Michael Waltz claimed Jeffrey Goldberg’s phone number was “sucked in” to his phone.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, hit back at Michael Waltz’s claim that the two had never met.
“My number was in his phone. He mistakenly added me to the group chat. There we go,” Goldberg said Sunday on “Meet The Press.”
On Tuesday, Waltz, the national security adviser, said he takes “full responsibility” for adding Goldberg to a group chat that discussed war plans, a scandal that was brought to light when Goldberg wrote about it for The Atlantic last week. In the article, Goldberg detailed how he was inadvertently added to a group chat with 18 Donald Trump administration officials, in which the officials planned war strikes in Yemen.
Trump said there was nothing unclassified in the group chat and the mistake is not a security concern.
Waltz said on Tuesday’s episode of “The Ingraham Angle” that he does not know Goldberg, and that Goldberg’s contact information “somehow” replaced the contact information for a person Waltz intended to add to the group.
“Well, if you have somebody else’s contact and then somehow it gets sucked in. It gets sucked in,” Waltz said.
Goldberg said Sunday that he doesn’t know what Waltz is talking about.
“This isn’t the Matrix,” Goldberg said. “Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones. I don’t know what he’s talking about there.”
Goldberg continued: “He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s just simply not true. I understand why he’s doing it. But this has become a somewhat farcical situation. There’s no subterfuge here. My number was in his phone. He mistakenly added me to the group chat. There we go.”
Photos show that Goldberg and Waltz both attended a Q&A with a French filmmaker in 2021, in which Goldberg moderated.
Source: huffpost.com
