MAGA conservatives are attacking Jeffrey Goldberg for being in the chat now known as “Signalgate.” But some are wondering why he left the chat. Here is Stephen Prager at Current Affairs:
…As Goldberg watched these deliberations unfold, he was understandably incredulous about the fact that he was included. That is, until he checked Twitter/X to confirm that explosions were indeed being reported in Yemen. He then turned back to the chat to watch as the top-level security officials celebrated the bombing with a bevy of emojis: American flags, fists pumping, hands praying. It was at this point Goldberg knew that the chat was real and that he truly was observing the innermost workings of a presidential administration completely undetected. And so, he did what any inquisitive journalist would do given those circumstances. He removed himself from the group.
I’m sorry… he did WHAT? Yeah, that’s right. He just removed himself from the group, a move he explains that he made “understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, ‘Michael Waltz,’ that I had left.” When I read this, my jaw was on the floor for a good few minutes. I haven’t been in the journalism game as long as Jeffrey Goldberg. When he left his job as a humble IDF prison guard to join the Washington Post, kicking off his illustrious career as a man of letters, I had not yet been born, so maybe he knows more than me. But if I were put in the position Goldberg found himself in, I simply cannot fathom doing what he did.
Goldberg was given a one in a million opportunity to observe the heights of American power unchecked, unfiltered, with top Trump administration officials acting as if they believed nobody was watching them. This is never a situation journalists are in, and Goldberg was well aware of that. By what appears to have been sheer, dumb luck, he was given the opportunity to be a fly on the wall in the most secretive room in the world. Instead of waiting and watching, taking in every bit of information he could, he decided to buzz on over to the middle of the table where everyone could see him and say, Hey guys, so I’m a fly and I accidentally ended up on your wall, I think there’s been some kind of mix-up and I saw some stuff I wasn’t supposed to see. Sorry! I’ll see myself out.
Read the entire piece here. What do you think? Is Prager’s critique fair?
