President Donald Trump said he agreed to be interviewed Thursday by The Atlantic editor who was mistakenly included in an online chat with senior administration officials.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed late last month that he was unintentionally included in a March 13 group chat with top White House officials.
Goldberg said Vice President J.D. Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and national security adviser Mike Waltz used the chat to discuss possible military action in Yemen against the Houthis.
Despite Democrats and critics demanding that officials be fired over the incident, Trump has stood behind Hegseth and Waltz.
The president said he would speak with Goldberg and two Atlantic reporters Thursday afternoon.
“Later today I will be meeting with, of all people, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor of The Atlantic, and the person responsible for many fictional stories about me, including the made-up HOAX on ‘Suckers and Losers’ and, SignalGate, something he was somewhat more ‘successful’ with,” Trump posted.
“Jeffrey is bringing with him Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, not exactly pro-Trump writers, either, to put it mildly! The story they are writing, they have told my representatives, will be entitled, ‘The Most Consequential President of this Century.'”
Trump said “curiosity” persuaded him to agree to the interview.
“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,'” he added. “Are they capable of writing a fair story on ‘TRUMP’? The way I look at it, what can be so bad – I WON!”
Goldberg has a history of writing stories that show Trump in a negative light.
In September 2020, Goldberg wrote a story claiming Trump called service members “losers” and “suckers.”
In October 2024, Trump’s campaign officials, as well as family members of a murdered U.S. Army private, accused The Atlantic of publishing “a false smear” against the then-former president through an extensive article, written by Goldberg, concerning his relationship with the nation’s military and accusing him of reneging on a promise to pay the soldier’s burial costs.
In 2017, Goldberg said Trump’s strong anti-media tirades could spur violent attacks against journalists.
The Signal chat controversy has been fodder for Trump critics in recent weeks.
On March 26, The Atlantic released the entire Signal chat among Trump senior national security officials. The transcript showed Hegseth provided the exact times of warplane launches, strike packages, and targets — before the men and women flying those attacks against Yemen’s Houthis this month on behalf of the U.S. were airborne.
The New York Times recently reported that Hegseth created another Signal messaging chat that included his wife and brother where he shared similar details of a March military airstrike against Yemen’s Houthi terrorists.
Hegseth on Tuesday said “informal, unclassified coordinations” were shared in an online chat, and he added that an internal probe into leakers at the Pentagon continues.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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