Saturday Night Live took aim this weekend at the Trump administration’s messaging blunder where top officials accidentally discussed Yemen airstrikes on Signal with a journalist from The Atlantic unknowingly included in their chat.
The sketch features three high school girls—played by Mikey Madison, Ego Nwodim, and Sarah Sherman—texting about boy drama when they suddenly find themselves added to a group chat with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, portrayed by Andrew Dismukes.
“FYI green light on Yemen race,” Hegseth writes. “Who’s ready to glass some Houthi rebels. Flag emoji, flag emoji, flag emoji, fire emoji, eggplant.
“Israel better bend over and spread it. Baller, water squirt emoji. God bless the troops, eggplant,” Dismukes as Hegseth continues while the girls are confused about who’s sending the texts.
When the girls hint to the secretary they’ve been added to the wrong chat, Dismukes’ Hegseth brushes it off with a joke.
“LOL LOL. Could you imagine if that actually happened?” he says. “Homer disappears into bush GIF. And oh my God, everyone, sending a PDF with updated locations of all our nuclear submarines. Check out that one we got chilling right outside Shanghai. Jordan Peele sweating like crazy GIF.”
Vice President J.D. Vance, portrayed by Bowen Yang, jumps into the conversation to discuss the strike.
“Nice job with the strike, fam. Female skier emoji,” he wrote. “My bad, meant to send fire emoji. … Egypt owes us big time for this Yemen shiz. POTUS was saying we should make them give us the pyramids.”
After more chaos unfolds, Nwodim warns the government officials again that they’re messaging high school students, which leads U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, played by Marcello Hernández, to pretend it was all a prank.
“In that case, we were totally pranking you guys,” Hernández’s Rubio replied. “But would you mind emailing your names and home addresses to [email protected]?”
The sketch wraps up with Yang’s Vance saying, “Hey could be worse. We could have added the editor of The Atlantic again*,”* which cues Mikey Day, acting as the publication’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg, to pop in with “You did!”
Last week in real life, U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief to a Signal group where they were discussing plans for a Middle East airstrike.
“On Tuesday, March 11, I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz,” the editor the wrote. “I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. I did not assume, however, that the request was from the actual Michael Waltz.”
