The Big Signal Mystery: How Did Goldberg Get Invited?

It’s scandalous, but hardly surprising, that high-level Trump officials discussed imminent missile strikes over a non-governmental messaging system. Hillary Clinton taught us that top officials often discuss classified material over public channels. The real mystery is why the journalist allowed to eavesdrop on the conversation was someone whose disdain for Donald Trump is well documented. And the feelings are mutual.

The security breach is serious and worrying. But it’s also inexplicable. If, for example, a reporter from a conservative news outlet such as The Federalist or Breitbart had been inadvertently invited to a discussion over the Signal app concerning plans to bomb the Houthi rebels of Yemen, the mistake would be easier to fathom.

But no. The journalist included was a well-known Trump antagonist, Jeffrey Goldberg. As editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Goldberg directs a publication that consistently casts the president as a menacing know-nothing whose presence in the Oval Office poses an existential threat to the Republic. Recent Atlantic articles about the Trump administration include “The Constitutional Crisis Is Here,” “Trump Is Nero While Washington Burns,” and “The New Authoritarianism.” While endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016, the magazine asserted that Trump was “the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency.”

Goldberg has advanced this argument himself through previous reporting on Trump’s relationship with the military. Most famously, he was the channel for the widely-covered claim by Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, that the president had dismissed the American soldiers who valiantly died storming the beaches of Normandy as “suckers” and “losers.” While Kelly stands by his account, many people who were in the room when Trump allegedly spouted those despicable words in 2018 say it never happened.

“The Atlantic … is dying, like most magazines, so they make up a fake story in order to gain some relevance,” Trump said at the time. “Story already refuted.”

Weeks before Election Day 2024, Goldberg wrote another incendiary article outlining what the author called “Trump’s singularly corrosive approach to military tradition.”

He added, “Today – two weeks before an election that could see Trump return to the White House – I’m most interested in his evident desire to wield military power, and power over the military, in the manner of Hitler and other dictators.”

Also in the run-up to the 2024 election, Goldberg wrote an essay titled “A Warning,” which claimed that “America survived the first Trump term, though not without sustaining serious damage. A second term, if there is one, will be much worse.”

Goldberg is entitled to his opinions, which echo those of most progressives who write for the legacy media. But it’s confounding that someone with that track record was the one outsider looped in on a highly secret discussion conducted outside of normal channels. If you wanted to gain traction for a story depicting the Trump administration as the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, it is hard to do better than Goldberg. The blanket coverage of his damning report only solidifies this reputation.

Still, as of now there doesn’t seem to be a conspiracy at play here. Goldberg fingers the perpetrator in his Atlantic article – which, in fairness, is a terrific scoop that any journalist would have coveted. “On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as [National Security Advisor] Michael Waltz.”

Trump himself has confirmed that someone in Waltz’s office had included Goldberg. “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there,” Trump said, largely dismissing the incident. It seems Goldberg’s Signal profile name ‘JG’ uses the same initials as U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

The real mystery remains – how is such an error even possible? Why would Goldberg’s initials be in any Trump official’s contact list? For that matter, why would anybody in the administration give him the time of day?

In this highly partisan media environment, it boggles the mind that the legacy media is even fed crumbs by the Trump administration. And yet every day the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others report inside scoops from what they call “highly placed officials.” While one hopes the president will demand that his people use only government channels for official business, this episode should alert him to potential enemies within.