Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg says it’s “simply not true” that he and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had never communicated with him before Goldberg was mistakenly included in a Signal chat of top Trump administration officials.
Screenshots shared by Goldberg show Waltz added the journalist to the Signal chat about an upcoming attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, but Waltz has repeatedly said he had never spoken to Goldberg before. During an appearance on Fox News earlier this week, Waltz said he must have had Goldberg’s number in his phone because “If you have somebody else’s contact and then somehow it gets sucks in … it gets sucked in.”
“This isn’t The Matrix,” Goldberg said when asked about Waltz’s explanation during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. “Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones. I don’t know what he’s talking about there.”
“You know, very frequently in journalism the most obvious explanation is the explanation,” he added. “My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone. He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s just simply not true. I understand why he’s doing it.”
Goldberg said the situation has become “somewhat farcical,” adding, “There’s no subterfuge here. My number was in his phone. He mistakenly added me to the group chat. There we go.”
Goldberg also went on to dispute claims by Trump administration officials that the information in the Signal chat was not classified.
“When the texts are coming over, as I’m watching them unfold, it’s 11:44 a.m. on a Saturday,” Goldberg said. “Pete Hegseth is promising that U.S. war planes are taking off in 30 minutes to bomb enemy targets that we know are protected by anti-aircraft batteries, OK? So if that’s not the most sensitive information, the most secret information in the world, I simply don’t know what the meaning of classified, or secret, or top secret is.”
“Because American pilots were about to fly into possibly a deadly situation, and the Secretary of Defense is telling everyone on the group chat — which, by the way, included me — that these pilots were about to go into harm’s way,” he added.
He said he was “sort of aghast when I’m watching this unfold.”
Meanwhile on Sunday, Senator James Lankford (R., Okla.) said he believes there should be an investigation into the Trump administration’s use of Signal to discuss sensitive national security matters.
“It’s entirely appropriate for the inspector general to be able to look at it and be able to ask two questions,” Lankford said on CNN’s State of the Union.
“One is, obviously, how did a reporter get into this thread in the conversation, and the second part of the conversation is, when individuals in the administration are not sitting at their desk in a classified setting on a classified computer, how do they communicate to each other?” he said.