In an extraordinary revelation, senior US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg said on Monday (March 24) that he was accidentally added to a group chat with top members of the Trump Administration, as they discussed plans to attack the Houthis of Yemen earlier this month. Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, detailed the events in an article for the publication (“The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans”). The group chat on the encrypted messaging platform Signal included US Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The incident has drawn criticism for the administration’s handling of sensitive US policy matters. Here’s what to know. What happened? Goldberg initially thought the “Houthi PC small group”, as it was named, was likely fake or attempted fraud. “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior U.S. officials, up to and including the vice president,” he wrote. The fact that Waltz reached out to connect with him on Signal also seemed strange to Goldberg. “I did think it somewhat unusual, given the Trump administration’s contentious relationship with journalists—and Trump’s periodic fixation on me specifically,” he wrote. These doubts were put to rest when the group discussed the timing of the first attack on Yemen, which was classified information, and Goldberg saw media outlets report on them. Asked about the incident, US President Donald Trump said he was unaware of it, “I don't know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time… I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. It’s to me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. I think it’s not much of a magazine.” A White House official later said that an investigation was underway and Trump had been briefed, Reuters reported. What is The Atlantic? It was founded in 1857 as The Atlantic Monthly by publisher Moses Dresser Phillips and editor Francis H. Underwood in Boston. Over time, renowned authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes would rank among its contributors. Its content would change over the years, moving away from poetry and fiction stories. In the 2000s, it became known as The Atlantic and its base shifted from Boston to Washington, D.C., reflecting its increasing focus on covering politics. In 2017 it was announced that the Emerson Collective was acquiring a majority stake. The group was founded and headed by businesswoman and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs. In a statement, she had called The Atlantic “one of the country's most important and enduring journalistic institutions.” Trump has previously criticised the magazine’s coverage, specifically a story written by Jeffrey Goldberg. Who is Jeffrey Goldberg? Goldberg is an Israeli-American journalist. He moved to Israel after college and served in the Israeli Defense Forces under conscription. He later returned to the US and began working as a reporter at The Washington Post. Over the years he has also been associated with The New Yorker and Bloomberg View. He is known for covering foreign policy matters and interviewing key political figures such as Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio. During Trump’s first presidential term, he had a run-in with Goldberg over an exclusive story in 2020 (“Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’”). In it, Goldberg cited sources as saying that the real reason Trump cancelled a visit to a World War 1 cemetery near Paris in 2018 was that “he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead”. Goldberg also quoted Trump as telling senior staff members, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” Trump also allegedly referred to the more than 1,800 US marines who lost their lives in the WW1 Battle of Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed. Trump refuted it and wrote in a post on X, “The Atlantic Magazine is dying, like most magazines, so they make up a fake story in order to gain some relevance.” However, three years later, his longest-serving chief of staff John Kelly appeared to confirm the remarks after their fallout.
