Minutes before the United States launched a deadly missile campaign in Yemen that reportedly killed 53 people and wounded 89, including multiple children, on March 15, the Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was sitting in his car in a grocery store parking lot waiting for the attack.
The story is now well-known and well-memed: Days before the missile barrage, Goldberg was added to a Signal group chat called “Houthi PC small group” after President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Waltz, invited him to connect on the encrypted message application. The editor was included in the discussion inadvertently, a spokesperson for the National Security Council acknowledged to the Atlantic.
The incident has set off a meme trend lampooning screenshots of messages from the group chat, published by the Atlantic, in which top government officials discuss a deadly assault with flagrant disregard for civilian casualties and seemingly no knowledge of the journalist in the room.
Though Signal has not been approved by the US government for sharing classified communication, the platform is frequently used by social movement organizers and journalists because of its end-to-end encryption. The incident, which has already been dubbed “Signalgate,” points to a serious breach of national security as members of Trump’s inner circle — including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard — shared details about specific targets and weapons and also named an active intelligence officer.
In a first-person narrative published yesterday, March 24, Goldberg recounted how he happened to join the group chat and the information discussed therein, though he said he omitted information that could “conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East.”
Goldberg, a national security reporter who also served in the Israeli military as a prison guard during the First Intifada, left the group chat once he believed it to be authentic. Some said that move ran counter to the motivations of a decorated beat reporter, testing what the American public believes a journalist can and should do. It’s probable that his decision was informed by journalism ethics such as minimizing harm and identifying oneself as a reporter, but it was also likely an attempt to thwart espionage charges. (The Nixon administration attempted to prosecute Pentagon Papers reporter Neil Sheehan under the Espionage Act.)
Other internet users brought back this month’s bloated portraits of Vice President Vance to make light of the situation. One user pointed out that Hegseth was the only person in the “Houthi PC small group” chat who had a Signal profile photo.
Several iterations of a bright-yellow Big Bird from Sesame Street sitting among suited individuals at a conference table are also circulating, connoting the absurdity of inviting a journalist into a government group chat discussing military campaigns.
And for once, the Daily Show was funny, imagining a text chain in which JD Vance’s profile photo grows larger and larger as the conversation progresses.
Former New York Times reporter and Washington Post commentator Taylor Lorenz, now an independent journalist, posted a series of memes pointing to the fact that Goldberg did nothing immediately after receiving intel on the imminent attacks.
The White House has said it was conducting a series of “precision strikes” against the Houthis, an Iran-backed armed political group in Yemen, in retaliation for attacks on ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis have claimed they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians by targeting ships linked to Israel, the US, or the United Kingdom, though the group has reportedly attacked other ships.
Since Goldberg published his article, President Trump has defended Waltz, who added Goldberg to the chat, in a phone interview with NBC News, calling him a “good man.” The group chat members claim that no classified information was shared.
The leaked (or whatever you want to call it) Signal group chat screenshots provide a template for memers to fill in with their own humor aimed at the Trump administration — or perhaps more acutely, for the public to understand the unseriousness with which the nation’s warmakers treat the use of lethal weapons and force.
