National security leaders have inadvertently leaked Yemen attack plans again… only this time, it was to teen girls on Saturday Night Live.
The NBC sketch comedy show’s cold open spoofs the Trump administration’s Signal chat scandal, which saw the highest-ranking national security officials add the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine to a Signal group text chain in which leaders discussed plans for an airstrike in Yemen. President Donald Trump later claimed the information shared in the texts was not classified. Days after the leak was revealed, The Atlantic released the text messages that included the attack plans.
The latest SNL episode opens with three high school girls — played by host Mikey Madison, Ego Nwodim and Sarah Sherman — texting about boy drama, when all of a sudden, the trio gets added to a group text with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, portrayed by Andrew Dismukes.
“FYI green light on Yemen race,” Dismukes’ Hegseth writes. “Who’s ready to glass some Houthi rebels. Flag emoji, flag emoji, flag emoji, fire emoji, eggplant.”
The confused high schoolers question who is texting them, as Dismukes’ Hegseth continues, “Israel better bend over and spread it. Baller, water squirt emoji. God bless the troops, eggplant.”
“Do we know you, bro? This is Jennabel,” Madison replies as Nwodim adds, “Hey, I think you have the wrong group chat.”
“LOL LOL. Could you imagine if that actually happened?” Dismukes’ Hegseth 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.”
Bowen Yang’s Vice President J.D. Vance later enters the chat.
“Nice job with the strike, fam. Female skier emoji,” he writes. “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.”
“OK, I’m engaging. The pyramids of Giza? Like, how would we move them here?” a confused Madison asks. Yang’s Vance responds, “Same way they built them, either aliens or slaves.”
Madison later texts, “Oh, I gotta go. Matt’s here to pick me up. We’re going to a movie,” to which Dismukes’ Hegseth asks, “Who? Gaetz?” Madison quips, “Actually, yeah.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, played by Marcello Hernández, was next to join the group chat. “Wait, who are the other three numbers here? P.S. sending you the real JFK files, not those fake ones we released. Do not share!” he writes.
Nwodim tries to tell the national security leaders again, “We’ve been trying to tell you we’re in high school,” as Sherman adds, “I think you accidentally added us to a government chat.”
“In that case, we were totally pranking you guys,” Hernández’s Rubio replies. “But would you mind emailing your names and home addresses to [email protected]?”
“Hey, could be worse. We could have added the editor of The Atlantic again,” Yang’s Vance adds before Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, played by Mikey Day, chimes in, “You did!”
Madison, the star of Anora, also makes her hosting debut on SNL, with musical guest Morgan Wallen.
During her opening monologue, the Oscar winner jokes about her “pretty relaxed vibe in real life” compared to the intense characters she’s played in movies. After showing scenes from her films Scream and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Madison says, “Those were two different characters who were lit on fire, and that’s range.”
She later talks about her role in Anora, which saw her play a young stripper from Brooklyn. “I kind of feel like horseback riding prepared me for doing Anora, but instead of riding horses, I was riding a Russian twink,” Madison quips.
“I performed all my own stunts for the film, including all the dancing, so it does kind of bother me when people assume it wasn’t actually me on the pole because it was, and I can prove it right now,” she adds before the camera cuts to another person on a pole, not Madison.
