Importance Score: 42 / 100 🔵
SNL Skewers Trump Officials’ Signal Chat Leak in Spring Premiere
Political satire program “Saturday Night Live” mined recent events for comedic fodder in its spring opener, prominently featuring a skit lampooning the disclosed Signal group chat involving former Trump administration figures and an editor from The Atlantic. The sketch comedy show returned after a brief hiatus to tackle the uproar surrounding the use of the Signal messaging application by high-ranking officials from the prior administration to converse about military operations targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Sketch Recreates Leaked Chat with Teenage Twist
The controversy stemmed from reports that former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz established the Signal text-based communication and mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic. Goldberg subsequently exposed the chat’s existence and published a transcript of the exchanges. The messages revealed that former Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth divulged the timing of impending airstrikes, though not precise targets, for a military operation on March 15.
In “SNL’s” comedic rendition of these events, the chat group was infiltrated by three teenage girls, portrayed by Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman, and guest host Mikey Madison. The teenagers express bewilderment at receiving odd messages from Hegseth, played by Andrew Dismukes.
Highlights from the SNL Skit
The skit featured Dismukes’s Hegseth character disseminating a series of improbable messages:
- “Tomahawks airborne 15 minutes ago,”
- “Who’s ready to glass some Houthi rebels?”
These messages were punctuated with emojis, including flag icons, a flame emoji, and an eggplant emoji. Madison’s teenage character responded with confusion, questioning Hegseth’s identity, while Nwodim’s character suggested he had joined the wrong group chat. Hegseth’s character, seemingly realizing his error, attempted to play it off as a joke, but then continued to share sensitive, albeit fictional, information.
Escalating Faux Security Breaches
In a further satirical escalation of the security lapse, Hegseth’s character then announced, “While I’ve got everyone, sending a PDF with updated locations of all of our nuclear submarines.” Bowen Yang, playing former Vice President JD Vance, joined the chat from Greenland, adding to the fictional breach by claiming to send a PDF of “all deep cover CIA agents,” with a warning not to share.
Marcello Hernández, as former Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then offered to send “the real JFK files,” distinguishing them from previously released “fake ones.”
Teenagers’ Realization and Goldberg’s Return
It was at this point in the sketch that the teenage characters grasped the gravity of the situation. Nwodim’s character stated, “We’re in high school,” highlighting the absurdity of their inclusion in such a sensitive communication. When Rubio’s character realized the teenagers’ true identities, he jokingly suggested they send their names and addresses to a government deportation email address.
Yang’s Vance character then quipped that things “could be worse,” suggesting they “could have added the editor of The Atlantic again.” Cast member Mikey Day, portraying Goldberg, then reappeared on screen, stating, “You did,” and humorously requested that the Secretary of Defense “lose my number,” concluding the sketch.
“SNL” is broadcast on NBC, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, which also oversees NBC News. Musical guest Morgan Wallen performed on the episode.