If you haven't been living under a rock (honestly? It sounds pretty appealing these days), I don't need to tell you that the biggest political story of the week has been the one about the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic who accidentally got added to a Trump administration group chat on Signal, where he was privy to presidential officials discussing regular, everyday things like plans to bomb Yemen. The editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, obviously proceeded to write a story about it titled "The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans," and it has turned into a whole thing being referred to as Signalgate.
While this whole thing is massively, amazingly disastrous, the best music angle people were managing to get out of it is that Taylor Swift was name-dropped in the US Senate Intelligence Committee meeting that followed — but a much better one has since come to light: US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, the guy who accidentally added Goldberg to the group chat, is apparently the brother-in-law of Creed's Scott Stapp.
Now, this may or may not even currently be true, since Stapp and Jaclyn Nesheiwat Stapp — sister to Jaclyn Nesheiwat, Trump's former homeland security director and Waltz's wife — were reportedly headed toward divorce last year [via People], but they did wed back in 2006. Plus, in 2019, Stapp performed at a campaign fundraiser for Waltz, who was formerly a Florida congressman.
The connection was brought to the world's attention by Stephen Colbert on last night's (March 26) episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The show aired a parody of Creed's hit "Higher" about the dynamics between Stapp and Waltz at the dinner table when the family gathers for Thanksgiving. Fake-Stapp is excited about the scandal's opportunity to allow his yams to receive proper praise!
You can check out the parody below. Even if Stapp and Nesheiwat have since divorced, this is a beautiful rainbow-connection, the-more-you-know moment (remember those?).
