The editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, said Vice President JD Vance’s comments in a leaked Signal group chat shows that he believes Donald Trump “doesn’t even understand what he’s doing.”
Goldberg was mistakenly added to the group chat by national security advisor Mike Waltz. In the chat, top Trump administration officials discussed plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen.
In the messages, Vance called the timing of the operation a “mistake,” adding, “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message in Europe right now.”
Goldberg said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that the exchange shows Vance thinks “the president doesn’t even understand what he’s doing here.”
“Here we have a serious, substantive conversation where he’s telling members of the Cabinet, members of the president’s own Cabinet, that, ‘No, no, he doesn’t even get it,‘” Goldberg said. “I would have to imagine that caused a little disturbance in the force in the White House.”
“I found that remarkable, obviously, given that JD Vance has tried very hard to make sure that he’s 100 percent aligned with what Trump says,” he added.
In a statement last week, Vance’s communications director William Martin insisted that the VP and Trump are fully aligned.
“The Vice President’s first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations,” Martin said.
“Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy,” he continued. “The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.”
