The journalist at the heart of the scandal over leaked war plans says Vice President JD Vance’s messages reveal what he really thinks about his boss.
Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg made waves on Monday when he revealed that he had been inadvertently added to a Signal chat in which top members of the Trump administration discussed plans to bomb Yemen. In the messages, Vance pushes back on the timeline for the attack, saying it is “inconsistent” with President Donald Trump’s hardline stance on European allies.
The exchange shows Vance thinks “the president doesn’t even understand what he’s doing here,” Goldberg said in an interview on CNN’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Here we have a serious, substantive conversation where he’s telling members of the Cabinet, members of the president’s own Cabinet, that, ‘No, no, he doesn’t even get it,ʼ” Goldberg said. “I would have to imagine that caused a little disturbance in the force in the White House.”
“I found that remarkable, obviously, given that JD Vance has tried very hard to make sure that he’s 100 percent aligned with what Trump says,” Goldberg added.
A spokesperson for Vance dismissed the supposed rift between the president and vice president, telling The Atlantic last week that Vance and Trump are fully aligned.
“The vice president’s first priority is always making sure that the president’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations,” the spokesperson said. “Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy. The president and the vice president have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.”
Goldberg also disputed National Security Advisor Michael Waltz’s assertion that the two never met before the Signal leak, saying the claim is “simply not true.”
The Atlantic editor dismissed Waltz’s claim that Goldberg’s number was somehow “sucked” into his phone.
“My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone,“ Goldberg said. ”He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s simply not true.”
The White House did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Goldberg’s comments on Sunday were his first admission that he had spoken with Waltz before he was looped into the group chat. While he admitted to The Bulwark that the two had met briefly years ago, Goldberg kept mum about his history with Waltz in an interview with CNN even as photos surfaced of the pair standing near each other during a 2021 book event.
“If your eyeballs see us together, then I guess your eyeballs are seeing us together,” Goldberg told CBS News of the photos.
Waltz has repeatedly claimed he had never met Goldberg, telling Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Goldberg is a “loser” and from the “bottom scum of journalists.”
“100 percent: I don’t know this guy—wouldn’t know him if I bumped into him, if I saw him in a police lineup,” Waltz said.
