Why Would Anyone In Trump’s Circle Have Jeffrey Goldberg’s Number?

So why was Jeffrey Goldberg’s number, from the Atlantic, on anybody’s phone in the Trump administration to “inadvertently” add to a Signal group chat?

Tony Katz:

Why was he in anybody’s phone? I keep saying that for me, this is so much of the argument. And, and admittedly, if this had happened under Biden, you would hear people on the political right screaming for blood and they wouldn’t be wrong. We would ask ourselves what actually took place? Were war plans discussed? Not like that… But was a group text amongst the leaders of the United States available to a journalist? Yes, they were. And it was indeed wrong. And it’s an issue. Noah Rothman joins me right now from National Review, his latest. Striking the Houthis does not constitute bailing out Europe again.

Striking the Houthis Does Not Constitute ‘Bailing Out Europe Again’ https://t.co/UnHsCSneeM

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) March 24, 2025

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He is also the author of Unjust and the The Rise of the New Puritans, The Progressives War on Fun, which is available at Amazon.com. Good to see you. We were talking just before we, we got on air that most people on the political left are discussing whether or not these people are incompetent and they’re terrible and they put America at danger. That did not happen. That’s a very easy thing to state, although you don’t like the idea that they allowed a journalist or anybody else who should not have been on a group conversation into the conversation, my argument has been why in the world Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic? I don’t like Jeffrey. I don’t know the man personally, but I don’t like him going back to hiring and firing Kevin Williamson from National Review because a couple of staff members got their nose out of joint that he might say something that they find offensive. It’s as if they had never read any Kevin Williamson in their entire lives. You went from a completely different angle, and you said is anybody going to look at what JD Vance just said right here? Is anybody going to take a look at this? So, before we get to your piece, let’s start with the overall, this conversation on the app Signal, you’ve got Marco Rubio and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, Tulsi Gabbard from Director of National Intelligence, who you and I both had an issue with in being confirmed. All these people having this conversation is it’s so weird that they had a conversation.

Noah Rothman:

Well, I’m going to say at the outset. That I do not share your confidence that our intelligence has not been compromised here. I don’t think we have the information to know that, and the indications that we do have are extraordinarily troubling Signal as an app, whether it’s secure or not is not allowed on federal devices, meaning that if it is downloaded on a personal private device, and you’re conducting these sensitive deliberations on it, they very well could be compromised by foreign actors. Why do we know this? We know this from the Hillary Clinton scandal in 2009 when she was using a BlackBerry on a tour in Southeast Asia. We understood at the time from security experts who were not partisans, that foreign actors can compromise these devices remotely. And gain access to American intelligence, even if we’re not talking about sensitive information

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