| The Trump administration's top intelligence officials stressed to Congress the threat they said was posed by international criminal gangs, drug cartels, China and Iran, testifying in a hearing Tuesday that unfolded against the backdrop of a security breach involving the mistaken leak of attack plans to a journalist. Read more here |
Using a popular social media app for a group conversation of war against the Houthis was not the mistake made by Donald Trump administration officials Monday. What defies imagination is how a reporter was added to the group text, Josh Hammer, a conservative columnist with Newsweek said on American Family Radio Tuesday.
As it happens, liberal journalists are abundant in supply, and it was Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, a Washington, DC-based political commentary outlet, who was shocked to find his inclusion with heavy hitters from the administration.
In a brief exchange with reporters after landing in Hawaii Monday afternoon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied Goldberg’s claim that battle plans against the Iran-backed Yemen-based terror group were discussed in the conversation.
The Houthis have been using missiles and drones to attack commercial and naval vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023.
Earlier this month, the Houthis claimed to have launched 18 missiles and a drone at the USS Harry Truman and the warships traveling with it. The Houthis called the attack “retaliation” for U.S. strikes against Yemen, Aljazeera reported.
Hegseth ignored a reporter’s question about use of the social media app “Signal” for the conversation but launched into an attack against previous work and positions of Goldberg.
“So, you are talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who has made a profession of peddling hoaxes, time and time again,” said Hegseth, citing coverage from The Atlantic on Trump and Russia; Charlottesville, Virginia riots; and comments allegedly made by Trump regarding soldiers killed in war.
“Why were those details shared on Signal?” a reporter asked.
“I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth responded.
Goldberg, in an appearance on CNN Monday night, said Hegseth’s denial was “a lie.”
‘Catastrophic incompetence’
Signal's origins date back more than a decade, and it is relatively common for officials at every level – state, local, and federal – to have accounts on encrypted messaging apps. So, Hammer contends the focus on Signal is misplaced.
“I’m not particularly concerned about the fact that high-ranking government officials are using Signal. I am deeply concerned by the fact, obviously, that Jeffrey Goldberg was somehow added to this Signal group,” Hammer told show host Jenna Ellis. "I mean, the best thing you can possibly say about that, the best way to possibly spin that is catastrophic incompetence, and that's the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is quite a bit darker than that."
Signal is designed for instant messaging, voice calls and video calls. It uses end-to-end encryption, meaning that no one beyond the users, even Signal itself, can read the messages. Its open-source code means Signal can be trusted as highly secure, writes Dovilas Bukauskas for NordVPN.
The group text originator was National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. Other participants included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Stephen Miller, a CIA representative and Hegseth, according to DailyMail.com.
Goldberg doesn’t line up with the beliefs of this administration, Hammer points out.
“I am someone who has been blocked on social media by Jeffrey Goldberg for over a decade because he is a very far-left journalist. He is someone who has been in the tank for Barack Obama and Joe Biden for elitist Democrats, for a very, very long time now.
“It’s inexcusable for any editor, writer, journalist to be added to a group chat with the Vice President of the United States and the National Security Advisor. It would be inexcusable for me to be added to that, frankly,” Hammer added.
As egregious the mistake that has been made, the fact that this has become a story highlights the “extraordinary unethical behavior” of Goldberg, according to Hammer.
It was made slightly tolerable in the sense that the journalist waited until after the March 15 U.S. air and naval attacks against the Houthis, the largest U.S. military operation in the Middle East in Trump’s second term, to let it be known he was among the recipients.
Had Goldberg released the information before the strikes that would have been “borderline grounds for treason,” Hammer stated.
Golden opportunity for embarrassment
The Trump administration was not afforded the chance to learn from the mistake in private. Goldberg’s entire purpose, according to Hammer, was to embarrass the administration.
“It can only be understood by the fact that Jeffrey Goldberg is a career left-wing sycophant,” he explained – then added:
“I'm allowed to say this because I obviously am Jewish myself. As someone who has a very Jewish-sounding last name – 'Goldberg' – Jeffrey Goldberg personally took it upon himself during the Barack Obama administration to basically be the voice of the Iran nuclear deal. Barack Obama basically used Jeffrey Goldberg as kind of his token 'court Jew' to … try to sell his catastrophic Iran nuclear deal to the masses.”
Hammer downplayed the possibility that a bad actor within the administration intentionally added Goldberg to the conversation. Instead, sometimes things are what they seem, he said.
“The operating theory from what I can glean from what I've read thus far is that he [Goldbert] was likely accidentally added because he shares the same initials as someone else who should have been added to the chat,” Hammer said. “This is government we're talking about here. Government does a lot of dumb stuff and makes a lot of dumb mistakes.”
At least two news outlets have suggested "JG" – as it would have appeared in the chat – could have been mistakenly assumed to be Jameison Greer, the U.S. Trade Representative who attends National Security Council meetings.
