(AFP) – President Donald Trump announced Thursday he will sit for an interview with the reporter who uncovered a major security lapse after being inadvertently added to a group chat in which top US officials shared secret military strike plans.
The Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg was propelled to global fame — and roundly attacked by Trump and other cabinet officials — after publishing details of the sensitive exchanges on the Signal app in the run up to US strikes on rebel Huthis in Yemen. Trump referenced the so-called “Signalgate” scandal when he announced the interview — scheduled for later Thursday — in a social media post that accused Goldberg of being “the person responsible for many fictional stories about me.”
“I am doing this interview out of curiosity, and as a competition with myself, just to see if it’s possible for The Atlantic to be ‘truthful,'” Trump said. Goldberg’s stunning inclusion in the Yemen strikes chat sent shockwaves through the national security establishment and around the world, leading to calls for the resignation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host.
Hegseth, who is a military veteran but had no previous national security experience, revealed the times of strikes on the Iran-backed Huthis and the type of aircraft, missiles and drones used — all before the attacks actually happened. Democrats have claimed that the lives of US service members could have been put at risk by the breach, and the row has raised serious questions about potential intelligence perils.
Trump has so far stood by Hegseth and other top officials on the chat, dismissing the scandal as a “witch hunt” and arguing that his Pentagon chief is doing a “great job.” Goldberg — who will conduct Thursday’s interview with two Atlantic colleagues, according to Trump’s post — also drew the president’s ire in 2020 for an article in which he reported senior US military officers hearing the president call soldiers killed in World War I “suckers” and “losers.”
Trump has angrily denied the claim on multiple occasions, but John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time of the purported remark, confirmed Goldberg’s reporting.
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