SNL tackles Iran as Hegseth calls war a ‘situationship’ while ousted Noem discusses her ‘self-deport’
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 LeBeouf, 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.
