Last week on Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update, Pete Davidson appeared in a segment where he made fun of the physical appearances of republican candidates. One such candidate was Texas’s lieutenant commander Dan Crenshaw who was just elected as the representative for Texas’s 2nd district.
Davidson joked that Crenshaw’s eye patch made him look like “a hitman in a porno movie”, which quickly had people from both sides of the aisle calling out the comedian for mocking the former Navy SEAL who lost his right eye in an IED explosion in Afghanistan. Last night, Crenshaw made a surprise appearance on the show alongside Davidson, who apologized for his comments.
Davidson said, “The man is a war hero and he deserves all of the respect in the world. And if any good came of this, maybe it was that for one day the left and the right finally came together to agree on something — that I’m a dick.”
In true SNL fashion, Crenshaw got some digs in at Davidson, first with his Ariana Grande “Breathin” ringtone and then with some jokes about Davidson himself. Crenshaw called out Davidson for looking like “if the meth from Breaking Bad was a person” as well as comparing him to Martin Short’s character in The Santa Clause 3.
Then Crenshaw got serious and talked about Veterans’ Day, encouraging viewers to spend time with the veterans in their lives. Beyond thanking them for their service, Crenshaw said “But I would actually encourage you to say something else. Tell a veteran ‘Never forget.’ When you say ‘never forget’ to a veteran, you are implying that as an American you are in it with them, not separated by some imaginary barrier between civilians and veterans but connected together as grateful fellow Americans who will never forget the sacrifices made by veterans past and present and never forget those we lost on 9/11 — heroes like Pete’s father.”
Crenshaw is one of the 15 veterans elected to the House of Representatives in the midterms, and at 34, he is one of the young rising stars of the republican party. In a profile in the Washington Post, Crenshaw addressed a 2015 Facebook post where he called Donald Trump “an idiot” and said his rhetoric on Muslims was “insane.”
Now, the congressman-elect has a more diplomatic/electable view on the president and his administration, saying “His style is not my style, I’ll just say that. It’s never how I would conduct myself. But what readers of The Washington Post need to understand is that conservatives can hold multiple ideas in their head at the same time. We can be like, ‘Wow he shouldn’t have tweeted that’ and still support him. . . . You can disapprove of what the president says every day, or that day, and still support his broader agenda.”
We’ll have to wait and see how Crenshaw performs in office, but the republican party is long overdue for a conservative voice that urges bipartisanship and is willing to reach across the aisle … even if it is just to poke fun at Pete Davidson.
(via Variety, image: screengrab)
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