Donald Trump’s reflexive response to the bombshell reporting that his cabinet endangered national security by sharing military secrets via a leaked online chat was utterly predictable.
He tried to shoot the messenger.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine, was mistakenly included on a group chat among top administration officials describing a military attack in Yemen. Goldberg’s response was professional. He verified the authenticity of the material and chose to withhold sensitive information before breaking his blockbuster story.
Predictably, Trump fixated on Goldberg.
“He's a, you know, sleazebag, but at the highest level,” Trump said about Goldberg on a podcast. (Good to know that sleazebags have levels.) “His magazine is failing,” Trump added, as if he follows such things. The Atlantic has gained subscribers since the story.
Attacking the reporter was one part of the Trump response.
Another was relying on Fox News and others in MAGA’s propaganda network to argue, comically, that the screwup was a minor story. Freelance journalist Isaac Saul summed it up: “It’s really hard to do any kind of political analysis without constantly grappling with the fact that our two political tribes are just living in completely and utterly different information ecosystems.”
That media dichotomy is not new, but the attacks on Goldberg struck me as something almost unprecedented. As the BBC matter-of-factly reported: “The Atlantic editor … became the prime target for every senior Trump administration official in Washington.”
Goldberg told the BBC: “So I am sitting there, minding my own business. They invite me into this … chat and now they’re attacking me as a sleazebag; I don’t even get it.”
Trump also called Goldberg a liar, as did National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, who is the one who mistakenly added Goldberg to the Signal group chat. Waltz also called Goldberg “the bottom scum of journalists.” (So, sleazebags go up in levels as they get worse and scum go down. Got it.)
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt read a long, sophomoric denunciation of Goldberg at a White House briefing, accusing him of being an “anti-Trump hater.” She also said Goldberg “peddles hoaxes.”
(Two mostly interchangeable terms in Trump world are “hoax” and “witch hunt,” employed during the Russian election influence scandal from Trump’s first term, now to the Yemen leak, and on scores of topics between.)
Goldberg told the BBC that “if I’m all those things, why would they invite me to the chat?” He said the Trump administration blames him rather than “actually acknowledging that they have a massive national security breach, and that they should just go fix it.” He added, “This is their move,” to attack the journalist. “You never defend, just attack.”
Goldberg had offended Trump with his reporting before. In 2020 Goldberg published a story quoting senior military officials saying that Trump had referred to fallen American soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.”
Trump and his aides denied the account, but c’mon, even you MAGA types must acknowledge that sounds utterly in character for Trump, who once belittled the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, a former Vietnam War prisoner, for having been captured. And during his first term, Trump reportedly did not want to be seen with veteran amputees because “it doesn’t look good for me.”
So, who do you believe?
In all of this, I am reminded just how much respect for journalists has eroded during my professional career.
I recently rewatched a documentary on the Watergate scandal when its focus turned to Walter Cronkite, the beloved anchor of the CBS Evening News from 1962 until 1981.
For younger readers, polls once identified Cronkite as “the most trusted man in America.” Can you imagine anyone in the media being so venerated today? Fair-minded and professional journalism is still the norm, but decades of anti-media propaganda have taken a toll.
On Watergate, two reporters from the Washington Post — Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — were investigating the connection between a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters and the Nixon White House.
Cronkite informed a massive national audience of the scandal by presenting a rare, two-part overview in 1972.
According to the CBS website, “With his steady and straightforward delivery, and millions of viewers tuned in at home,” Cronkite “gave legitimacy to, what was then a developing story, that ultimately resulted in the indictment and conviction of several of President Richard Nixon’s closest advisers, and in the resignation of the president himself.”
“The fact that Cronkite did Watergate at all gave the story a kind of blessing, which is exactly what we needed,” Ben Bradlee, the Post’s editor during the Watergate era, wrote in Newsweek magazine years later.
Cronkite also had a major impact on the Vietnam War. Cronkite visited there in 1968 after the Tet offensive, the sweeping attacks launched during the Vietnamese New Year.
When he returned, Cronkite predicted in a commentary that the war could only end in a protracted stalemate. President Lyndon Johnson told his staff, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” Many suggested that LBJ’s decision not to seek reelection was connected to Cronkite.
I studied under one of Cronkite's closest associates. Edward Bliss was his first managing editor on the CBS Evening News, and he left CBS in 1968 to establish the broadcast journalism program at American University in Washington, D.C. I met Bliss seven years later while studying for my master’s degree.
Bliss, who had also worked for the legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow for 10 years, is the one who handed Cronkite the note on Nov. 22, 1963, saying that President Kennedy had died in Dallas. In launching the careers of a new generation of journalists, Bliss was skilled, gentlemanly, and cerebral. He was regarded by students with awe.
Journalists like Cronkite and Bliss were exceptional, but there have been many great journalists in the decades since, both in broadcast and print.
Bliss died in 2002 at age 90; Cronkite in 2009 at 92. If they were reporting news in 2025 that Trump did not like, I am convinced he would call these two icons “liars and sleazebags” as well.
Because, sadly, to paraphrase Cronkite’s famous closing line on his weeknight newscasts, “that’s the way it is.”
