Signalgate journalist Jeff Goldberg said he’s unafraid of legal retaliation from the Trump administration, saying, “I don’t get bullied” in a Sunday morning interview.
“No, I don’t get bullied,” the Atlantic editor told NBC News host Kristen Welker when asked if he’s worried the administration would “come after you.” “I’m not worried about that. They’re obviously being very, very silly there.”
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Goldberg has been the talk of Washington, D.C., since breaking news last week that he was added to a Signal chat in which top Trump White House officials discussed plans to attack the Houthi terrorist organization.
In an appearance on Meet the Press, he said he’s confident there won’t be any legal action taken against him and furthered his claims that he had spoken with national security adviser Mike Waltz prior to him inadvertently being added to the intelligence group chat.
Waltz has claimed that Goldberg’s number got “sucked into” his phone, which Goldberg flatly denies.
“This isn’t The Matrix,” Goldberg said, referencing the 1999 movie. “Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones. I don’t know what he’s talking about there.”
“The most obvious explanation is the explanation,” Goldberg added, saying his number was already in Waltz’s phone and that any claims to the contrary are “simply not true.”
President Donald Trump and his team spent most of last week pushing back fiercely against the story, attacking Goldberg’s credibility, saying the mission in question was a success, that Signal is an approved communication device on government phones, that information shared was not classified, and suggesting the media is making too much of the incident.
Goldberg defended himself in the interview, saying that if the information wasn’t classified, “I simply don’t know what the meaning of classified or secret or top secret is.”
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Asked if he has any regrets about how the story played out, Goldberg said he wished the Trump administration hadn’t challenged his first story forcing him to write a second one with more compromising details.
“I wish that I had not been put in the position to have to release the more sensitive texts,” Goldberg said. “But the only reason I did that was because they said we were lying about what we had, and they were trying to cover up what was obviously a massive national security breach.”
