The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart took down the Trump officials caught up in the Signal text leak scandal in his typical style.
Top national security officials for President Donald Trump, including his defense secretary, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story posted online Monday.
Stewart joked that in previous years, journalists had to work with sources to secure classified war documents.
“Now, you just wait for the national security advisor to be distracted by White Lotus while he’s setting up his bomb Yemen group chat,” the veteran host joked.
Stewart pondered if he too was in the group chat.
The host also gravitated towards Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, writing in the group: “We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
“For those of you who don’t know, OPSEC means ‘operational security.’ He said that in a group chat with a journalist.”
The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic.”
The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported.
It was not immediately clear if the specifics of the military operation were classified, but they often are and at the least are kept secure to protect service members and operational security. The U.S. has conducted airstrikes against the Houthis since the militant group began targeting commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea in November 2023.
Just two hours after Goldberg received the details of the attack on March 15, the U.S. began launching a series of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
