Politics

JUST IN: The Atlantic Backtracks On ‘War Plans’ Hit Piece

Published

6 days ago

March 26, 2025

The liberal news outlet which has ground Washington, D.C. to a halt within the past few days has backtracked after claiming that top Trump officials had shared “war plans” with an editor over an unsecured group chat.

Jeffrey Goldberg, the Canadian-born editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited to join a Signal chat with Vice President J.D. Vance, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and others discussing the imminent bombing of Houthi strongholds in Yemen. In his story, Goldberg claims that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared “war plans” several hours before the bombing began, a term he included in the headline.

One day after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Goldberg of adding “sensationalist spin” to his report, editors have changed the story’s headline. It now reads “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisors Shared on Signal.”

Conservative journalist Eric Daugherty wrote on X that the change vindicated Hegseth’s claim that no war plans or classified intelligence were shared with Goldberg.

“THEY’RE BACKPEDALING! The Atlantic just sent out an update report CLARIFYING that there WERE NO WAR PLANS exchanged in that Signal chat… they were (as we all saw) some discussion on the Houthi strikes that Americans knew were coming,” he said.

“This hoax totally fell on its face!”

To be sure, material about the looming mission in Yemen was shared with Goldberg, and it’s still unclear how or why he was invited to the chat group on an app widely utilized by journalists and other individuals seeking to keep their messages encrypted. Although so-called security experts have deemed the use of Signal a significant security lapse, the Biden administration had previously issued guidance encouraging officials “highly targeted” by foreign intelligence services to use the app, according to Fox News.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday downplayed the significance of the leak, saying it had “no impact at all” on the Yemen campaign and that The Atlantic is “not much of a magazine.” He expressed his full support for Waltz, saying he “learned a lesson” from the oversight.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung doubled down on the criticism of The Atlantic later on Tuesday, accusing “anti-Trump forces” at the liberal outlet of trying to “peddle misinformation.”

“From the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ hoax of the first term to the fake documents case of the last four years… at every turn anti-Trump forces have tried to weaponize innocuous actions and turn them into faux outrage that Fake News outlets can use to peddle misinformation,” Cheung posted to X.

Republicans on Capitol Hill also circled the wagons, slamming the mainstream media for questioning the use of Signal when the Biden administration relied on it for years.

“It is my understanding that the Biden administration authorized Signal as a means of communication that was consistent with presidential record-keeping requirements for its administration, and that continued into the Trump administration,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning.