Jeffrey Goldberg: Leavitt 'playing at some sort of weird semantic game'
The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said on Wednesday the White House is playing “some sort of weird semantic game” by focusing on his use of “attack plans” instead of “war plans” in his second bombshell report about the Signal group chat in which top Trump officials discussed plans to strike Houthi rebels — apparently without realizing Goldberg was in the chat.
The top editor on Wednesday published follow-up reporting, headlined, “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.” The story followed an initial article, headlined, “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt zeroed in on the different wording and suggested The Atlantic was backtracking on its initial claim that “war plans” were inadvertently shared with a journalist.
“The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans,’” Leavitt wrote in a post on the social platform X, with a screenshot of the headline of the Wednesday article.
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” she added.
Goldberg dismissed the suggestion that the variation in word choice signaled any sort of concession.
“I don’t even know what that means. I mean, the plain language in the text is-, what are they arguing? That an attack is different than a war?” Goldberg said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, when asked to respond to Leavitt’s post.
“They put operational details of a forthcoming attack on a terrorist organization into Signal, into a Signal chat that included phone numbers that they didn’t recognize. I don’t even understand what that means,” he continued.
“They’re talking about attacking and killing terrorists using various weapons systems, so she’s just playing at some sort of weird semantic game. I don’t understand,” Goldberg added.
Goldberg published group chat messages on Wednesday with additional detail about the timing of the attack and the weapons that would be used.
Goldberg initially withheld those detailed messages, citing concerns about disclosing classified U.S. intelligence, but after Trump officials repeatedly blasted the reporting and claimed classified information was not circulated in the chat, the outlet said it wanted to make the messages public to let people decide for themselves.
“The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions,” Goldberg and colleague Shane Harris wrote.
Hegseth has denied sharing classified information in the group chat in comments to reporters, and during an appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the information in the Signal group was not classified.
“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the journalists from The Atlantic said.