One story has dominated Washington this week. On Monday, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, revealed that he had been part of a group chat on the encrypted app Signal with senior Trump administration officials discussing strikes in Yemen against Houthi militants. That’s the Iranian proxy group that has spent the last two years using missiles to effectively shut down the easiest passage between Europe and the Indian Ocean, and repeatedly firing ballistic missiles at Israel—and which the Trump administration struck hard, on March 15, as they celebrated in the chat.
Once the shock over such a stunning unforced error subsided, the focus was on the behind-the-scenes look at foreign policy thinking in the administration: In the group, Vice President J.D. Vance voiced his reservations about the strikes the president had ordered; everyone seemed to have complete disdain for “freeloading” Europeans. Then the question was who Trump might fire because of the breach. But then the administration circled the wagons and took aim at Goldberg for the leak.
