WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt attacked Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg as a” discredited,” “anti-Trump sensationalist reporter” Wednesday — and said Elon Musk had offered to help figure out how Goldberg was included in a recent administration group chat about airstrikes on Yemen.

Leavitt attacked the journalist who revealed the embarrassing episode, which has spurred bipartisan concern about information security, as President Trump and his aides circled the wagons and refused to fire anyone involved to deny Democrats a “scalp.”

“We are not going to bend in the face of this insincere outrage,” Leavitt said at her regular briefing, accusing “Democrats and the media” of backing “a coordinated campaign to try and sow chaos in this White House.”

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attacked Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg Wednesday after he published a group chat of administration officials discussing Yemen airstrikes.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attacked Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg Wednesday after he published a group chat of administration officials discussing Yemen airstrikes.Getty Images
Leavitt focused on Goldberg as much of the day’s news coverage focused on national security adviser Mike Waltz, who added the well-known Trump critic to the group chat, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who insisted no classified information was shared, despite expert analysis to the contrary.

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“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,” Leavitt said from the briefing room podium, with a screenshot of an article about Goldberg’s past advocacy behind her on a TV screen.

“And how else has Goldberg discredited himself? … 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. Jeffrey Goldberg didn’t care.”

Goldberg was a "discredited" journalist, Leavitt said.
Goldberg was a “discredited” journalist, Leavitt said.The Bulwark / YouTube

National security adviser Mike Waltz included Goldberg on the group chat.
National security adviser Mike Waltz included Goldberg on the group chat.AFP via Getty Images
Leavitt added: “There’s more, but we don’t have all day, and we can now add the Signal hoax to this very long list. The real story here is the overwhelming success of President Trump’s decisive military action against Houthi terrorists.”

The press secretary did not mention that the lede of Goldberg’s bombshell 2020 report on Trump allegedly skipping a visit to a military cemetery in Paris in 2018 was debunked by a subsequent Freedom of Information Act release that proved the Navy made a “bad weather call” that prevented a helicopter flight.

Leavitt called Signal, the encrypted app on which Trump’s leading officials communicated about airstrikes earlier this month, “an approved app for government use” and “the most safe and efficient way of communicating, especially when people can’t be in a [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility].”

“Democrat Senator Mark Warner is hysterical over the use of Signal, which is an approved decrypted app, in the killing of Houthi terrorists,’ she said. “But Senator Warner himself used Signal to work with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch to connect [with] the disgraced Steele dossier author who started the Russia hoax.”

Leavitt was short on specifics about the investigation into Goldberg’s inclusion in the chat — saying that the White House counsel’s office and National Security Council were reviewing the matter without specifying which was taking the lead and how the findings would be known.

Musk, the driving force behind the Department of Government Efficiency, “has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how [Goldberg’s] number was inadvertently added to the chat again — again to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again,” she said.

Leavitt called the controversy an effort to derail Trump's agenda.
Leavitt called the controversy an effort to derail Trump’s agenda.REUTERS
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down after the briefing on his insistence that no classified information was shared on the group chat, even after Goldberg published additional messages containing details of the mission.

“There’s no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information,” Hegseth told reporters in Hawaii. “Nobody is texting war plans.”