President Donald Trump was shocked to learn at a press conference Monday that messages between some of his administration’s top officials and aides were leaked when an editor for The Atlantic was mistakenly included in a private Signal group chat.
The stunned commander-in-chief at one point told reporters gathered in the White House’s Roosevelt Room: “You’re telling me about it for the first time.”
During the press conference, Trump was asked what his reaction was to The Atlantic article published Monday, which revealed that his top officials accidentally shared plans to bomb Yemen with Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s editor-in-chief.
The president seemed blissfully unaware of either the article or the security breach.
“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. I think it’s not much of a magazine but I know nothing about it,” Trump said. “You’re saying that they had what?”
His confusion didn’t seem to end there. After the reporter specified that the messages were sent through the messaging app Signal, Trump cut him off: “Having to do with what? What were they talking about?”
In his article, Goldberg described how he was mistakenly added into a Signal group chat with the likes of Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, where top Trump administration officials revealed plans for a Houthi-targeted military strike in Yemen on March 14.
He also attached screenshot evidence of the chat.
The spokesman for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, confirmed the legitimacy of the group chat, informing Goldberg that it appeared to be “an authentic message chain.”
A spokesperson for Vance also addressed the messages, telling Goldberg that “Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy.”
The only person seemingly kept in the dark throughout this whole ordeal was the president himself.
“Well it couldn’t have been very effective because the attack was very effective, I can tell you that,” he said at the press conference, wrapping up his thoughts on the matter. “I don’t know anything about it.”
