"Saturday Night Live" cast member Pete Davidson laughed through his "Weekend Update" segment about midterm candidates Saturday night, which included a joke about a war veteran that landed with a thud.
However, the GOP candidate he insulted said he doesn't want an apology for what he called a "mean-spirited" comment.
Ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections, Davidson took aim at the appearance of a series of "gross" congressional candidates. In particular, his joke about Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who wears an eye patch after losing an eye in Afghanistan, was viewed as insensitive to war veterans.
"You may be surprised to hear that he's a congressional candidate from Texas, not a hit man in a porno movie," Davidson said during "Update," laughing through his lines and then trailing off. "I know he lost his eye in war or whatever ... whatever."
Davidson acknowledged that he shouldn't be making fun of people's looks ("I'm not insane ... I look like I make vape juice in a bathtub. I look like a Dr. Seuss character went to prison"), but he still garnered a reaction from Crenshaw, who didn't want an apology.
"Good rule in life: I try hard not to offend; I try harder not to be offended. That being said, I hope @nbcsnl recognizes that vets don't deserve to see their wounds used as punchlines for bad jokes," the Republican candidate tweeted on Sunday.
Speaking with TMZ, Crenshaw said that he wants the nation "to get away from this culture where we demand apologies every time someone misspeaks" and said "SNL" can do what it wants because it's "feeling the heat from around the country right now."
He thought the show could take a lesson, however.
"Veterans across the country probably don't feel as though their wounds they received in battle should be the subject of a bad punchline for a bad joke," Crenshaw said. "Here's the real atrocity in all this: It wasn't even funny. It was not original. It was not funny, it was just mean-spirited."
"SNL" colleague Kenan Thompson also addressed the "unfortunate outcome" on Monday, saying that Davidson "definitely missed the mark." But he tried to defend his cast mate too.
"I think he was more so commenting on the fact that the joke maybe didn't land as hard as he wanted to as opposed to being like, 'I don't care about veterans,'" Thompson said on NBC's "Today" show.
"My father's a veteran, Vietnam, and I personally would never necessarily go there, but it's tough when you're fishing for jokes _ like that's how stand-ups feel, like there's no real filters out there in the world when they're trying to go for a great joke or whatever, and we try to respect that but at the same time, when you miss the mark, you're offending people so you have to really be a little more aware in my opinion."
It's been a rough few weeks for Davidson, who has been mostly making headlines for his breakup with pop star Ariana Grande.
He addressed that during the "Weekend Update" segment as well.
"I know some of you are curious about the breakup. But the truth is it's nobody business and sometimes things just don't work out and that's OK," he said. "She's a wonderful, strong person and I genuinely wish her all the happiness in the world. Now, please, go vote on Tuesday."
One of Davidson's barbs last week about the split appeared to contribute to Grande's new diss track, "Thank U, Next," which dropped just before "SNL" aired on Saturday. It takes aim at a quartet of Grande's exes, including Davidson.
