The Pete Hegseth Group Chat Memes Are as Wild as the Invite Itself

It looks like Fox & Friends Weekend co-host turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may have made a serious blunder in March 2025. According to The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, Hegseth shared confidential information after Goldberg was accidentally added to a Signal group chat titled "Houthi PC Small Group."

Goldberg found himself among 18 Trump administration officials discussing a secret military operation targeting the Houthis in Yemen.

Yes, Goldberg claims he knew about the attack before it happened, all because of the mistaken invite. If true, that’s a huge security concern.

Naturally, the mishap has sparked intense debate. Some think Goldberg is exaggerating, while others are stunned it even happened. Of course, it also served as the perfect inspiration for plenty of memes capturing both the shock and sheer absurdity of the situation.

Here’s a roundup of the wildest Pete Hegseth group chat memes making the rounds.

Coming in at the top of our list is this meme, which swaps out Jonathan Goldsmith’s head from the iconic Dos Equis beer ad, where he’s known for saying, "I don’t always drink beer…" with Hegseth's head. In this version, Hegseth says, "I don’t always include reporters in unsecured war plan group chats, but when I do, it’s because I’m incompetent and drunk." Now that’s a meme that really packs a punch!

This meme suggests Hegseth was casually adding people to a war plan group chat, almost like how someone might casually bring up a topic during a late-night conversation with a girlfriend. X (formerly Twitter) user @ProjectLincoln didn’t hold back, calling Hegseth "messy" for the move because, really, how do you share a war plan with a media outlet's editor-in-chief?!

This meme attempts to paint a picture of Hegseth's "condition" as he allegedly texted war plans to a journalist — an editor-in-chief, no less. Lots of questions here... lots of questions.

Hegseth was pretty outspoken to reporters when asked about the sensitive information the journalist was allegedly given access to, calling him "a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist." But at the roundtable with all the Trump officials? Folks think he might cower, much like Roman Roy in this clip from Succession.

This X user claims they also received war plans from Hegseth via email, but they had a pretty hard time making sense of it all. Unfortunately for Hegseth, Goldberg didn’t have the same trouble and took the story straight to publishing.

If Hegseth did, in fact, include a journalist in a top-secret war group chat, perhaps this X user has a point. Who else has he accidentally included in messages or sent the wrong photo to? And more importantly, why isn’t a more secure structure being used for group chats of this nature? Hegseth is pretty defensive right now, but an explanation is definitely needed, sir.