‘I Might Be in This Group Chat’

That was Jon Stewart’s theory on The Daily Show, at least, with the late-night comedian joking about how much easier it is these days for journalists to be privy to top-secret intel.

“You know, back in my day, if you were a journalist and you wanted leaked war documents, you’d work the sources, meet ’em in a dark alley, earn the trust, pound the pavement,” he lamented.

“Now, you just wait for the National Security Advisor to be distracted by White Lotus while he’s setting up his ‘Bomb Yemen’ group chat,” adding in character, “Are those guys jerking each other off?”

Seriously, if you’ve not been following The White Lotus, that is a totally legitimate question for a viewer to be asking and you can find out more about that right here:

As it turns out, Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was somehow added to a group chat two weeks ago that included key Trump administration officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secret of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance and others.

“So he’s watching this chain go back and forth detailing the logistics and the specifics of a military strike and he thought somebody was trying to fool him; he thought it was disinformation,” Jimmy Kimmel said of the thread detailing planned attacks against the Houthi terrorist organization in Yemen.

“Turned out it was just a bunch of fools because the strikes started happening exactly as it was described in the texts,” Kimmel continued.

Kimmel went on to marvel that “no one on the chain thought to ask, ‘Who is JG? … They could have been leaking secrets to Jeff Goldblum, for all they know.”

After the White House seemingly acknowledged the error, Hegseth offered more of a denial, telling reporters on Tuesday per Newsweek, “Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say.”

As for Goldberg himself, Hegseth said, “You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again…This is a guy who peddles in garbage.”

Kimmel, meanwhile, looked at how conservative media reacted to the story, singling out Hegseth’s former weekend co-host on Fox & Friends, Will Kane, who said that the content of the texts showed a “collaborative, open, honest, team-based attempt to come to the right decision.”

“He made the choice to look at the bright side of it,” Kimmel said, but at the same time questioned the approach of looking at the content of the messages.

“‘If you read the content of these messages–‘” he quoted, before commenting, “The point is, we’re not supposed to read the content of these messages! I have to hand it to him, that a real beauty of a spin.”

This came after Kimmel contrasted how he figured the right might respond if something like this had happened under the previous administration.

“My god, if Joe Biden’s top military team accidentally texted these plans to a journalist, Laura Ingraham’s erection would be so rock strong it would break through the wall like the Kool-Aid man,” he said.

Meanwhile, Stewart was looking at the specific wording and comments in the leaked text thread from this “administration that is carrying out its plans with competence and professionalism.”

“Perhaps my favorite text of the entire group chain is the one from our defense secretary saying, ‘We are currently clean on OPSEC,'” he quoted, with a sly look to the camera.

“For those of you who don’t know, OPSEC means operational security,” the comedian explained, waiting a moment for the words to really sink in for his audience. “He said that in a group chat. A group chat with a journalist.”