National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other top Trump administration officials mistakenly included Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic (Left bias), in a messaging chain that detailed planned strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. The plans, shared by Hegseth, specified when the strikes would take place and which forces would be used.
The Atlantic initially reported on the group chat on Monday, but the magazine withheld contents of the thread in its initial report due to security concerns. The full texts were published on Wednesday following members of the Trump administration’s claims that none of the messages were classified. In a statement, a National Security Council spokesman said, "the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain."
Voices across the spectrum criticized the security blunder with varying levels of intensity that did not follow partisan lines, though some on the right defended it as a minor error.
Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-In-Chief of The Atlantic wrote, “I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.”
The Dispatch (Lean Right) published a piece stating, “The regrettable irony of this fustercluck is that the people most culpable for the scandal everyone is talking about—the sloppy handling of sensitive materials and military deliberations—were the best actors when it came to the actual policy discussion. Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Joe Kent, Trump’s pick to run the National Counterterrorism Center, revealed that they are quite serious in their fundamental animosity toward our European allies and more than a little contemptuous of the idea that America should ensure freedom of the seas, among other things.”
A writer for Al-Jazeera (Lean Left) argued, “I wish ‘senior officials’ in other secrecy-obsessed countries would follow Waltz’s laudable lead and let journalists witness – on purpose or in error – the banal ‘inner workings’ of cavalier members of the bureaucratic equivalent of the so-called ‘principals committee’, particularly when it involves lethal matters of war and peace. That way, the stubborn myths would be laid bare about the ‘serious’ men and women who populate the shrines to power in Western capitals and are obliged to ‘debate’ the consequences and implications of killing innocents in sovereign nations.”
The New York Post Editorial Board (Right) published, “Look, Trump was elected in good part because Americans were sick to death of the last administration’s endless cavalcade of lame, easily disproved lies…Yes, we get that stepping up to own failures is hard. But it just got that much harder for Americans to trust the administration on national security issues going forward.”