The Atlantic and Jeffrey Goldberg are garbage. Goldberg authored an atrocious piece yesterday that slanders President Trump over a soldier’s death in 2020.

The title of Goldberg’s piece is:

Trump: ‘I Need The Kind Of Generals Hitler Had.’ 

And it gets worse from there. You see, Jeffrey Goldberg uses the first few paragraphs to go after President Trump by exploiting the death of Spc. Vanessa Guillén. A young soldier who was brutally murdered by another soldier who, along with his girlfriend, attempted to burn her remains. 

Goldberg writes that President Trump, while meeting with the family, offered his support and wanted them to know he’d help with costs out of his own pocket if they needed it.

In the meeting, Trump maintained a dignified posture and expressed sympathy to Guillén’s mother. “I saw what happened to your daughter Vanessa, who was a spectacular person, and respected and loved by everybody, including in the military,” Trump said. Later in the conversation, he made a promise: “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.”

And then Goldberg takes the knives out with this absolutely atrocious bit concerning what supposedly happened during a meeting that took place months later, in December 2020. 

At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?”

According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000.

Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.”

Khawam, the family attorney, told me she sent the bill to the White House, but no money was ever received by the family from Trump. Some of the costs, Khawam said, were covered by the Army (which offered, she said, to allow Guillén to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery) and some were covered by donations. Ultimately, Guillén was buried in Houston.

Let’s just stop right there. Who were the people at that meeting?? Goldberg doesn’t say. I want to know who they are. So do many others. 

And it’s at this point where Goldberg’s slander of Trump hits the fan. The pushback started nearly immediately. Vanessa’s sister, Mayra is beyond infuriated and hurt at this smear and the exploitation of her sister. 

Wow.
I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics- hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members. President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today. https://t.co/o8cDrKOKBV

— Mayra Guillen (@mguilen_) October 22, 2024

Mayra then posts the following: “My sisters death was never to be politicized. Unbelievable.”

CNN aired this report of the White House visit of Vanessa’s family with President Trump.

“As you know, the FBI and the DOJ are now involved. We got them involved. And people at Fort Hood, where it took place, are very much involved. We didn’t want to have this swept under the rug, which could happen,” Trump told Vanessa Guillen’s mother, father and two sisters.

~Snip

The family pushed the President not only for justice for Vanessa Guillen but also for an overall change to military culture and to how sexual harassment can be reported.

The family was in Washington to press for support for the #IAmVanessaGuillen bill, which would allow active-duty service members to file sexual harassment claims through an independent party. After the family talked to him to encourage him to support the bill, Trump responded, “You have our support, and we’re working on it already, as you know, and we won’t stop, and hopefully something very positive will come out in honor of your sister.”

It was during the subsequent conversation that the President found out the family had been unable to have a funeral for Vanessa and offered to help. 

Yet Jeffrey Goldberg threw facts and ethics out the window in his blind rush to slander of President Trump. In doing so, he hurt a good family who was devastated by the needless death of their sister Vanessa. 

He also resurrected the “suckers and losers” bit, which much of the media is gleefully buying into once again. 

Which the media nods approvingly, others who were actually IN THE ROOM during this supposed racist utterance of President Trump’s, went on the record to push back at Goldberg. 

The Atlantic, using anonymous sources, wrote that Trump disparaged murdered Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen & ordered Mark Meadows not to pay for her funeral. Guillen’s sister Marya is defending Trump’s treatment of her sister & her family, and Mark Meadows is denying the story. pic.twitter.com/tE7vF3AVkY

— Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) October 22, 2024

And there are others who’ve now gone on record saying that Goldberg’s so-called reporting is slanderous and false. Natalie Kwaham, the Guillén family attorney, is one. 

“After having dealt with hundreds of reporters in my legal career, this is unfortunately the first time I have to go on record and call out Jeffrey Goldberg@the Atlantic: not only did he misrepresent our conversation but he outright LIED in HIS sensational story,” Khawam wrote on X.

“More importantly, he used and exploited my clients, and Vanessa Guillen’s murder … for cheap political gain,” she added.

Theo Wold is another. 

I was at President Trump’s meeting with the Guillén family because I assisted with translation that day.

President Trump was genuinely concerned about Vanessa Guillén and appalled by the tragedy the Guillén Family were enduring.@mguilen_ was poised and confident in…

— Theo Wold (@RealTheoWold) October 22, 2024

Jeffrey Goldberg is on record promoting hoax after hoax after hoax. From the Iraq War, to Omarosa’s lies, to the “suckers and losers” comments supposedly made in France, and now this awful exploitation of Spc. Vanessa Guillén’s death in order to slander President Trump, Goldberg uses invisible anonymous sources to further his agenda. 

Serious question. At what point does @TheAtlantic and @JeffreyGoldberg face actual real reprocussions for these multiple smear articles where they were clearly lying?

Posts are all anyone does. Someone needs to sue them into the ground like Deadspin.

— HebrewservativeV2 (@HebrewserV2) October 22, 2024

President Trump is correct. Most of the media is a bunch of slimy vipers, and Jeffrey Goldberg is at the top of that heap. 

Feature Photo Credit: Spc. Vanessa Guillén via Wikimedia, cropped and modified