{"id":415166,"date":"2026-01-18T15:59:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T15:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415166\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T15:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T15:59:12","slug":"top-trump-officials-ignore-reality-to-defend-perfect-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/415166\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Trump Officials Ignore Reality to Defend \u2018Perfect\u2019 ICE"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> Renee Nicole Good earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) introduced Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (Ashley Padilla), who was unapologetic about the fatal incident<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More from Rolling Stone<\/p>\n

\u201cNow obviously there\u2019s been clashes on both sides in Minneapolis. And have we been perfect? Yes,\u201d she insisted.<\/p>\n

Noem then encouraged more people to sign up to join ICE, the agency which has seen a massive influx of money<\/a> from the GOP\u2019s budget bill and yet has reportedly<\/a> been hiring underqualified applicants.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs 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?\u201d she asked, in what was reminiscent of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler\u2019s ICE recruitment ad<\/a> last October. \u201cIf 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 \u2018Noem,\u2019 as in, \u2018Do I have this situation under control? Noem, I don\u2019t.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump then brought out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost), who had no problem depicting Good\u2019s killing as an example of American exceptionalism.<\/p>\n

Regarding tensions with<\/a> Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and how thousands of anti-regime protesters have reportedly been killed in recent weeks in Iran, Hegseth said, \u201cI\u2019m going to tell him, \u2018If Ayatollah once, Ayatollah a thousand times: you don\u2019t dare kill your protesters. That\u2019s our thing!\u201d<\/p>\n

Best of Rolling Stone<\/p>\n

Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday Night Live kicked off with top members of the Trump administration defending Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[124067,194400,88,69639,46162,76416,4801,15394,3479,92],"class_list":["post-415166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ashley-padilla","tag-ayatollah-ali-khamenei","tag-entertainment","tag-homeland-security-secretary","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-james-austin-johnson","tag-kristi-noem","tag-rolling-stone","tag-trump","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}