Saturday Night Live opened with a skit on the biggest scandal of the week, the so-called “SignalGate.”
The show had Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Andrew Dismukes), Vice President JD Vance (Bowen Yang) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernandez) entering a teen girl group text chat. They share state secrets, as the girls are bewildered by the flood of information being sent their way.
The Atlantic this week published editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s account of being mistakenly added to a Signal group chat with top Trump administration figures, in which Hegseth shared detailed attack plans on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The bombshell story has dominated headlines all week, as the Trump administration has tried to claim that the information shared was not classified.
The whole episode has been an embarrassment, as National Security Adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News, and it also showed Hegseth’s penchant for emojis.
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“FYI. Greenlight on Yemen raid. Sandborn 15 minutes ago. Who’s ready to glass some Houthi rebels? Flag emoji, flag emoji, flag emoji, flag emoji, flag emoji, fire emoji. Eggplant.”
“Who is this?” one of the teen girls asks.
“Pete Hegseth, secretary of defense,” he responded. Then he texted on, “Israel bend over and spread it. Baller. Water squirt emoji. God bless the troops. Eggplant.”
“Do we know you, bro? This is Jennabelle.”
“Oh nice, Jennabelle from defense, right?”
“Hey, I think you have the wrong group chat,” another girl texts.
But Hegseth went on texting. “Sending a PDF with locations of all our nuclear submarines. Check out what we got chewing right outside Shanghai. Jordan Peele sweating like crazy GIF.”
“Stop sending us this stuff,” one girl told him.
But Hegseth went on to add Vance, in Greenland, and Rubio, and the texts continued.
Finally, one of the girls told them, “I think you accidentally added us to a government chat.”
Rubio texted, “In that case, we were totally pranking you guys. LOL. But would you mind emailing your names and home addresses to deportations@ice.gov?”
Eventually, Goldberg (Mikey Day) appeared, having been in on the chat all along. “Hegseth, you have got to lose my number.”
Watch SNL‘s cold open in the video above.