Kristi Noem’s El Salvador prison visit, Michael Che also jokes, looked like she was “trying to beat a world record on OnlyFans”
Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update mocked nearly every Trump administration official involved in the scandal of inadvertently providing attack plans to a journalist via a Signal group chat.
On Monday, The Atlantic reported that National Security Adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added the publication’s editor-in-chief to a chat in which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth detailed plans for a forthcoming strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen.
In the days since, the Trump administration hasn’t been all too clear about what exactly happened, with Hegseth repeatedly denying that anyone was “texting war plans”–even though the White House itself confirmed the message chain’s authenticity–and Waltz simultaneously taking responsibility for the “embarrassing” error while suggesting that the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg, could have somehow schemed his way into the chat. Additionally, Waltz on Tuesday denied that a staffer was at fault, yet that same day Donald Trump pointed the finger at someone working under Waltz.
As national security experts overwhelmingly dispute the administration’s contention that no information in the chat was classified, Waltz, it appears, still has a job only because Trump doesn’t want to give Democrats and the press “a win.”
About all this, co-anchor Colin Jost began: “This week, we learned our entire national security team has the texting skills of my aunt Janet.”
“Of all people to accidentally add to the chat, it was the editor of The Atlantic. That’s like if you’re planning a surprise quinceañera and cc’ed Jared from Subway,” Jost joked.
Jost then took a shot at Elon Musk when noting the type of emojis Waltz typed: a fist, the U.S. flag, and a fire, the last of which was really “the Tesla emoji.”
“Waltz later explained – this was his real explanation – that the journalist’s number must have gotten ‘sucked onto’ his phone,” he added. “Worse, he then tried to get rid of the number by saying, ‘Siri, how do I suck the journalist off?’”
As for Hegseth’s denial, which included the line, “And that’s all I have to say about that,” Jost compared the former Fox News co-host to Forrest Gump.
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“He went full Gump–except Hegseth’s life is more like a box of wine,” he joked of the man who has been accused of alcohol abuse.
Michael Che then moved on to how Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited an infamous prison in El Salvador as part of a message to undocumented immigrants to “self-deport.” Yet to Che, Noem, who filmed a video in front of dozens of tattooed men behind bars while wearing a $50,000 watch, it seemed like she was there for something else: “trying to beat a world record on OnlyFans.”
Jost, regarding Vice President JD Vance‘s visit to–and icy reception in–Greenland, then quipped that he was “delivering the administration’s clearest threat so far: Either Greenland joins the U.S., or the U.S. will keep sending them J.D. Vance.”