Actor Colin Jost made a rare cold open on Saturday Night Live (SNL) this week, appearing as an aggressive Secretary of Defense—or war, as he prefers being called—Pete Hegseth holding a press conference on the U.S. military strikes off the coast of Venezuela.
In the sketch, Jost is asked by a reporter whether he truly gave the order to kill the two survivors of a U.S. military strike on September 2—an allegation that sparked outrage this week.
“First of all, that kind of cruel, heartless act has no place in ‘Operation Kill Everybody,’” Jost 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—sorry, a guy I met at an anonymous meeting.”
The sketch was concluded by Jost saying he knows that President Donald Trump, a “high-energy alpha,” has his back. The camera then turns to James Austin Johnson, who played the president, sleeping and muttering New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s name.
“You can freeze my rent anytime,” Johnson said before shaking awake and adding: “I wasn’t sleeping, I’m very much awake. Now, someone quickly tell me: Where am I, who am I, and what year might it be?”
Johnson then falls back to sleep, with Jost calling for “another MRI before he wakes up.”
‘Fire Away’
In its decades-long history, SNL has never shied away from commenting on the current political environment.
Jost and Johnson’s sketch on Saturday represented a very direct mockery of the Trump administration’s recent attacks against alleged drug boats from Venezuela—and of Trump’s health, which some have put into doubt in recent months.
“We’re now at war with Venezuela,” Jost’s Hegseth told reporters, before adding: “Pretend I’m a random fishing boat and fire away.”
The legality of using deadly military force against alleged drug boats off the coast of Venezuela has repeatedly been questioned, though the White House has defended it.
The second attack targeting survivors of a U.S. strike on a suspected drug boat on September 2, which was first reported by The Washington Post, has sparked particular outrage among lawmakers and experts.
A former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court told the BBC that the U.S. airstrikes on alleged drug boats should be considered crimes against humanity under international law.
“These are criminals, not soldiers. Criminals are civilians,” said Luis Moreno Ocampo. “They are criminals, and we should do better at investigating them, prosecuting them and controlling them, but not killing people.”
What Is Hegseth Saying About It?
Hegseth initially condemned the newspaper’s reporting as “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” but the second strike was later confirmed by the White House. This week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the order had come from Admiral Frank Bradley and not Hegseth, adding that the Navy officer had acted “well within his authority and the law.”
Hegseth said that he considered Bradley’s decision justified.
What About Trump’s Sleepiness?
Despite years mocking former President Joe Biden for his alleged sleepiness, dubbing him “Sleepy Joe,” Trump has been spotted apparently dozing off during that same Cabinet meeting in which Hegseth was answering questions about the September 2 double strike.
The president closed his eyes several times for an extended period of time—nearly six minutes altogether, according to The Washington Post—during a 75-minute long Cabinet meeting this week as his advisers were speaking.
It was the second time Trump seemed to struggle to keep his eyes open, after being noticed apparently dozing off for a cumulative 20 minutes, according to The Washington Post, during a similar Oval Office event on November 6.
Responding to a recent New York Times article that said the president was facing the “realities of aging in office,” Trump said: “Right now, I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago.”