The revelation that numerous high-ranking Trump defense and intelligence officials shared sensitive tactical information on Signal, a private messaging app not vetted for government use, and shared it inadvertently with a prominent magazine editor who was mistakenly included in the group chat is being treated as a nothingburger by the Trump administration.
Following a trusted political playbook that calls for denial, mischaracterization and misdirection, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attacked the included editor — Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic — who reported the security breach, rather than address the myriad problems represented by Goldberg’s revelation. President Trump also attacked Goldberg and the magazine in response.
(Hegseth called Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes” without acknowledging that the Trump team must think the journalist of some importance — after all, it included Goldberg on the chat.)
Jeffrey Goldberg is well-known for his sensationalist spin. Here are the facts about his latest story:
1. No “war plans” were discussed.
2. No classified material was sent to the thread.
3. The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different…
— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) March 25, 2025
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt followed suit, issuing a bevy of denials in a social media post that castigated Goldberg as someone known for “sensationalizing” — even as a near consensus among veterans of the national security community called the breach a “stunning” act of “gross incompetence.”
Based on Leavitt’s post, the only aspect of the story that the White House and its critics agree on is that it is “sensational.”
Seeking to further diminish the significance of what’s being called “SignalGate,” billionaire Trump advisor and DOGE de facto leader Elon Musk tried humor, denigrating the venerable magazine and its journalistic impact and integrity by making a joke about its alleged failure to reach an audience.
Sharing a headline from conservative satirical magazine Babylon Bee, Musk wrote “Best place to hide a dead body is on page 2 of The Atlantic magazine, because no one ever goes there.”
President Trump shared Musk’s joke on Truth Social.
But Musk’s joke is running into a different reality than the one he curates on X. The reality being reported today is that the SignalGate story — which Musk implies is practically invisible at the moribund Atlantic — is the biggest news story of the year. Bigger than Trump’s inauguration, bigger than Tesla’s stock plummet, bigger than Musk’s DOGE cuts.
As Axios reports, metrics show that “SignalGate is more than just a revelatory report, it’s a viral sensation that’s driving meme mania online. SignalGate was the top story in the world across all English-language articles, according to NewsWhip, which measures social media engagement across Facebook and X.”
(The news tracking company NewsWhip shows that the SignalGate story had more engagement in 24 hours than any other story of 2025, by a wide margin.)
Even conservative Fox News analyst Brit Hume balked at taking Hegseth’s petulance as a good look for one of the most powerful men in the world, addressing the SecDef’s ad hominem attack on the journalist by writing: “Oh for God’s sake, the administration has already confirmed the authenticity of the message.”
Oh for God’s sake, the administration has already confirmed the authenticity of the message. https://t.co/AxQGqqyux3
— Brit Hume (@brithume) March 24, 2025