‘Signalgate’ has turned a string of patriotic emoji into a meme that will live in infamy
A recent group chat between high-ranking Trump officials may not exactly have been secure, but its place in internet culture certainly is.
The fiasco known as Signalgate introduced what may already be the most infamous group chat in American history, inspiring a flood of memes across all social media realms and unveiling a string of patriotic emoji that now holds a permanent smirking perch in the public lexicon.
According to an eye-popping story from The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, an account attributed to National Security Advisor Mike Waltz invited Goldberg to join a chat called “Houthi PC small group” on encrypted messaging app Signal earlier this month. There, boldfaced names including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance discussed plans to bomb Houthis in Yemen. Although dubious at first, Goldberg realized the chat was authentic when those plans were later confirmed by reality.
After Goldberg published his scorching account of Signalgate on Monday, the internet erupted in speculation. Ironically, group chats across the country were likely consumed with it. The National Security Council quickly confirmed that the messages seemed authentic. Their statement to the press included a meager defense of those involved: “The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
Of course, many social media dwellers thought the thread demonstrated something else: elite memeability.
“Me in the security chat” quickly emerged on X and Bluesky, alternately to describe how one might look while reading texts about bombing plans, or how out-of-place one might feel being awkwardly included in such texts.
Some memes focused on other unexpected parties being added to the “Houthi PC small group” and which further unexpected secrets might be revealed there, while others centered around not being invited to that chat or not being able to leave it.
— Pekka Kallioniemi (@P_Kallioniemi) March 25, 2025
There have been reenactments, historical and otherwise. The Daily Show’s version, which they rolled out on Instagram, even cross-pollinated the group chat format with another recent political meme—the weird JD Vance photoshops.
Beyond a vast assortment of joke formats, though, something else evolved out of Signalgate: the most surreal, extremely online usage of emoji ever captured in a national security setting.
Goldberg’s article came with the closest thing to “receipts” the journalist could produce without further jeopardizing national security—selected screenshots. In one of them, Waltz is revealed celebrating the successful bombing campaign with the following emoji: a punching fist, an American flag, and a classic flame. (The trio of symbols does not yet have a collective name, but for the duration of this article, I will refer to it as Team America, a nod to the South Park creators’ 2004 satire of macho jingoism, best known for the earworm “America, F*ck Yeah!”)
Within hours of Goldberg’s bombshell dropping, use of the Team America emoji fanned out across X, Bluesky, Reddit, Tiktok, and Instagram.
I told an intern his work was good and he just replied « ???? ???????? ???? » ???
— PE Croissants ???? (@sscoutcap) March 25, 2025
Some used it to mock the ice-cold detachment required for using triumphant emoji to mark the macabre occasion of a strike that killed at least 53 people. Others jumped right into ironically embracing Team America in faux displays of patriotic fervor. Taylor Swift fans deployed it the way Swifties do pretty much everything: with the inclusion of Taylor Swift lyrics.
One popular use for Team America emoji that quickly emerged on Monday was in calling out the group chat’s hypocrisy. As CNN has documented extensively, several of the people involved—including Hegseth, Waltz, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—previously called for Hillary Clinton to receive criminal charges over her much-litigated alleged security lapses. (Clinton herself reacted to the news by tweeting: “You have got to be kidding me.”)
Several X users took to quote-tweeting old Waltz tweets on related topics with the Team America emoji configuration. Even the Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee got into the action, along with Gen Z congressperson Maxwell Alejandro Frost. Tweeting apparently wasn’t enough for Florida rep Jared Moskowitz, who held up a Team America emoji sign at a House Judiciary Committee meeting on Tuesday morning.
While memes about the security group chat are currently in abundance, both in volume and breadth, the Team America emoji seems headed for a much longer shelf life. It’s the textual equivalent of a semi-ironic high-five, with undertones of mischievous mockery. Based on the amount of mileage it’s already gotten in just one day, it seems poised to break meme containment and become a go-to affirmative response in random text messages and a staple of Jumbotrons everywhere. In fact, the only thing that might stop its spread is if MAGA world reclaims it as a symbol of pride and starts putting it on hats, which is what will probably happen.