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Reports of Trump calling fallen US troops as 'losers' to be backed by more info, says Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeffrey Goldberg, who penned the shocking story saying the president insulted martyred American troops says that in this climate, the information is necessary to help voters make a decision in November

President Donald Trump’s sour relation with the mainstream media is nothing new and the latest outlet to join the list is The Atlantic which recently came up with a shocking report that the president insulted the country’s fallen heroes of the Battle of Belleau Wood during his trip to France in 2018. The report said while Trump refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris because his hair would have been ruined by the rain, he also ended up calling the dead Marines as “losers” and “suckers”. Trump said it was because of the unfavorable weather conditions that he could not visit the cemetery.

The president and his aides have since taken on The Atlantic over the report saying it is not true but the publication has remained unfazed. Jeffrey Goldberg, its editor-in-chief, has now said that “more information” is likely to come out in the near future to back the story about Trump’s controversial remarks. 

Goldberg, 54, told CNN’s Brian Stelter on “Reliable Sources” on Sunday, September 6: “I would fully expect more reporting to come out about this and more confirmation and new pieces of information in the coming days and weeks. We have a responsibility and we're going to do it regardless of what he says.”

He also defended his anonymous sources to say: “These are not people who are anonymous to me. We all have to use anonymous sources especially in a climate in which the president of the United States tries to actively intimidate journalism organizations and people who provide information to journalism organizations.” On the decision to publish the article which has put Trump in a spot less than two months before the high-profile election, The Atlantic editor-in-chief said it was taken confidently because of the number of sources he had and their close ties to the president. 

“The formula is simple. What you do is you have to say, does the public's right to know or need to know a particular piece of information outweigh the morally complicated and ambiguous qualities of anonymous sourcing,” he said. "Most of us, most of the time, don't rely on anonymous sourcing for most things because there are difficulties there. But in this climate, with information that we judge the voters to need, we are going to use anonymous sources because we think the public has a right to know. Especially when you have four or five or six sources, primary sources, corroborating sources, telling you the same thing,” he added. 

Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein echoes Goldberg

Goldberg found a backing in Carl Bernstein, the famous investigative reporter who was known for breaking the Watergate scandal story that ended Richard Nixon’s presidential run in the 1970s. The 76-year-old told Stelter on the program that anonymous sourcing is often a key tool for reporters.

"Almost all 200 of our stories about Watergate were based on anonymous sourcing," he said, adding that in the Trump era, “reporting is almost uniformly based on anonymous sourcing in part because that's the only way we can get to the truth.”

Speaking on the Trump presidency, Bernstein said: “We have to recognize that almost everything we know about the truth of Donald Trump and his presidency comes from reporting. The fake news is the president's news," and journalists are "doing the real reporting.”

On Sunday, Trump even hit out at The Atlantic’s majority owner Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of the iconic Steve Jobs. Attacking one of the richest women in the world saying she was wasting her late husband’s money, the president tweeted: “Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE. Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!!” He posted it in reply to a tweet made by Charlie Kirk, one of his active supporters who said Jobs made a big donation to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign.

Jobs donated at least $500,000 to the campaign of Biden, the New York Times reported in July. 

'Not going to be intimidated by Trump'

Goldberg, however, was least bothered and said there was no question of the magazine getting intimidated by the president and it would continue with its reporting on the administration. “We’re not going to be intimidated by the President of the United States. We're going to do our jobs,” the award-winning journalist said. 

On Sunday, September 6, Veteran Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie backed the president over the controversy. Speaking on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’, he said the president who was described by anonymous sources in the report is not the one he knows. "I would be offended, too, if I thought it was true. I am very proud that this president has led to a renaissance in veterans affairs," he said.