John Oliver has weighed in on the “Signalgate” scandal, in which members of President Donald Trump‘s administration accidentally added The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to their Signal group chat about Yemen attack plans.
On the latest episode of “Last Week Tonight,” Oliver said that Trump “brought us another week of chaos” with his team’s handling of the situation, mentioning how defense secretary Pete Hegseth initially denied that the chat was about war plans and national security advisor Michael Waltz said Goldbergs’ contact was “sucked in” to his phone. However, The Atlantic then published texts from the group chat that proved otherwise.
“The White House tried to do damage control all this week, from playing semantic games of whether they were technically war plans to hinting Goldberg somehow got himself onto the chat, something undercut by literally showing Michael Waltz, the U.S. national security adviser, adding Goldberg in,” Oliver said. “And by the way, all of this was in the run up to airstrikes that are estimated to have killed up to 46 civilians on one day, which should be a scandal in and of itself.”
The host added that it was “grotesque to see the glib response in the chat afterward,” noting the specific emojis that were used by officials in response to the attacks being carried out.
“Waltz posted fist, American flag, fire emoji while another official posted prayer hands, prayer hands, muscle, flag, flag,” Oliver said. “And look, those clearly aren’t the right emojis to send after a bombing because the right emojis are no emojis.”
However, Oliver continued that “this is something of a motif for this administration: deeply unserious people doing deeply stupid things with massively serious consequences.”
To end the segment, Oliver encouraged others to “push back hard” against the administration’s behavior and then translated that sentiment into “the language that they seem to prefer.” As different emojis flashed across the screen — including the middle finger, peach, heart and American flag — Oliver said: “Go fuck yourselves, assholes. Love, America.”
