When it comes to political satire, “Saturday Night Live” has had no end of possible material lately, and for its spring opener, the recent Signal group chat involving Trump administration officials and The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was almost unavoidable.
The show returned from a two-week hiatus and dove into the debacle in which top leaders in the Trump administration used the Signal app to discuss military moves against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said he set up the Signal text chat and mistakenly invited The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who revealed its existence and published a transcript of the exchange. It shows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared the timing of planned airstrikes, but not specific targets, for the March 15 attack.
In “SNL”‘s version of events, the chat group included three teenage girls, played by Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman and host Mikey Madison. They were flummoxed over strange texts from Hegseth, played by Andrew Dismukes.
“Tomahawks airborne 15 minutes ago,” he said, reading out his texts as he typed. “Who’s ready to glass some Houthi rebels?” He concluded by reading aloud the inclusion of multiple flag emojis, one fire emoji and one eggplant.
Madison’s teenage character responded: “Do we know you, bro? This is Jenebel.”
“Oh, nice,” Hegseth responded. “Jenebel from defense, right?”
Nwodim chimed in: “I think you have the wrong group chat.”
Hegseth appeared a little nervous.
“Lololol,” he said. “Could you imagine if that actually happened? Homer disappear into a bush GIF.”
The chat continued, somewhat oblivious to the presence of the outsiders. Hegseth decided it was an opportune time to share some information.
“While I’ve got everyone,” he said, “sending a PDF with updated locations of all of our nuclear submarines.”
Vice President JD Vance, played by Bowen Yang, jumped into the group chat from his trip to Greenland: “Sending a PDF of all deep cover CIA agents,” he said. “Don’t share!”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, played by Marcello Hernández, took his turn.
“Sending you the real JFK files,” he said. “Not those fake ones we released.”
About this time, the teenagers realize that maybe they shouldn’t be in the group.
“We’re in high school,” Nwodim said.
When Rubio realized the three really are high schoolers, he said they should send their names and home addresses to “deportations at ICE dot gov.”
“Could be worse,” Yang’s Vance said. “We could have added the editor of The Atlantic again.”
“You did,” said cast member Mikey Day, playing Goldberg as he tapped on a phone screen.
He then asked the secretary of defense to “lose my number.”
“SNL” airs on NBC, a division of NBCUniversal, which is also the parent company of NBC News. Morgan Wallen was the night’s musical performer.
