“Daily Show” correspondent Ronny Chieng ripped senior Trump officials on Tuesday as he questioned how their group chat — one where they discussed plans to bomb Yemen — could be breached by The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
“How did this happen? I mean, don’t you guys have tech support in the government,” asked Chieng as a picture of billionaire Elon Musk wearing a “tech support” t-shirt appeared next to him.
Chieng noted that President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz adding Goldberg to the chat “wasn’t even the most embarrassing thing to happen” in the Signal text thread before turning to Waltz’s heavily-mocked fist-flag-fire emoji reaction to the U.S. strikes targeting the Houthi militia.
“Is anyone else kind of upset that we’re conducting war by emoji now?” Chieng asked.
“I mean what does this even mean? I’m going to fist the flag and then light it on fire?”
He argued that people shouldn’t use emojis for “life-and-death situations” as they’re “too open for interpretation.”
“Like imagine if your doctor texted you a crab emoji, right? And now you’re going, ‘Oh my God, I have crabs?’ And your doctor has to be like, ‘LOL, no, it’s the astrology sign for cancer,’” said Chieng, sparking applause from the crowd.
Chieng went on to clown Republicans over their “nobody’s perfect” reactions to the breach including Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), who called it a “mistake” before pushing back at CNN host Boris Sanchez’s continued questioning.
“Boris, I gave you the soundbite already. I gave you the soundbite already,” she stressed.
Chieng swiftly imitated the congresswoman, ”‘Boris, I gave you the soundbite, stop asking follow-up questions. If I wanted to talk to a journalist, I’d be on a private group chat with Pete Hegseth.’”
Watch more of Chieng’s Tuesday monologue below.