Classified war plans inadvertently sent to journalist
The Atlantic’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was accidentally added to a group chat with top officials that detailed classified war plans.
A report released Monday by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief outlining how he came to be in a group chat with top Trump administration officials as they discussed plans to bomb Yemen has shaken the nation.
Jeffrey Goldberg wrote a firsthand account about how he was added to a group titled “Houthi PC small group” on the encrypted messaging app Signal. He first thought it could be people posing as the Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump’s national security advisor Mike Waltz, and others in order to trick him.
But Hegseth outlined the military operations targeting Houthis in Yemen mere hours before they happened on March 15.
Trump stood by his national security team on Tuesday, calling it “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.”
The incident is raising legal questions about using the publicly available app to share sensitive or classified information and whether the disappearing messaging violates federal record-keeping laws.
Meanwhile, the internet is doing what it does: poking fun at the now-public slip-up.
Memes and jokes about serious matters often a coping mechanism
Despite the gravity of the attack and questions around national security communications, the internet is once again charging forward with humor, just like it did during other serious matters like the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes and more.
Experts say that humor can be a powerful coping mechanism during such challenging times. And in fact, a study published in 2021 examined meme consumption during the pandemic, finding that something as simple as viewing a few memes can be helpful in fostering positive emotions, mitigating stress and increasing one’s confidence in dealing with challenges.
“Humor provides a way of reframing the events or situations in our lives so we see them differently,” Robin Nabi, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the study’s authors said as USA TODAY previously reported. “Instead of seeing the threat, which results in anxiety, humor leads us to focus on the incongruity or absurdity of a situation, which minimizes anxiety’s power.”
Internet group chat culture meets national security news
While several Democrats are raising alarm bells about national security, the internet is cracking on with the jokes.
“Renaming my family group chat ‘secret war plans’ because someone is always sending something stupid in there,” one user wrote on X.
While some raised prior allegations of Hegseth’s public intoxication, others compared the incident to the possible horror of texting the wrong person.
“It’s very serious business obviously but I do think it’s very funny imaging how they all felt when they saw the ‘Jeffrey Goldberg has left the chat’ notification,” someone said on X.
Others joked about the scam text moment we are living in:
“I woke up this morning to texts from Pete Hegseth warning me I had unpaid EZ Pass tolls,” a user joked on Bluesky.
Multiple Jeffrey Goldberg mix-ups
Goldberg is the editor-in-chief at The Atlantic magazine. But others with similar names have been caught in the firestorm of reactions that Goldberg’s reporting created.
Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief at The Dispatch, has been repeatedly replying to disparaging posts at him on X to let them know he is not Jeffrey Goldberg.
Another user confessed she thought everyone was talking about Jeff Goldblum, the actor who most recently played the Wizard in “Wicked.”
In any case, multiple users applauded Goldberg for reporting the information promptly and leaving the group chat when he realized it was more than likely real.
“Jeff Goldberg better than me tho bc I would have stayed on that chain until Jan 2029,” Jasmine Wright, a Washington D.C.-based reporter wrote.
Contributing: Riley Beggin, Joey Garrison, Savannah Kuchar and Daryl Austin, USA TODAY
Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected]. Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @kinseycrowley.bsky.social.