Saturday Night Live brutally mocked the Trump administration’s handling of war with Iran, with star Colin Jost reprising his impression of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as an amped-up frat boy.
The cold open began with Hegseth performing a keg stand — a “Hegstand” as he bragged from the podium — then chiding a reporter for labelling the U.S. conflict with Iran as a war.
“This isn’t a war, OK?” Jost said.
“It’s a situationship,” he added, a slang term for an ambiguous relationship.
The joke played on how Republican allies of the president have been reluctant to describe the ongoing conflict as a war, given that the White House bypassed Congress and started the conflict unilaterally, even though only lawmakers can formally declare a war.
As the cold open went on, Jost continued to roast the White House strategy, claiming the ambiguity around the mission — is it about regime change? Stopping state-sponsored terror? preempting a strike on the U.S.? — is all part of a secret Trump administration strategy.
“If we don’t know what we’re doing, then Iran definitely doesn’t know what we’re doing,” Jost said.
“You’re all playing chess — I’m playingGrand Theft Auto,” he added, a nod to the administration’s use of footage from the violent video game in recent Iran-related promotional videos.
The U.S. strategy, he insisted, was about going “wild,” just like actor Shia LaBeouf, who was recently arrested after a partying spree in New Orleans.
In the cold open, Hegseth then ceded the stage to recently-fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, played by Ashley Padilla, who Hegesth said had been reassigned to a new role, “under the bus.”
“I didn’t get fired,” Padilla insisted. “I self-deported.”
She then joked about some controversies that helped bring the real Noem down, including the aggressive immigration operation in Minneapolis, as well as allegations she was having an affair with her adviser Corey Lewandowski and that DHS spent government funds on luxury jets for top staff.
“I think I really nailed it, and by it, I mean my married coworker in a big, beautiful flying bedroom 30,000 feet over Minneapolis,” Padilla said.
The sketch also mocked Noem’s new post, serving as a special envoy to the Trump administration’s “Shield of the Americas” initiative.
“As I told my plastic surgeon, the work is never done,” Padilla said.
Back in the real world, Noem remains under scrutiny even as her tenure leading DHS is set to conclude at the end of March.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is demanding that the remaining funds spent by “Kosplay Kristi” Noem on a controversial $220 million “vanity” ad campaign be rerouted to help victims of last year’s devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
“While Kristi Noem poured $220 million of taxpayer money into a political ad campaign featuring herself on horseback, more than $500 million in FEMA funding for LA fire recovery sat stalled on her desk,” Newsom, a Democrat, wrote in a statement. “Families in Los Angeles shouldn’t have to wait while she and Donald Trump play politics. Release the funding now and redirect those dollars to help communities rebuild.”
During her time overseeing homeland security operations, Noem was widely mocked for dressing up in tactical gear for various photo ops and press conferences, leading to derisive nicknames like “Kosplay Kristi” and “ICE Barbie.”
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