The White House and Minister of National Defense Pete Hegseth have been invited to a group chat of senior officials related to national security in Donald Trump's second administration and are now downplaying the matter, referring to Jeffrey Goldberg (60), editor of the U.S. magazine 'The Atlantic,' which revealed that these officials discussed airstrike operations against the Islamic militant group Houthi in Yemen via messenger, as "a discredited journalist." Goldberg has gained attention as he previously incited Trump's anger by calling Trump "a conman" and "a villain reporter."
Goldberg was born in Brooklyn, New York. He dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania and moved to Israel, where he served in the Israel Defense Forces. During the First Intifada in 1990, he worked as a prison guard. While in Israel, he began his journalism career as a columnist for the Jerusalem Post.
Goldberg returned to the U.S. and worked as a social affairs reporter for The Washington Post. He went through New York Magazine and The New York Times Magazine, and served as the New York bureau chief for the Jewish newspaper Forward. In 2000, he moved to The New Yorker, where he worked as a Middle East correspondent for five years before returning to Washington. In 2007, it was reported that David Bradley, president of The Atlantic, sent a pony to Goldberg's home for his three children in an effort to recruit him. Goldberg became editor of The Atlantic in 2016, nine years after he joined the publication. He is also the host of PBS's "Washington Week with The Atlantic."
Since Goldberg became editor, The Atlantic won its first Pulitzer Prize in 2021. It also received Pulitzer Prizes in 2022 and 2023. The Atlantic received an excellence award at the National Magazine Awards in both 2022 and 2023. Goldberg has recently strengthened the magazine's political department, reportedly hiring several prominent reporters from The Washington Post. As of last year, The Atlantic announced it had over one million subscribers. The annual magazine publication frequency has increased from 10 to 12 issues.
◇ Trump's feud with the 'villain reporter and conman'
Goldberg had a hostile relationship with President Donald Trump. In September 2020, Goldberg reported that Trump referred to soldiers who died in combat during World War I as "losers" and "fools." At that time, Goldberg noted that Trump's cancellation of his visit to the American cemetery at Aisne-Marne near Paris in 2018 was not due to the official reason of bad weather but because he was worried about his hairstyle getting ruined in the rain, and that he believed honoring those who died in war was not important. Later, in 2024, Goldberg reported that Trump continued to disdain the U.S. military, saying he needed "generals like Hitler."
Subsequently, Trump posted on social media that The Atlantic is "a failed radical leftist magazine," calling Goldberg "a sleazebag" and "a slimeball reporter." During a question-and-answer session with reporters at the White House on the 25th, Trump also described The Atlantic as "a failed magazine" and accused Goldberg, stating, "He creates many stories and basically has a negative impact on the country."
Officials from the Trump administration also only mentioned Goldberg regarding this incident, rather than the essence of discussing military operations on general messengers. Minister Hegses criticized Goldberg on the 24th during a meeting with reporters in Hawaii, the stopover of his trip to Asia, stating that "No one exchanged war plans via text" and that "(Goldberg is) a conman who has made spreading lies his profession and a highly discredited journalist." Caroline Levitt, spokesperson for the White House, also commented on the 25th on X (formerly Twitter) that "(Goldberg is) a journalist known for interpreting events sensationally."