“You don’t dare kill your protesters. That’s our thing!” Pete Hegseth tells Iran’s leader
Saturday Night Live kicked off with top members of the Trump administration defending Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the backlash to an agent shooting and killing Renee Nicole Good earlier this month.
Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) introduced Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (Ashley Padilla), who was unapologetic about the fatal incident.
“Now obviously there’s been clashes on both sides in Minneapolis. And have we been perfect? Yes,” she insisted.
Noem then encouraged more people to sign up to join ICE, the agency which has seen a massive influx of money from the GOP’s budget bill and yet has reportedly been hiring underqualified applicants.
“Is your neck wider than your head? Are you currently wearing a Punisher t-shirt? Have you ever punched a hole in the wall because your son took a dance class?” she asked, in what was reminiscent of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s ICE recruitment ad last October. “If the answer is yes, grab a gun, any gun, and saddle up, big boy, and just know you can always count on me because my last name is ‘Noem,’ as in, ‘Do I have this situation under control? Noem, I don’t.’”
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Trump then brought out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost), who had no problem depicting Good’s killing as an example of American exceptionalism.
Regarding tensions with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and how thousands of anti-regime protesters have reportedly been killed in recent weeks in Iran, Hegseth said, “I’m going to tell him, ‘If Ayatollah once, Ayatollah a thousand times: you don’t dare kill your protesters. That’s our thing!”