White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt opened Wednesday’s press briefing by going on offense against Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg over his report this week about a Signal chat group where top Trump administration officials discussed U.S. strikes against Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
Leavitt ripped the mainstream media for focusing on the story, which she called “sensationalized” and said was “falling apart by the hour.”
The story broke open because Goldberg was somehow added to the group, allowing him to monitor what U.S. officials were saying about the forthcoming strikes.
“The National Security Advisor has taken responsibility for this matter, and the National Security Council immediately said alongside the White House Counsel’s Office that they are looking into how a reporter’s number was inadvertently added to this messaging thread,” Leavitt said. “We have said all along that no classified material was sent on this messaging thread. There were no locations, no sources or methods revealed, and there were certainly no war plans discussed.”
She said that the story proves that “Democrats and their propagandists in the mainstream media know how to fabricate, orchestrate, and disseminate a misinformation campaign quite well, and there’s arguably no one in the media who loves manufacturing and pushing hoaxes more than Jeffrey Goldberg.”
“Goldberg is an anti-Trump hater,” she said. “He is a registered Democrat. Goldberg’s wife is also a registered Democrat and a big Democrat donor who used to work under Hillary Clinton. This is the same Jeffrey Goldberg who infamously lied about weapons of mass destruction to get us into the Iraq War, which cost trillions of dollars and thousands of American soldiers.”
“And how else has Goldberg discredited himself?” she continued. “By absurdly claiming that President Trump was Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign, by peddling the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ hoax that tried to hijack President Trump’s first term, by inventing the ‘suckers and losers’ hoax to help Joe Biden in the 2020 election, by peddling a hoax about President Trump involving Gold Star families to help Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, which our campaign at the time, vigorously denied.”
.@PressSec on the latest hoax from Democrats and their media mouthpieces: "If this story proves anything, it proves that Democrats and their propagandists in the mainstream media know how to fabricate, orchestrate, and disseminate a misinformation campaign quite well." pic.twitter.com/F33uQtduD8
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 26, 2025
