“Weekend Update” straight man Colin Jost played up Hegseth’s prickly side in a parody press conference, where he stormed into the room, chest bumped a staffer and berated the pool of journalists before he begrudgingly opened the floor to questions.
“So you got questions for me? Fine! Pretend like I’m a random fishing boat and fire away,” he quipped, a note to the controversy surrounding the U.S.’s open-water attacks on boats that the Trump administration claims are smuggling drugs.
“First of all, that kind of cruel, heartless act has no place in ‘Operation Kill Everybody,’” he said. “Second, I wasn’t even in the room when it happened. OK, I was so jacked up after the first strike I had to make an emergency call to my sponsor — I’m sorry, a guy I met at an anonymous meeting — so I don’t drink something that I like and I want, but I can’t have, but I want it, and I need it, and I want it right now. Ba, ba ba-ba-da! It’s booze.”
When asked to confirm the death toll of the attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats, which has reportedly surpassed 80 people, Jost’s Hegseth smugly replied, “Let’s just say, if I had a drink for every Venezuelan we’ve killed, I’d really like that number of drinks.”
Watch the full sketch here: