Trump Team’s War Plans Group Chat Triggers Avalanche of Memes
Top intelligence officials and Republicans are trying and failing to downplay the revelation that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and others discussed secret plans to bomb Houthi militants in Yemen in an unsecured Signal chat group that featured Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, because someone on it accidentally invited him. Meanwhile, the internet is reveling in the fallout as if it were petty online high school drama.
Derek Guy, an internet personality known for his fashion commentary, appeared to set off one meme trend on X by posting a photo of Kris Jenner wearing a robe and scrolling through her phone while in bed, writing: “Me reading national security secrets bc i’ve been accidentally added to a group chat.” Another user shared an image of Big Bird looking entirely out of place in a group made of up Darth Vader and imperial officers from Star Wars, with the caption: “Me in the group chat for top secret air strikes.” Another pop culture reference was the drug lord Stringer Bell, played by Idris Elba in the TV series The Wire, during a scene when he admonishes an underling for taking notes on a criminal conspiracy. Instead, a post on X had him incredulously ask, “arranging war plans in a group chat?” A meme that made the rounds on multiple social media platforms depicted a Wojak character standing in the corner at a party and thinking to himself, “They don’t know I’m the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.”
Others drew inspiration from the actual leaked chat messages. Liz Charboneau, vice president of research at the Democratic rapid response media organization American Bridge, screenshotted three emojis sent by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser who added Goldberg to the “Houthi PC small group,” after airstrikes that killed at least 53 people (mostly women and children, according to the the Yemeni Health Ministry): a punching fist, an American flag, and a fire emoji. Charboneau noted, “if I text you this it means your secret is NOT safe with me.” Dan Toomey, business journalist and host of Morning Brew’s Good Work, went a step further, posting a doctored image in which it appears that homeland security advisor has replied to a real message from Vice President Vance with a St. Patrick’s Day-themed horny copypasta that includes the phrase “this means it’s time to lick some lucky LEPRECHAUN ass” amid a deluge of suggestive emojis.
On Bluesky, one user turned a classic meme template of a man and woman flirting over text into a topical joke: “You up?” the woman writes, with the man replying, “We’re bombing Yemen tomorrow.” Another post imagined Hegseth sending a message that said “Yurkey” instead of “Turkey,” with Vance, Waltz, and even Goldberg ridiculing him by repeating the typo. (A similar fake screenshot on X displayed the text “Hey guys probably going to bomb Yemem tonight lmao,” with another group member mocking the misspelling.) One fictive scenario involved Vance justifying the inclusion of a gamer friend with the screen name “bonerdude” in the group chat. And yet another viral Bluesky post warned that children could be “texting state secrets in a Signal chat” with abbreviations including “tbh” for “Talkin ‘Bout Houthis.”
With Democrats hammering Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe (who confirmed he was in the group chat) over this security screw-up, and Hegseth and Trump simply smearing Goldberg and The Atlantic in an attempt to dismiss the story, it’s not clear how the scandal will shake out. Trump’s opponents have a number of potential angles on the issue, from arguing that the White House is conducting an illegal war against Yemen to pointing out the vulnerability of sensitive security information (Gabbard and Ratcliffe have argued that no classified material was discussed over Signal) and the possibility that individuals covered their tracks by sending texts set to disappear after a short time: Goldberg reported that some of Waltz’s messages were on a week-long timer and would vanish after that, but federal laws require the preservation of government records. Trump’s absence from this working group of subordinates could also suggest that the president is out of the loop on U.S. military actions abroad.
For the moment, however, critics of the Trump regime at home and around the world are again in awe of the incompetence that has repeatedly made a laughingstock of his inner circle. The level of operational security on display at the White House this week was neatly summarized in an X post whose author declared that they were starting “a new [Facebook] chat with my bros.” The attached image showed an edit field for changing the title of the group, with the clever input “NOT the yemen airstrikes groupchat.” So apologies to Hegseth if he hoped to use that name going forward — it’s already taken.
