Shortly after his publication shared the full “attack plans” that were discussed in the Signal group chat he was accidentally invited to join, The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday to discuss the high-profile government leak and, specifically, the Trump administration‘s “silly” response to his coverage of it.
“First of all, we didn’t do this lightly,” Goldberg began, defending The Atlantic’s Wednesday article and noting that the outlet had reached out to multiple points of contact within the federal government to make sure there really was nothing “classified” in the texts. “The White House issued us an anodyne statement late last night saying they think that some of this is sensitive and they would rather not have it out there, but there was no objections to specific details.”
“At a certain point, I just felt, you know, let our readers decide for themselves,” Goldberg continued. “Read these texts that I got sitting in my car on my phone in a Safeway parking lot two hours before the attack launched and you tell me if this seems like good operational security.”
In response to Trump calling him a “sleazebag,” the Atlantic editor joked, “It’s kind of rude. First, they invite me to their Signal chat and then they call me names. That doesn’t seem right.” He went on to refute any notion that the leak was the result of anything nefarious he had done. “The simple truth of the matter is on March 11, [National Security Advisor] Mike Waltz sent me a message request on Signal and I accepted it. That’s the entire story,” Goldberg stated.
On Tuesday, President Trump brushed off the seriousness of the Signal snafu, saying that he believed Goldberg’s presence in the aforementioned group chat had “no impact at all” on its purpose. He additionally called Waltz a “good man” and remarked that the National Security Advisor had “learned a lesson.” Multiple federal officials have echoed Trump’s comments, insisting that the security breach involving Goldberg was not a serious mistake.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt furthered that narrative, tweeting, “The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans.’ This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.” When asked about Leavitt’s distinction between “attack plans” and “war plans,” Goldberg succinctly told “Morning Joe,” “I don’t even know what that means.” He later added, “They can play a semantic game, but it’s just silly. It’s not serious.”
“Imagine this text went to someone else,” Goldberg explained. “This is operational details about a forthcoming attack on an enemy that has anti-aircraft capabilities. They have allegedly shot down our drones before. So why you would tell anyone in the world on a messaging app that American pilots are about to fly into a — sorry for the expression — war zone?”
“This is the purpose of journalism,” Goldberg noted. “We discovered something the government was doing that was wrong and dangerous. And you know, they could have responded by saying, ‘Yes, we should not have been on Signal. We won’t do it again.’ That would have been an easy way to deal with this.”
You can watch the full 44-minute “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.
