Jeffrey Goldberg says Mike Waltz lied about talking to him: ‘Numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones’

WASHINGTON — Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg is accusing Mike Waltz of lying about talking with him — ridiculing on Sunday the claim that his phone number was mysteriously “sucked into” the national security adviser’s cellphone before being included in a Signal group chat about Yemen airstrikes.

“This isn’t ‘The Matrix’. Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones,” The Atlantic magazine’s editor in chief said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about there. You know, very frequently in journalism, the most obvious explanation is the explanation. My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone.”

Waltz, a former Florida congressman, claimed last week that he’s never spoken with or met Goldberg — a prominent critic of President Trump — even though a viral photo shows the men standing together at a 2021 event.

“He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s just simply not true,” Goldberg said.

“I understand why he’s doing it. But you know, 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.”

Goldberg did not elaborate on his alleged prior contacts with Waltz.

National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes denied Goldberg’s claim.

“Mike does not know Jeffrey Goldberg and does not recall ever meeting him,” Hughes told The Post.

“As a Member of Congress, he met thousands of people at dozens upon dozens of public events. Goldberg has a long history of erroneous reporting and baseless attacks against the President and Trump administration officials. I’ll take the word of a decorated Green Beret, combat veteran over Jeffrey Goldberg every day of the week.”

Goldberg was invited by Waltz on March 11 to a Signal messaging chat called “Houthi PC small group,” in which Trump officials discussed preparations for March 15 airstrikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement, which has been attacking ships in the Red Sea.

Waltz claimed Tuesday that Goldberg’s number was “sucked into” his phone and that “I’ve never met, don’t know” and “never communicated with” the writer.

Many Trump allies doubt that the national security adviser is telling the truth, but Trump and his top White House aides have publicly backed Waltz to deny Democrats a “scalp,” and he joined Vice President JD Vance Friday on a trip to Greenland.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt last week said that Goldberg “lied” about weapons of mass destruction ahead of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and highlighted his disputed 2020 article accusing Trump of disparaging US troops buried in France as “suckers” and “losers.”

Trump denied saying so, but the allegation was cited as fact by Democrats.

Goldberg claimed in that article that Trump “blamed rain for the last-minute decision” to cancel a cemetery visit near Paris in 2018 by “saying that ‘the helicopter couldn’t fly’ and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there” and that “[n]either claim was true.”

Navy records showed that military personnel made a “bad weather call” that canceled the helicopter flight. Goldberg never corrected his story.