John Oliver mocked the Trump administration’s major gaffe last week, wherein U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz unknowingly added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine to a group text in which leaders discussed plans for an airstrike in the Middle East.
“The Trump administration brought us yet another week of chaos,” he said on Sunday’s Last Week Tonight.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in question, posted the details on his outlet’s website with the headline “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
Oliver joked that was “one of the greatest headlines I read this week.”
The other ones?
- “Monkeys Chase British Tourist Out of Hotel Pool in Thailand: ‘Scariest Moment of My Life” (NDTV);
- “This Octopus’s Other Car Is a Shark” (The New York Times); and
- “Lots of Fun, Good Weather Greets Guests During Deerfield’s 24th Annual Testicle Festival” (Daily Telegram).
Meanwhile, Goldberg wrote in his story that he didn’t believe the chat group was real until the time of the attack.
“I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. … I checked X and searched Yemen and saw the explosion was being heard across Sanaa, the capital city,” he wrote.
Oliver noted that the air strikes killed up to 46 civilians in one day, “which should be a scandal in and of itself, [but] it’s grotesque to see the glib response in the chat afterward.”
Two of the responses were comprised of a series of emojis (fist, American flag, fire; and prayer hands, prayer hands, muscle, flag, flag).
“Look, those clearly aren’t the right emojis to send after a bombing because the right emojis are NO emojis,” he said.
