakable displays of gross incompetence never happened. Well, Goldberg was like: Nah, we got receipts.
From Deadline:
In his initial story about being added to the text chain, Goldberg withheld Hegseth’s texts about the attack plans, describing them in generalities rather than specifics out of concern that publication could jeopardize the lives of U.S. military personnel. The top administration officials were texting about planned strikes on Houthis rebels in Yemen. But in their response to the bombshell story, Trump administration officials have insisted that the information shared on Signal was not classified, while they also tried to discredit Goldberg, attacking his past pieces for The Atlantic. In testimony before Congress on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe also said that the material shared was not classified, and Trump also made the assertion later in the day. Hegseth had insisted that no one was texting war plans. In a new piece, Goldberg and Shane Harris wrote, “The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.” In the texts that were published, Hegseth gives details of when the operation is to be launched, the time of first strikes and that drones were aimed at “target terrorist.” “THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP,” Hegseth noted. Minutes after the first target strike, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz offered details on the damage done and some information on who among the Houthi leadership was hit.
So, basically, Goldberg did his job as a journalist by reporting the chat group he was included in — because no matter how much the president and his administrators hate looking stupid, this level of White House jankiness is news the people have a right to know — and he was even responsible enough not to reveal the sensitive content of what he was “accidentally” made privy to. But that wasn’t enough for Trump and his minions, who might as well have claimed the whole thing was Goldberg’s fault because he failed to text STOP to opt out of highly classified White House war plans. They could have just admitted they messed up. Instead, they tried to shoot the messenger, so now Goldberg has gone from calling them out to calling them all the way out.
“This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m.,” Goldberg and Harris wrote. “This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi ‘Target Terrorist,’ was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.”
And yet, the party of, “But, but, but Hillary’s emails” is suddenly full of excuses and denial.
Sad.
See how social media is reacting to the mishap below.