On March 24, The Atlantic reporter Jeffery Goldberg published a story that grabbed the attention of millions of Americans, entitled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans”, a story title that seemed so bizarre that many assumed it to be click-bait. However, Goldberg’s story was anything but forged.  

When Jeff Goldberg was added to a group chat with names of cabinet members and Trump’s White House Staff members, he thought that it must have been a scam, fully expecting the numbers in the group chat to ask him for his social security number and bank information. Correspondence within the chat soon after disclosed specific plans for the military operation of the bombing of Yemen, operations against the Houthi fighters which were soon after carried out.  

After Jeff Goldberg published this story, Trump severely downplayed the situation, writing off the contents of the group chat as “unclassified information” that was overplayed by liberal journalists. However, if these specific details of the strike, which would usually be sent in classified government channels, had gotten into the wrong hands, the lives of all the Americans on the fighter jets could have been endangered.

Citizens and White House officials alike were dumbfounded by this mistake on the part of Michael Waltz, national security advisor who accidentally added reporter Goldberg to the Signal Chat. An internal investigation by Trump’s team found that when Goldberg previously reached out to one of Trump’s cabinet members, his email was forwarded to Waltz, who accidentally saved his contact information as Hughes, national security council spokesperson.

Many feel that the story calls into question the security of national affairs, if the National Security advisor himself made such a detrimental misstep.