‘Unserious’: Journalist hits back at Hegseth's attack that he 'peddles in garbage'

The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, hit back at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moments after the Pentagon chief vigorously denied ever sharing top secret war plans via a Signal group chat that included the journalist.

“The whole thing is just a very flummoxing to me because I haven't seen this kind of unserious behavior before,” Goldberg told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki in some of his first public comments after he stunned Capitol Hill when he broke his story Monday.

He added: “And, you know, and the secretary of defense, all due respect in that presentation, seems like a person who's unserious and is trying to deflect from the fact that he participated in a conversation on an unclassified commercial messaging app that he probably shouldn't have participated in.”

The remarks followed Hegseth’s strong refutation to Goldberg’s reporting when he claimed earlier in the day: “Nobody was texting war plans.”

ALSO READ:The new guy in charge of USAID doesn't believe in foreign aid

“So you're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again,” Hegseth said of Goldberg, adding that he is “a guy that peddles in garbage. This is what he does.”

But Goldberg stood by his report on Monday, agreeing with Psaki when she said "there are receipts" to back it up.

“He can say that it wasn't a war plan, but it was a was a minute-by-minute accounting of what was about to happen, organized by CentCom – central command – which is the military oversight group of the Middle East, the broader Middle East,” Goldberg said. “This is their plan. And he was taking their plan and sharing it with a bunch of civilian leaders.”

He told the MSNBC host that in the interest of being responsible, he wouldn’t “disclose the things that I read and saw,” but said he was privy to “precise detail” of the imminent attack.

“I’ve never seen a large group of national, senior-most national security officials, just kind of will-nilly put out a bunch of stuff, you know, without knowing who they're talking to.”

Watch the clip below or at this link: