Trump Just Handed His Biggest Enemy in Media a Slam Dunk

President Donald Trump insisted that information leaked to Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg was not classified multiple times during a White House press availability Tuesday afternoon. But his defiant tone may have just backed his administration into a corner of litigious federal investigations, potentially giving one of his most prominent and influential critics a major win.

On Monday, Goldberg dropped a bombshell report about Trump National Security Adviser Mike Waltz accidentally adding him to a group chat in which the principals committee – the heads of the top American national security agencies — discussed plans to strike Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen earlier this month.

Pro-Trump media figures have since bent over backwards to try to defend the massive security breach, which could potentially involve crimes, given the law that Trump enacted during his first administration in response to Hillary Clinton’s email server controversy. After fits and starts and various attempts at explanations, Trump surrogates eventually landed on their insistence that no classified information was shared with Goldberg.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was defiant in telling a reporter Monday, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

During a Tuesday press event, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Trump if he was going to “change any of the practices after a reporter was added to group chat about attacks on Yemen.” After touting the operation’s success, Trump said, “There was no classified information, as I understand it.”

Later, when asked about Signal, the encrypted commercial messaging app used, Trump added, “This was the best technology for the moment, but again, it wasn’t classified, so they probably viewed it as something that wasn’t that important, and obviously, with the attack being — I mean, I don’t know if it has been read out to you yet, but that attack was a tremendous success.”

Collins pressed the president on who exactly determined that the information shared wasn’t classified, to which Trump demurred and asked for another question.

So why is this relevant? Well, as we learned during the Mar-a-Lago classified documents debacle, the commander-in-chief is the ultimate decider on what is classified information and what is not. It does not take a stretch of the imagination to hear Trump’s comments as a signal to Goldberg that since this isn’t classified, it could be made public.

During a podcast with The Bulwark, Goldberg pushed back hard on the claim that no classified information was shared with him. Host Tim Miller asked whether, given the White House’s pushback and criticism of him, he should “now demonstrate” that there was classified information in the messages, asking, “Shouldn’t you publish the text?”

Goldberg rejected that as motivation to publish, saying:

My colleagues and I, the advice and the people who are giving us advice on this have some interesting conversations to have about this. But just because [the administration is] irresponsible with material doesn’t mean that I’m going to be irresponsible with this material. And you know what? I could, whatever… I mean, you’ve had long history, as I have, with dealing with them. And at moments like this, when they’re under pressure because they’ve been caught with their hand in the cookie jar or whatever, they will just literally say anything to get out of the moment, to get out of the jam – and that’s okay. I get it. I get the defensive reaction.

Goldberg then suggested that in the coming days, he would reveal a plan to have the information “vetted publicly” but that he wanted to ensure he could hold to his principles and protect certain information. He said:

But here’s the thing. My obligation, I feel, is to the idea that we take national security information seriously. And maybe in the coming days, I’ll be able to let you know, okay, I have a plan to have this material vetted publicly. But I’m not going to say that now because there’s a lot of conversations that have to happen about that.

All of my inclinations, as you can tell, including withholding the name of the CIA undercover officer, all of my inclinations are I have a pretty clear standards in my own behavior of what I consider… information that I consider to be in the public interest, even if it’s technically classified or information that’s in the public interest and information that’s not in public interest. I’m sticking to my principles here.

So, if this information is not classified, as Trump insisted multiple times, then Goldberg should have the agency to release the data he received legally.

Fox News host John Roberts put the tension in stark relief Tuesday afternoon, saying, “The White House saying it wasn’t classified, the Director of National Security, the Director of the CIA saying that information was not classified, and as Hegseth saying no war plans were discussed. So if Goldberg wanted to prove Hegseth wrong, all he has to do is share that screen grab that I am sure he has got, but he hasn’t done that yet.”

“Put up or shut up,” replied his guest, former Trump aide Alex Gray. “At this point, I think we have to take the officials at their word.”

So, Goldberg is now feeling pressure from pro-Trump media to share the information he’s seen, which again has been confirmed real by the Defense Department, which, if it’s not classified, will make him look, at best, like a fool.

However, suppose the information IS classified and the details he described in his report turn out to be top secret, as has been broadly defined by media outlets of all stripes. In that case, Trump is being duplicitous, and his administration could also be criminally investigated for misleading statements or a cover-up. And as we’ve learned in Watergate, it’s the cover-up, not the crime, that gets you.

Some might think it naive to suggest a Trump-led Department of Justice would ever investigate the president’s criminal accusations, and that is certainly a fair point, particularly in light of recent Supreme Court decisions. But that’s a column for another day.

Nonetheless, pro-Trump media insistence that Goldberg should “put up or shut up” could come to bite the 47th president in the ass, even if its just politically exploiting allegations of incompetence, security lapse and rhetorical hypocrisy.

Watch above via Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.