John Oliver has once again mocked Donald Trump’s administration following another week of turmoil for the president’s team after highly classified war documents were accidentally leaked to a journalist in a group chat.
Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg broke the story on Monday (24 March) when he reported that members of the Trump administration had mistakenly added him to a Signal group chat that discussed a classified military operation targeting Houthi positions in Yemen.
Kicking off his latest episode of Last Week Tonight, Oliver said: “The Trump administration brought us yet another week of chaos.” He also praised Goldberg’s headline – “The Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans”– adding that it was “one of the greatest headlines I read this week”.
Oliver’s other favourites were “Monkeys Chase British tourist out of hotel pool in Thailand: ‘Scariest moment of my life’”, “This octopus’s other car is a shark” and “Lots of fun, good weather greets guests during Deerfield’s 24th annual Testicle Festival”.
He noted that the airstrikes being discussed in the chat had garnered a series of emoji reactions from those in the group, including a fist, an American flag, flames, prayer hands and an arm flexing a muscle.
“Look, those clearly aren’t the right emojis to send after a bombing because the right emojis are no emojis,” proclaimed Oliver.
He continued: “It’s basically like asking which Minion meme is right to send after Dylan’s ex-wife died in a car accident. They weren’t together anymore, were they? But it feels wrong not to send something when the answer is maybe send flowers and not this actual meme of a Minion cheering in a graveyard holding a sign that says ‘Sorry about your ex-wife.’ That is not the answer.”
“This is something of a motif for this administration: deeply unserious people doing deeply stupid things with massively serious consequences.”
Oliver also lamented a video released by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of deported migrants being held in a crowded prison in El Salvador which he called “deeply disturbing”.
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He added: “The past couple of months have seen this administration operate with incompetence and cruelty, interspersed with the occasional Nazi-adjacent visuals. The good news is they’re facing massive pushback over the mass deportations. The bad news is they’ve already done a ton of damage. But if they think they can brush off illegally detaining innocent people with the same flippancy they reserve for adding the wrong person to a group chat, they should know in no uncertain terms that the rest of us will push back hard.”
Oliver concluded the segment with his own set of emojis – a running man, middle finger, pointing finger, peach alongside a hole, red heart and an American flag – or as he interpreted them: “Go f*** yourselves, a**holes, love America.”