It’s now been a week since The Atlantic broke its story that a group of top Trump Administration officials had discussed plans to attack the Houthis in Yemen on the unsecured, commercially available app Signal, and that journalist Jeffrey Goldberg had been accidentally added to the chat. Yes, what we all call Signalgate. And now, its getting stranger by the second.
Signalgate Going Conspiracy
Goldberg went on to publish most of the discussion on Monday and more of it on Wednesday. Based on that, and what has been said on the record by the journalist and by multiple participants in the chat, it appears that the chat is genuine and that National Security Adviser Mike Waltz created it and added Goldberg to it, most likely because he thought he was adding someone else.
While Waltz denied that he and Goldberg had ever met or spoken, Goldberg said in an interview on NBC over the weekend that this was not true.
It would appear that Goldberg’s name and number appeared in his contacts because Waltz had been a source for him at some point, possibly during the many years Waltz spent in Congress.
Having served on the House Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence committees, Waltz might have had occasion to talk to Goldberg, a leading national security journalist.
There’s also no reason for that to be controversial, except that the president would likely take exception to his national security adviser “leaking” to a reporter who Trump is known to dislike- even if it happened years ago, before Waltz was in the administration.
But supporters of the president have come up with some more far-flung explanations for what exactly happened with Signalgate.
It’s been called a “hoax” from the White House podium while there’s also been much parsing of the definitions of “classified information” and “war plans.”
There have also been further conspiracies alleged:
Signalgate: “Sucked Into This Group”
In a Fox News interview last Tuesday, not long after he accepted “full responsibility” for the Signalgate affair, and admitted that “I built the group,” Waltz was asked how Goldberg’s number got into his contacts.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist,” Waltz said, using a phrase that often precedes the sharing of conspiracy theories.
He went on to say that Goldberg is “the one that somehow gets on somebody’s contact and then gets sucked into this group.”
This was forcefully denied, on Meet the Press Sunday, by Goldberg himself.
“Well, this isn’t ‘The Matrix.’ Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones,” Goldberg said in the interview.
He also denied the national security adviser’s insistence that he and the journalist had never met or spoken without straightforwardly admitting that Waltz has been his source in the past.
The Alex Wong Theory
Trump ultra-loyalist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer had an alternative explanation for what happened: To blame the Principal Deputy National Security Advisor, Alex Wong, and to note that he’s married to U.S. Attorney Candice Chiu Wong, “a Chinese woman who was one of the key attorneys involved in prosecuting J6ers.”
Also, Alex Wong worked for Covington & Burling, one of the law firms that Trump is crusading against.
Is there any evidence that Wong and his wife – or, implicitly, China — have anything to do with Signalgate, or set the whole thing in motion as part of an “op”?
Absolutely not. Waltz himself stated in the Fox interview that “a staffer wasn’t responsible.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), on whose staff Alex Wong previously served, went on to defend Wong and his wife as “complete and total patriots, 100% MAGA Warriors who always put America First,” contrary to Loomer’s baseless and hugely racist implication that they’re Chinese spies.
The Katherine Maher Angle
There’s another goofy conspiracy theory about Signalgate that even Donald Trump himself has pushed.
Katherine Maher is the CEO of National Public Radio. Last week, she was grilled in a Congressional hearing, including over anti-Trump social media posts.
As some in the media pointed out, Maher is also chair of the board of the Signal Foundation, the parent of the app used by administration officials. Trump himself re-shared an X post noting this over the weekend.
Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
But it’s unclear what the conspiracy theory even is. Did Maher, in her position as CEO, somehow fabricate the Signal messages?
Obviously not, as multiple participants have confirmed that the chats are genuine.
And it was the Trump Administration officials who chose to use Signal, without any prodding from who they consider a hostile NPR CEO.
About the Author Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
