The fallout from the purported Sign group chat between high nationwide safety officers that inadvertently included a journalist is the newest chapter between President Donald Trump and The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who as soon as reported that Trump referred to fallen army members as “suckers” and “losers.”
“He’s as you understand is a sleazebag, however on the highest degree. His journal is failing,” Trump mentioned of Goldberg on Wednesday throughout an look on the “VINCE Present” podcast.
Earlier than coming to The Atlantic, Goldberg has accomplished reporting for a number of information retailers, together with the Washington Publish, the Ahead and the New Yorker, overlaying the Center East, Washington politics and different matters.
He joined the workers of The Atlantic in 2007 and have become its editor-in-chief 9 years later. During the last a number of years, he has written articles on the internal workings of the primary Trump administration.
It was beneath his management that The Atlantic revealed its third presidential endorsement within the journal’s 168-year historical past when it backed then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Trump within the 2016 election.
The endorsement known as then-candidate Trump “probably the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate within the 227-year historical past of the American presidency,” and mentioned, “He’s an enemy of fact-based discourse; he’s blind to, and detached to, the Structure; he seems to not learn.”
Jeffrey Goldberg speaks on stage throughout the “Nancy Pelosi on The Artwork of Energy” panel for The Atlantic Competition 2024 on September 19, 2024 in Washington, DC. | President Donald Trump meets with US Ambassadors within the Cupboard Room of the White Home in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2025.
Jemal Countess | Mandel Ngan/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Just a few weeks after the endorsement, Goldberg criticized Trump’s rhetoric throughout the marketing campaign in an interview with NPR.
“On the very least, he traffics in racial invective knowingly. To me, that is a threshold query. For those who do this and if you understand what you are doing then, sure, you are a racist. I believe he is a racist,” he mentioned within the interview.
Trump has attacked Goldberg and the journal over the endorsement for years, claiming it was a failing publication.
A month earlier than the 2020 election, Goldberg wrote an article in The Atlantic that described an 2018 incident the place Trump refused to go to an American cemetery in France the place World Warfare I service members had been buried.
“Why ought to I am going to that cemetery? It is crammed with losers,” Trump informed his advisers, based on the article. It additionally mentioned Trump known as fallen Marines “suckers.”
The president denied he had used these phrases on what was then Twitter and went after Goldberg’s sources. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of workers, later confirmed Goldberg’s account in an interview with CNN.
“That is extra made up Pretend Information given by disgusting & jealous failures in a disgraceful try to affect the 2020 Election,” he tweeted.
Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief, The Atlantic, speaks with ABC Information, Mar. 26, 2025.
ABC Information
The editor has remained essential of Trump’s insurance policies, rhetoric and actions.
In 2023, months after Trump introduced he was operating for reelection, the journal ran a whole difficulty devoted to analyzing what a second Trump time period would look and mentioned it was no totally different than authoritarian regimes.
Trump known as out Goldberg by title two weeks earlier than the 2024 election after he wrote a piece about Trump’s relationship with the army throughout his first time period. Goldberg wrote that former Trump officers informed him that Trump was obsessive about dictators and mentioned he wanted “the type of generals that Hitler had,” citing two individuals who heard the personal dialog.
Then-Trump spokesman Alex Pfeiffer mentioned the anecdote was “completely false. President Trump by no means mentioned this.”
White Home Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt echoed the president’s assaults on Goldberg throughout a press briefing Wednesday claiming that the editor has spent years making an attempt to discredit the president whereas ignoring Trump’s successes.
“Nobody within the media who loves manufacturing and pushing hoaxes greater than Jeffrey Goldberg,” she informed reporters.
Goldberg defended his reporting throughout an interview with ABC Information Reside on Wednesday.
“They’ve determined responsible the man who they invited into the dialog. It is slightly bit unusual conduct,” he mentioned. “Actually I do not know why they’re appearing like this besides to assume that they are they understand how severe a nationwide safety breach it’s. And they also must deflect it and push it on to the man, once more, they invited into the chat — specifically me.”
