The Daily Show‘s Ronny Chieng has weighed in on Trump administration’s now infamous Signal group chat, in which U.S. officials planned to bomb Yemen without realising that national security advisor Michael Waltz had inadvertently added The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the conversation.
“Is anyone else kind of upset that we’re conducting war by emoji now?” quipped Chieng, noting that Waltz reacted the air strikes with a string of emojis.
Skewering Republicans’ reactions to the Signal scandal, Chieng pointed out their paradoxical responses of calling the breach a mistake, deriding Goldberg’s journalistic integrity, and saying that the leaked chat actually proved the officials’ competence.
“So this reporter who is dishonest and sucks is also correct,” said Chieng. “You can’t use ‘it was a mistake’ and ‘it was fake news.’ You gotta pick one.”
Chieng also jokingly expressed empathy for the U.S. officials, “who are just trying their best to kill other humans.”
“I guarantee that if anyone in this audience had their group chats leaked, it would ruin every single one of your lives,” quipped Chieng. “I personally have chats that are actually more sensitive than a missile attack on the Houthis, OK? If you told me that my group chats leaked, and then told me it was just my missile attack one, I’d be like, ‘oh my god, thank god, thank god.”
