I'm sure that Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic was certain that he had his Pulitzer Prize winning moment when he wrote the article about being added to a classified text message chain in which high level Trump administration, including Pete Hegseth discussed war plans. I can only imagine his smug countenance as he accepted the praises of his fellow journalists for proving that Donald Trump's administration was incompetent. He refused to release the text messages because of the highly sensitive and classified nature of the information. As it turns out, 90% of what he said was a lie.

After the hastily called hearings to discuss what had happened it became clear that the text messages were going to be released by the administration. The Atlantic staff decided to go ahead and release them and then they had to change their story about the nature of the highly detailed and classified war plans contained in the text message chain. The first part of the text message is very vague and discusses in very general terms that the attack plan is in place to be led by the Israelis then supported by the United States. The second part of the text message contains specific times that US fighter groups would leave base and arrive on target. There was no information about the date the attacks would be carried out, the locations of the attacks, or specific information about the targets to be attacked. If these were truly war plans they were drawn up by a 6th grade boy playing army with his friends in recess.

It is however concerning that Goldberg was added to the text message chain on the secure app Signal. How did he get there? The first explanation was that a staffer, Alex Wong, had mistakenly added 'JG' to the chat believing those were the initials of another national security staffer. That leaves us to believe that Jeffrey Goldberg was included in a chat group involving the Secretary of Defense and other high-ranking members of the defense and intelligence community. That's hard to believe.

Alex Wong is Mike Walz's national security adviser. He has worked for several years in the state department focusing on North Korea and Southeast Asia. He has ties to the Chinese government through his wife, Candice Chiu Wong. Candice clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor and then was one of the lead prosecutors of the January 6th insurrectionists. Questions have been raised in the past about her ties to the Chinese government.

Alex worked for the law firm Covington & Burling, which was recently stripped of its national security clearance by the Trump administration. The firm had worked closely with the Justice Department in investigating and attempting to prosecute conservative organizations that were accused of spreading misinformation. In other words, they were part of the weaponization of government under the Biden administration. There had also been concerns raised about their ties to foreign governments including China.

Itis at least plausible to believe that Wong added Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat group on purpose with the intent to embarrass the Trump administration. And he may have had some friends in the state department and intelligence agencies that also wanted to embarrass the administration. There is some discussion that the intelligence community was upset at the use of the Signal app because they could not monitor conversations held on the app. I have also seen other discussions in which it is said smartphones can be hacked and that flip phones should be used because they are less susceptible to hacking since they don't have the software and Wi-Fi capabilities of smartphones—A fact well known among drug dealers who generally use flip phones to conduct their business.

So once again we have an example of prominent media personalities lying to the American people in order to accomplish a goal, embarrass the Trump administration. You have to wonder, would more people be upset because a journalist was added to a secure conversation regardless of what was involved in that conversation had the story been presented factually. I think so. But because Goldberg lied and the rest of the propaganda media ran with the story people believe they have less credibility and are focusing on the lie rather than the mistake.