Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg said national security adviser Mike Waltz invited him to a Signal chat where he allegedly saw discussions of "war plans," and now he is weighing whether to publish the transcript.
"My colleagues and I, and some of the people giving us advice on this, have some interesting conversations to have about this," Goldberg told The Bulwark in a podcast Tuesday. "But just because they're irresponsible with material doesn't mean that I'm going to be irresponsible with this material."
However, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted in a media scrum Monday night, Goldberg has a history of "peddling in garbage" to make President Donald Trump look bad to be advantageous politically for the left. In fact, former President Joe Biden based multiple Democrat presidential campaigns on alleging Trump called World War II victims "suckers and losers" after Goldberg's past reporting.
"My obligation is to the ideal that we take national security information seriously," Goldberg said as he weighed revealing what he claims are "war plans" to the public.
"Maybe, in the coming days, I'll let you know I have a plan to have this material vetted publicly, but I'm not going to say that now because there's a lot of conversations that have to happen about that," he said, adding that he is "sticking to my principles" here.
"I'm added to the Signal chat Houthi PC small group," Goldberg said during the 18-minute podcast interview. "I'm 100% convinced it's a fake" because of all the senior Trump administration officials' names he recognized in the chat either in full names or initials.
"It just doesn't happen; somebody's setting me up."
Goldberg made explosive claims that Vice President JD Vance suggested in the chat that President Donald Trump does not understand policy.
"I find it fascinating that JD Vance is in the chat not only saying that he disagrees with the president, but he doesn't think the president understands the ramifications of policy," Goldberg told The Bulwark's Tim Miller.
"This is where it's kind of bold: He says it in a chain that includes half the Cabinet."
Goldberg thought, Why the hell do I have this?
The preplanned Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats Tuesday concluded with Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., telling Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, "We will get full transcript" of the Signal chat.
"And by the way, we will get the full transcript of this chain, and your testimony will be measured carefully against its content," Ossoff said.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.